Trump’s Trade War Begins: Disaster to follow

My Facebook comments:

Trump has declared world trade war, disrupting business plans, abrigating contracts, upending consumer budgets, rendering $billions of productive investment useless, hammering Americans’ retirement portfolios, and killing jobs. It’s much worse than expected, which was already bad. For the first time, an American Administration is deliberately trying to engineer a global recession—or worse. And it’s based on discredited poverty-inducing 17th Century economics. It’s pre-Adam Smith. It’s primitive. And it’s also based on unimaginable paranoia. What does it even mean when Trump says “other countries have been ripping us off” and other such nonsense? Countries don’t trade. Private individuals do. When a foreign company exports its product to the U.S. to offer for sale, and an American decides to buy it, both sides win. Trade is WIN-WIN. Who's getting “ripped off?” Nobody. 

Economically, Trump’s collectivist premise that this will “make America wealthy again” really means make the government wealthier. The money raised by the tariffs—which will be much less than Trump dreams—will not enrich the average American. It will be sucked out of American consumers to enrich the government. Somebody’s getting ripped off, alright—American consumers, American businesses that depend on global trade, and foreign companies that supply the goods that enrich Americans’ lives. Trump cares about America, in the same sense as a big government Progressive—but he doesn’t care about Americans.

Trump’s trade war is not only economically destructive. It is immoral. It violates the inalienable individual rights of Americans to freely trade with other people. Economic freedom is fundamental to Americanism. Trump is trampling all over the American Dream.

Too many Americans have been flipping out over a few Federal workers losing their jobs and some spending being cut. But this is penny-ante stuff—and in principle positive. The real danger is in Trump’s trade war. I hope Congressional Republicans get a backbone, join with Democrats—as 4 rational Republicans just did on Canada tariffs—and outlaw Trump’s whole tariff scheme, and curb the presidential power to impose tariffs willy-nilly by executive order—a power no president should have. No, it’s not the end of the world—not yet. Perhaps the hope that this is all a negotiating ploy, and things will ultimately work out, is still alive. But we’re in dangerous territory. Make no mistake. Trump has led our country into taking the first step down a road that ends in World War III. Congress must stop Trump on this issue. That would really be Putting AMERICANS First.

At this posting, the stock market is experiencing a massive coronary. 

But there is one potential silver lining developing. Trump’s unconstitutional power grab may be jolting Congress into growing a spine. The Washington Post reported . . . 

A bipartisan bill that would give Congress final approval on tariffs imposed by a president was introduced Thursday by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). The bill seems to have little chance of passage but underscores the unease among some Republicans with Trump’s tariffs plan, which sent shock waves through financial markets and rattled business owners around the world on Thursday.

I’m not holding my breath. Maybe enough Republicans will join all Democrats in stripping Trump, and the presidency, of it usurped power to impose tariff taxes, which Constitutionally belongs to Congress. Unfortunately, too many Republicans are blind Trump backers, Democrats have their own protectionist problems. But “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

Related Reading:

Trump just imposed the largest tax hike since 1942 without congressional approval

Trump’s tariffs are a tax by another name, and the power to levy taxes lies with Congress.

If Trump were trying to implement an income tax hike of similar magnitude by executive order, it would be plainly unconstitutional. Everyone knows that only Congress can set tax rates. What’s different about tariffs? On its face, nothing. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”

The McKinley Tariff that Trump has said he admires was not an executive order signed by President William McKinley; it was legislation sponsored by McKinley when he was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. So, too, the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act — which did much to worsen the Great Depression — was passed by Congress. It was not an executive order from President Herbert Hoover.

The problem is that, since the 1930s, Congress has delegated considerable authority to the president to set tariff rates. But, as in so many other areas, Trump is stretching executive authority beyond the breaking point.

The United States has done much better during the past 50 years than other industrialized economies: U.S. GDP per capita is 2.4 times larger than Japan’s and 1½ times larger than Germany’s. In October, just before Trump’s election, the Economist proclaimed the U.S. economy “The envy of the world.” How is this an emergency?

“This is a shocking abuse of the president’s authority to declare national emergencies,” she told me. “I don’t think that will stand up to a court challenge.” It is imperative that Congress take back the power to set tariff rates. Only elected legislators are allowed to raise taxes, and only elected legislators should be allowed to raise tariffs — which are simply taxes under another name.

Phony Liberation From a Phony War

Hillary’s Cave-in to the Left on Free Trade

NAFTA, Whatever its Flaws, Was a Good Thing

‘Buy American’ is UN-American—Harry Binswanger

The real reason Trump is destroying the economy: Trump is imposing ruinous tariffs because American democracy is no longer strong enough to stop him. [Mostly spot on. But I have to take issue with his reference to America as a Democracy. This reference confuses the issue, and leads to unnecessary contradictions. America is a Constitutional Republic. But the author’s basic argument is correct; Trump is violating the Constitutional checks and balances by imposing taxes without Congress, and is abusing emergency powers—albeit by using powers that he inherited.]

