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From the Mind of a Dumb ole Biker from Alvin, Texas.

Just watched CAIR give their speech on the shootings. These people have lost their minds. Seriously, they are blaming our immigration problem and President Trump for the mass shooting in New Zealand. They are blaming the Trump supporters for the mass shooting. They are demanding Congress enact laws to protect them from hate speech, they are demanding Congress enact laws to protect them from the American people.

This happened in New Zealand and they are blaming us. Unbelievable…They want an end to the first amendment and free speech, they want tougher laws and prison sentences for anyone who talks bad about them and their faith. What does that tell you folks? You better start paying attention, As I said before, I strongly condemn violence such as this, but, blaming us is doing nothing but creating more division.

Using their logic, we should condemn every Muslim country and every Muslim for the acts committed against Christians in their own countries. The say they want peace and to live a loving peaceful life here, but they condemn the United States for something that happened in New Zealand. If we used the same mindset, there would be no Muslims left in this country. If we used the same rules they want to apply to us, on them, then there would be no safe place for any of them. That’s crazy.

They have lost their minds. How come they come here, to flee desperation and starvation, but condemn the very people who offer them safety? They come here, then condemn our way of life, Does that make any sense to anyone?

Someone somewhere knew this was going to happen. Let me explain, I mean seriously, they scrubbed his social media account which is standard practice, but and here’s the big BUT! They ban me if I say the word Homo on here, if I say the word queer, or gay on here. You going to try and convince me, no one knew what this so called hate organization was up to? IF I mention the word Muslim negatively, Merely mentioning the subject or word gets me banned, Yeah someone knew what was going to happen. These people had their speeches all laid out and immediately started blaming Trump and our border wall as the reason these Muslim’s got attacked in another country…Blaming America because they got attacked in another country. Sorry, but, someone knew and choose to let it happen. Convince me I’m wrong…There is a much bigger agenda at play here. Consider this, all of this happens within a week from the Feds admitting that there are 22 terrorist camps within the United States.

Well heck, I’m just a Dumb ole Biker from Alvin, Texas. What do I know?

The post New Zealand appeared first on Tea Party Tribune.

In January, I shared a short video about protectionism, which expanded on some analysis from a one-minute video from last year.

Today, here’s a short video explaining the trade deficit, which also expands on a one-minute video from last year.

Simply stated, trade deficits are largely irrelevant.

And since trade balances don’t matter, then it makes no sense to fight trade wars. Especially when protectionist-minded politicians inflict lots of casualties on their own people.

Given all the dramatic rhetoric in Washington about trade deficits – especially from President Trump, it’s worth pointing out that there’s nothing radical or unconventional about my analysis.

Kevin Williamson, for instance, made similar points when he explained the economics of trade deficits for National Review.

A trade deficit is just a bookkeeping entry, not a debt that has to be paid. Countries don’t trade — people do. Americans are no more harmed by the trade deficit with Germany than you are by your trade deficit with Kroger. …trade deficits…are not really driven by consumer behavior… It’s true that many Americans prefer German cars and French wines — and cheap electronics and T-shirts made in China — but trade deficits mostly are the result of several other causes: macroeconomic factors such as tax policies and savings rates, the strength of a country’s currency, and, most important, its attractiveness to investors. …Far from being victimized by such trade, Americans are enriched by it.

Indeed, while more trade is associated with more prosperity, Kevin notes that there’s no link with trade balances.

Trade deficits are not a sign of economic trouble, and trade surpluses are not necessarily a sign of economic health. The last time the U.S. ran a trade surplus with the world was 1975, when our economy was in a shambles. Britain ran a trade deficit from Waterloo to the Great War, a century marking the height of its power, and it grew vastly wealthy.

Neil Irwin, writing for the New York Times, points out that a trade deficit is the same as a capital surplus.

