Globalization: The Irrational Fear that Someone in China Will Take Your Job

With the Obama administration turning toward trade protectionism, this is a good time to revisit the age-old controversy over free trade. Recent arguments have often centered on the supposed evils of globalization, and Globalization attempts, with only partial success, to deal with globalization anxiety. According to Greenwald (who teaches in Columbia University’s Graduate School of [...]

The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen

If you were to believe spokesmen for the Obama regime and its allied pseudo-economists, there is no tradeoff between the size of government and our standard of living. On the contrary, they would like people to believe that the bigger the government gets, the more it can “stimulate” the economy and solve all sorts of [...]

Making a Bad Bill Worse

How do you make a dreadfully bad piece of legislation—the nearly $800-billion so-called “stimulus” bill—worse? Simple: Add protectionism. The “Buy American” provision of the stimulus bill, which mandates the use of domestic iron, steel, and manufactured goods even if imports are cheaper, makes our trading partners nervous. That created a problem for President Obama: “I [...]

TGIF: Smoot and Hawley Return

As if the “economic stimulus” bill was not bad enough, it also contains a “Buy American” provision. It is now truly an economic sabotage bill. This is particularly scary. When the economy soured last year, one could reassure oneself that this would not be a repeat of the 1930s… Now maybe we shouldn’t be so [...]

Protectionist "Stimulus"

The Washington Post reports: The stimulus bill passed by the House last night contains a controversial provision that would mostly bar foreign steel and iron from the infrastructure projects laid out by the $819 billion economic package. Without endorsing any of the eventual infrastructure projects, we must acknowledge that this protectionist rider to the bill [...]

U.S. Agricultural Programs: Who Pays?

E. C. Pasour, Jr. is professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University. He is coauthor with Randal R. Rucker of Plowshares and Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture (Independent Institute, 2005). The Economist labeled the recently enacted 2008 farm bill “A Harvest of Disgrace” (May 24, 2008). The five-year [...]

Book Reviews – April 2008

• Globalization by Donald J. Boudreaux Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
• Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty Reviewed by Bettina Bien Greaves
• Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie by Clayton E. Cramer Reviewed by George C. Leef
• The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond by Barry Eichengreen Reviewed by Waldemar Ingdahl

We Have Enough Globalization?

Jude Blanchette is a freelance writer living in Shanghai. The debate over free trade is, and has been for over 200 years, quite contentious. In reading over the historical debates, it often seems as if no ground has been made by the advocates of a global, borderless economy. Indeed, this is what makes reading Adam [...]