Why is Trump rewriting US economic history? Anyone?

Abortion Rights and Majority Rule

A Washington Post op-ed, Women are not ‘community property,’ a Georgia judge rules, echoes a fundamental American principle: individual rights to life, liberty, and property are inalienable and precede government. Ruth Marcus, quoting extensively from Judge Robert McBurney’s decision overturning a Georgia abortion law that prohibits abortion once there is a “detectable human heartbeat,” writes:

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.” 

Bravo! This is exactly the point. It’s why the blather about leaving this decision up to individual states gets things wrong. The choice is for the woman to make, not the government, at any level. [My emphasis]

Marcus is a solid Leftist on most issues. As such, she is not a consistent defender of inalienable  individual rights (to put it mildly). 

I posted this comment:

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.”

Absolutely! Protecting our liberties from democracy is fundamental to Americanism. And it goes for all of our fundamental individual rights, including rights to free speech, property, and free trade. But the Democratic Party was founded on the primacy of majority vote, and has held that reactionary position since 1828, when it held that the enslavement of a racial minority should be determined not by reference to the principle of inalienable individual rights promised in Declaration of Independence, but to popular vote in each state.

To this day the Democratic Party still adheres to its horrifying anti-American roots. To wit:

President Joe Biden: “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland: "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” 

Vice President Kamala Harris: “And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”

Well, by its own long-held totalitarian democratic principles, the Left should be cheering the end of Roe. Leaving a woman’s fundamental right to her own body to the whims of state voters is exactly what “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow” looks like.

And, what about a woman’s, or anybody’s, other property? I couldn’t address this point explicitly due to word limitations. But, as John Locke understood, “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” The Founders concurred. The fundamental right to property begins, but does not end, with the functions of one's body. Property rights extend open-endedly to encompass the results of the work of one's mind and body. A woman's body is not subject to majority vote. Neither is the money I earn or the house I buy with that money, or a businessman's pricing policies. All of these rights are linked. You violate one, and you violate all.

In other words, rights to material and intellectual property extend from right to person. Of course, the Left routinely violates property rights in the economic realm, and increasingly threatens rights in the intellectual realm. Where is their outrage when Kamala Harris proposes price controls and wealth taxes, or the Biden Administration creates a “Disinformation Governance Board?”

Memo to the Democrats: Be careful what you wish for. You’ve long preached the supremacy of democracy over inalienable individual rights. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, which returned the right to reproductive freedom to state voters, is exactly what your democracy worship means. You can’t cancel the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence in your quest for your statist Progressive policies, and then call on them when it’s convenient. Either you adhere to them or you pay the price.

I have long ago decided that I would never vote for a Democrat, at least on the national and state levels. The Democratic Party’s historical support for slavery, democracy fundamentalism (in direct opposition to our constitutionally limited republic), white supremacy, the KKK and lynching, Jim Crow, and socialism. That, to this day, it has not changed its ideological and philosophical stripes compels me to write off the party as the central focus of anti-Americanism. I don’t expect that to change in my lifetime.

Related Reading:

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

The Truth about Harris’s Proposed Tax on Unrealized Capital Gains

On the Candidates’ Disastrous Price Policies—and Harris’s Moral Obscenity

Senator Mike Lee is Right: America ‘is not a Democracy’

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Right to Abortion, Not Others' Wallets

KOSA Negates the Government’s Law Enforcement Responsibility

A bill known as the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, passed the U.S. Senate by a 91 - 3 margin. It now [8/3/24] goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

The bill is not what the title implies. It is much more . . . and much worse.

Reason’s Elizabeth Brown observes: 

The Kids Online Safety Act would have cataclysmic effects on free speech and privacy online.

"Bills like KOSA cynically hide censorship behind the mantle of child protection. Tell Sen. Schumer and other lawmakers to reject KOSA," urged the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

In a New York Times article, Senate Passes Child Online Safety Bill, Sending It to an Uncertain House Fate, Maya Miller reports

The centerpiece of the legislation would create a “duty of care” for social networking platforms that mandates they protect minors against mental health disorders and from abuse, sexual exploitation and other harms. Companies could be held liable for failing to filter out content or limit features that could lead to those adverse impacts. [My emphasis]

What content can anyone say does not fit with "could lead to adverse impacts? What would not  be included is such a vague mandate as “duty of care?”

A second measure included in the package would strengthen privacy protections for anyone under 17 and ban targeted advertising to children and teens. It would create an “eraser button” for parents and children, requiring companies to permit users to delete personal information.

Despite the lop-sided vote margin, the bill has notable critics.