A core idea that Donald J. Trump has embraced throughout his time in public life has been that the United States is losing in trade with the rest of the world, and that persistent trade deficits are evidence of this fact. …The vast majority of economists view it differently. In this mainstream view, trade deficits are not inherently good or bad. …When a country runs a trade deficit, there is a countervailing force. …the flow of capital is the reverse of the flow of goods. And the trade deficit will be shaped not just by the mechanics of what products people in the two countries buy, but also by unrelated investment and savings decisions. The cause and effect goes both directions. …the flow of capital into the country — the inverse of the trade deficit — creates benefits that can be good for jobs, by encouraging more domestic investment.

Amen. I wrote back in 2017 about why it’s good when foreigners invest and create jobs in America.

Irwin also explains that the U.S. gets significant benefits because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency.

…the dollar isn’t used just in trade between the United States and other countries. The dollar is a global reserve currency, meaning that it is used around the world in transactions that have nothing to do with the United States. When a Malaysian company does business with a German company, in many cases it will do business in dollars; when wealthy people in Dubai or Singapore’s government investment fund want to sock away money, they do so in large part in dollar assets. That creates upward pressure on the dollar for reasons unrelated to trade flows between the United States and its partners. That, in turn, makes the dollar stronger…maintaining the global reserve currency creates…a lot of advantages. Lower interest rates and higher stock prices are among them.

For what it’s worth, politicians should ignore the trade deficit and focus instead on preserving the dollar’s special status as a reserve currency.

Let’s also review some commentary from Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe.

For centuries, economists have pointed out the destructive folly of tariffs and other trade barriers. Tirelessly they explain that a trade deficit is not a defeat, just as a shopper’s “deficit” with a department store is not a defeat. They implore policymakers to see that trade restrictions always impose more costs on a country’s economy than any benefits they generate. …Nations don’t trade with each other. We speak as if they do out of habit and convenience, but it’s not true. The United States and Canada are not competing firms. America doesn’t buy steel from China, and China doesn’t buy soybeans from America. Rather, hundreds of individual American companies choose to buy steel from Chinese mills and fabricators, and hundreds of Chinese-owned firms make deals to buy soybeans from far-flung American growers.

He explains that trade is peaceful and productive cooperation.

…international trade occurs among countless sellers and buyers, all acting independently in their own best interest. …To those individuals, national trade deficits and surpluses are irrelevant. They aren’t competing — they’re cooperating. Buyers and sellers aren’t in conflict with each other, let alone with each other’s countries. On the contrary: By doing business together, traders create wealth and connections, knitting the world together in mutual interest, making the planet more harmonious.

Reminds me of Bastiat’s observation about trade and war.

But that’s a separate issue. The focus today is on the meaning (or lack thereof) of trade deficits.

Let’s close with a chart from the video (which I first shared exactly one year ago), which clearly shows that a trade deficit is simply the flip side of an investment surplus.

P.S. I’m still waiting for an anti-trade person to answer these questions I asked back in 2011.

P.P.S. And I also challenge anyone to defend Trump on this issue when compared to Reagan.

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Image credit: distel2610 | Pixabay License.

Two days ago, I wrote about how the Constitution was designed, in large part, to protect Americans from majoritarianism.

The Supreme Court is doing a reasonably good job of protecting some of our liberties (or, in the Heller case, restoring our liberties), but I point out in this clip from a recent interview that the Justices have failed to protect our property rights.

But since I’m now a lawyer, let’s focus instead on what legal scholars have written on this issue.

The late Professor Bernard Siegan authored a great book, Economic Liberties and the Constitution. If you care about these issues, you should buy it.

In the meantime, here are some excerpts from an article he wrote for Chapman Law Review.

The original Constitution of 1787 granted limited powers to each of the three branches of government… The federal government was limited in power so that it could not deprive citizens of their privileges and immunities… The Constitution was passed by delegates who had lived under and were steeped in the common law. Most terms and provisions of the Constitution are of common law origin and cannot fully be understood without reference to the common law. Thus, although there were no specific protections for the right of property or economic activity or press and speech, the United States government was given no power in the Constitution to deprive people of these common law rights.

Siegan explains some of the thinking that motivated James Madison.

The most influential Framer of both the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights was James Madison, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Virginia… He spent considerable time preparing for the Convention by studying the writings of leading authorities on government, particularly the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, who advocated freedom for commerce as essential to the viability and progress of a nation. As a result of his…extensive review of literature on the subject of government, Madison concluded that for a nation to be politically and economically successful considerable limitation of government powers was required, enabling the productive, inventive, and competitive talents of the people to flourish. He believed that the welfare of a nation mandated the creation of a commercial republic that would depend on freedom of the markets and not on the authority of the state.

There’s also an excellent book, The Dirty Dozen, written by Robert Levy and William Mellor, which outlines twelve terrible Supreme Court decisions that expanded the power of government (including Wickard v. Filburn and Kelo v City of New London).

Here are some excerpts from remarks by Levy.

The Tenth Amendment says quite clearly that the federal government is authorized to exercise only certain enumerated powers, the ones that are listed there and that are specifically delegated to the national government. The Tenth Amendment goes on to say, if the power is not listed there, if it’s not enumerated and delegated to the national government, then it is reserved to the states or, depending on the provisions of state constitutions and state laws, to the people. …No matter how worthwhile the goal, no matter how much Congress thinks that it has identified a really important problem, and no matter how sure Congress is that it knows how to fix the problem, if there’s no constitutional authority to pursue it, then the federal government has to step aside and leave the matter to the states or private parties.

In other words, the Founders weren’t joking when they listed the enumerated powers.

They even included an amendment as part of the Bill of Rights to reinforce those limitations on the power of government.

Speaking of amendments, advocates of bigger government could have used that approach to expand the power of Washington. But, as Levy points out, they didn’t need to follow the rules because the Supreme Court decided to no longer protect economic liberty.

…the Supreme Court has accomplished through the back door what the states and the Congress could not have accomplished through the prescribed amendment process. Regrettably, I think, the modern court has lost its compass… Much of the court’s enduring mischief…started during the New Deal and continues today.

Last but not least, Professor Richard Epstein (my former debating partner) has a great book entitled The Classical Liberal Constitution. It also belongs in your library (and will help underscore the differences between classical liberalism and today’s statist version of liberalism).

Until then, here are excerpts from one of his articles.

…the Constitution…does offer broad and specific protections to private property through the Takings Clause (“nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation”4×4. U.S. Const. amend. V. ) and through the Due Processes Clauses of the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments (providing that neither the federal government nor the states may deprive any person of “life, liberty or property, without due process of law”5×5. Id.; id. amend. XIV. ). …a unified conceptual framework should apply to what are called economic and personal liberties, even if it were possible to articulate some hard-edged separation between them. The analytical origin of this position is that voluntary contracting, whether for the transfer of goods and services or the formation of long-term associations, works as well in the one domain as in the other.

Epstein points out that there was a spirited debate when the Constitution was drafted and adopted, but both sides in that debate would oppose the expansion of government power that largely began in the 1930s.

…there were many differences between the Federalists and Antifederalists, but anyone would be hard pressed to find a single point of contention that could be cashed out to support the hallmark legislation of the New Deal. …the Contracts Clause imposes limitations on how the state could regulate ot only existing contracts, but also those contracts that had not yet been made. And whatever doubts that existed were largely removed by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, where the correct reading of the Privileges or Immunities, Due Process, and Equal Protection Clauses all place powerful limitation on the scope of state power to regulate economic and noneconomic matters alike. …neither the Federalists nor the Antifederalists in the ratification debates supported such massive federal schemes as the National Labor Relations Act.

Let’s close with this clever image someone posted on Facebook.

P.S. Here’s some satire about Obama and the Bill of Rights.

P.P.S. And here’s what Professor Epstein said about his interactions with Obama at the University of Chicago.

P.P.P.S. I image Levy/Mellor book would be re-titled The Dirty Thirteen if it was updated to include the horrific Obamacare decision.

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Image credit: Mark Fischer | CC BY-SA 2.0.