The bill faces strong pushback from technology companies, who argue it would place unacceptable burdens on them to moderate content and verify users’ ages, and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union that contend it would restrict free speech. In the Senate, the measure generated narrow but intense opposition despite several rounds of redrafting to address such concerns.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, recently called the bill “the Pandora’s box of unintended consequences,” arguing it would stifle First Amendment-protected speech. Other critics, such as Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said they were worried that limiting children’s access to certain content on social media could further isolate vulnerable youths, including L.G.B.T.Q. young people who often rely on online communities for a sense of belonging and acceptance.

Count me among the opponents.

The Washington Post also reported on the passage of the bill (Senate passes landmark bills to protect kids online, raising pressure on House).

I posted this WAPO Comment:

Note what the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) does NOT do—hold the people who actually create and post the harmful content accountable. Instead of doing their duty to identify and prosecute the guilty, the politicians are going after the social media companies. If a crime is planned around a dinner in a restaurant; or committed using the Verizon phone network; or committed using the public roads, would it be right to charge that restaurant owner, Verizon, or the government for the wrong-doing? Yet that is the position that the social media companies, which are no different IN KIND, are being forced into with this horrifically misleading bill. 

Yes, KOSA is a threat to free speech and privacy, as the opponents argue. But it is also a massive abnegation by the political class in its primary function to identify criminal activity, make the necessary laws, and enforce the laws against the guilty while protecting the innocent.* In effect, the bill shifts that function from government, where it belongs, to private enterprise. Under the smokescreen of “kids safety,” KOSA is a massive inversion of the purpose of law and of justice: It evades the guilty and targets innocent third parties.

We should demand that the politicians do their jobs; go after the guilty, rather than take the easy, politically expedient course of making technology companies the scapegoats. 

* [I am indebted to Jon Hersey for pointing out this little-discussed aspect of this and similar laws targeting social media companies. Hersey wrote “Many of the bureaucrats and commentators behind these laws and initiatives against social-media companies share essentially the same tactic. They blame social-media companies for not doing what governments are supposed to do—protect individual rights—and then rationalize that this supposed failure is grounds for doing what governments are not supposed to do—violate individual rights.”]

Related Reading:

Social Media and the Future of Civil Society by Jon Hersey for The Objective Standard

Senate To Vote on Web Censorship Bill Disguised as Kids Safety by Elizabeth Brown for Reason

Linda Stamato’s Broad Attack on Our Intellectual Freedom

Censorship-By-Proxy is Real, and it's Here

The End of the Free Internet Is Near: The idea that the internet should enjoy minimal government oversight precisely because it was a technology that enabled open and free speech for everyone has been turned on its head. -- DECLAN MCCULLAGH for Reason

HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen

Review of Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media by Michael Dahlen for The Objective Standard

A Lesson From 1930s Germany: Beware State Control of Social Media By Heidi Tworek for The Atlantic

Trump Joins Biden in War on the Average Person’s Newfound Power to be Heard

Christmas the Secular, Christmas the American

Is it appropriate for non-Christian Americans to celebrate Christmas? Many do, and why not? I’m an atheist—or, more precisely, a person of reason—and I have no problem celebrating Christmas, even though it has no religious significance for me.

Christmas is obviously a religious holiday for many, signifying the birth of the Christian icon Jesus Christ. But as an American holiday, Christmas is and, by our own Constitution, a secular holiday. That makes it a holiday for everyone. Therefore, people are free to celebrate Christmas according to any meaning they choose.

Why do I say that? Two reasons—one moral, one Constitutional.

I am indebted to philosopher Ayn Rand for showing that, philosophically, in America, Christmas can’t be strictly a Christian holiday. In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas, Rand observed:

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property… of the Christian religion.

This makes perfect sense. Neither Christianity nor any particular religion can have an exclusive claim on morality. “Good will toward men” is not a monopoly of Christianity. Rand’s reference to the National Holiday aspect of Christmas points to another important reason why Christmas in America cannot be the exclusive domain of Christianity, or of religion more generally.

Here, I am also indebted to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. As the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In 1870, Congress made Christmas a national legal holiday. This means that anyone who claims, as one NJ letter-to-the-editor wrote, that Without Jesus Christ you can't have Christmas, that person is repudiating the U.S. Constitution. A national religious holiday in a secular nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state (freedom of religion and conscience) is a logical impossibility. Since to have a secular government means to have one that is neutral with regards to the fundamental conscientious beliefs of all of its citizens, an American national holiday by definition cannot be religious.

In fact, what we today call Christmas originally didn't have any connection to Jesus at all, writes Onkar Ghate in U.S.News & World Report:

Before Christians co-opted the holiday in the fourth century (there is no reason to believe Jesus was born in December), it was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, of the days beginning to grow longer. The Northern European tradition of bringing evergreens indoors, for instance, was a reminder that life and production were soon to return to the now frozen earth.

The Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice with the holiday Saturnalia. In Northern Europe, the holiday was called Yule.

Indeed, as philosopher Leonard Peikoff observes over at Capitalism Magazine, the leading secular Christmas symbol - Santa Claus - actually contradicts some standard Christian tenets:

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. ... In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

...Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

When Congress declared Christmas a National Holiday, in 1870, Christmas ceased being a strictly religious observance and became a secular holiday. A legal religious holiday in a nation dedicated to freedom of religion and conscience is a contradiction. (The Founders used the terms “religion” and conscience” interchangeably. They understood religious freedom to include the freedom not to believe in or practice any religion—in effect, not just freedom of religion, but freedom from religion as well; i.e. separation of religion and state.) Being a national legal holiday, Christmas can have non-religious, non-Christian meaning just as validly as a Christian meaning. It’s a matter of individual preference. Otherwise, what’s the point of freedom of conscience?

So, regardless of your personal beliefs, go ahead and enjoy Christmas on your own terms.

On that note, let me extend to everyone a hearty wish for a joyous, safe, and thoroughly non-contradictory…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Related Reading:

How the Welfare State Stole Christmas, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Don't Need Christ to Celebrate Christmas

Why Christmas Should be More Commercial—Leonard Peikoff

The Real Meaning of Christmas: What Would Jesus Teach Today?

A ‘War on Christmas?’ No: A War on non-Christians

QUORA: ‘The constitution is a living document that must change as society changes. Do you agree or disagree? Why?’

 QUORA: ‘The constitution is a living document that must change as society changes. Do you agree or disagree? Why?’

I posted this answer:

No and yes. The U.S. Constitution is substantive, not just procedural. Substantively, it is unchanging. Procedurally, it is subject to change.

The Constitution stands on a particular philosophical and moral foundation. The philosophy that undergirds America is grounded in human nature and man’s relationship to nature. The Founding generation understood that man is a rational being; and thus that reason is man’s means of survival and living; that reason is an attribute of the individual; that every individual therefore has the inalienable rights to think and act on the judgment of his own mind, in support of his own life, without interference from his fellow man, so long as he/she does not interfere in the same freedom of others.  Based on an understanding of man’s nature, America’s Founders believed all individuals are naturally free to self-govern their lives, and the Founding documents reflected this. These principles are grounded in the facts of nature. This grounding is summarized in the Declaration of Independence. This is the meaning of the words of the Declaration of Independence, which holds that all people are born equal in their freedom of self-governance and self-determination.

Through the Declaration, the Founding generation recognized the “certain unalienable Rights” of man, individual man, required by his nature to fulfill this freedom—“among” which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The right to work, trade, and contract in order to acquire, use, and keep property was considered implicit in these rights, which is why the Constitution explicitly protects private property rights and freedom of commerce while pointedly not authorizing the government to redistribute private wealth among private individuals in any form.**

Society may change, which is why the Founders grounded this country’s government on a foundation that can withstand the changing vagaries of society, or politics, or culture, or powerful factions. Until human nature changes, the substance of the Constitution, that of being grounded in individual rights, is not “living.” The purpose of government is to “secure these rights,” not violate them, and it cannot abandon this obligation based on shifting political, cultural, popular, or factional whims or passions. 

I think of the unalienable individual rights of the Declaration as the Founders’ attempt to create a “safe space” to protect individual freedom from societal changes. The U.S. Constitution was written to form a type of republican government designed specifically to protect that safe space. The Constitution is “living” in the sense that governmental procedures can change with changing circumstances, such as with advances in technology. The Constitution allows that “We the People” always be open to procedural or structural changes “in order to form a more perfect union.” The Constitution does, after all, include an amendment process.

In this way, the Founders intended to protect individuals from any form of encroaching tyranny. To protect the governed from societal changes, they established the safe space of unalienable individual rights. To protect the people’s safe space, they created the Constitution to limit the government to establishing those protections. Society may change, and it certainly has. America started as a poor, agrarian society. Today, it is an industrial and technological wonder. Certainly, laws must change to keep up with those advances. The Founders understood this need for progressive government, and the Constitution may be amended to adapt governmental procedures to those changes. But the government’s purpose and job, for which the constitution was created, will always be “to secure these rights.” Until and unless human nature changes, that purpose is eternal. So substantively—that is, in its fundamental philosophical underpinnings—the Constitution is not “living” because “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” remain constant over time. 

** [notwithstanding the fact that our current government redistributes wealth on a massive scale.]

Related Reading:

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?--Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

QUORA: ‘Why do law schools teach constitutional law but not the Declaration of Independence as an animating principle?’

The U.S.Constitution: Nick Goldberg’s Scheme to Transform Our Liberty Document into a Democratic Socialist Manifesto