“President Joe Biden,” USA Today reports, “is raising tariffs significantly on electric vehicles, semiconductors and several other goods imported from China, moves his administration says are meant to ‘level the playing field’ in sectors where the Biden administration has made major investments.”

The USA Today story notes, in passing, one of the two real reasons for Biden’s latest Trumpian scheme:  He’s “courting the support of working-class voters in Midwest battleground states including Michigan, the center of the U.S. auto industry.”

The other reason is to court campaign  donations (financial and in-kind, direct and indirect) from various lobbying groups, including labor unions and American businesses.

“Level the playing field” is code for “tax American consumers so that American businesses and workers don’t have to compete with foreign products on price for value.”

Tariffs are not levied “on” the tariffed goods. They’re levied “on” the BUYERS of the tariffed goods.

If you’re in the market for an electric car, computer, solar panel, etc., Biden’s plan is to jack the prices up on some of your options (made in China) so that you’ll be more inclined to buy from the voters, labor unions, and businesses he’s “courting” with your money.

The “investments” Biden brags about making come out of your pocket as well. He’s forking over billions of dollars in corporate welfare to build factories for his friends in Big Business and maybe (maybe) provide better jobs for voters he wants to like him more than they like Donald Trump this November.

It’s the same game Trump himself played before, and pledges to play again, if he wins the presidential election.

The real case for tariffs, once we set aside “level the playing field” nonsense, is that tariffs let crooked politicians reward their friends and the voters they’re targeting … with your money.

That’s also the main argument AGAINST tariffs, but there are others.

One of the most important, to steal a phrase, is the “national security” argument. Trump and Biden have both used “national security” as an excuse for imposing trade restrictions in the past, but they always get it backward.

Free trade promotes peace. The freer the trade, the less likely war is to break out, for the simple reason that when two countries’ economies depend on trade with each other, they’re less likely to go to war with each other.

The opposite is also true. As Otto P. Mallery wrote, “If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless the Shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky.”

I don’t know you; I don’t know if your vote is up for sale to the highest bidder.

If it isn’t, you should keep in mind what Biden and Trump have both done, and promise to continue doing, to you.

If it is, I hope you can do better than a Pawn Stars style “best I can do is raise your cost of living and increase your risk of death in a nuclear exchange.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On May 1, the US House of Representatives passed the fraudulently titled “Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023.” It’s not yet law, pending Senate passage and a presidential signature, but the lopsided House vote (320 to 91) should worry all Americans, including the country’s 7.6 million Jews.

In theory, the bill merely clarifies how the US Department of Education should interpret Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination on the basis of  race, color, religion, sex, and national origin by “federally funded programs,” including most colleges and universities.

In fact, however, the bill — by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of antisemitism” — reveals itself as just another underhanded attempt to suppress freedom of speech by placing new conditions on federal funding.

The bill expressly includes “the ‘[c]ontemporary examples of antisemitism’ identified in the IHRA definition” in its own definition of antisemitism.

Those examples include “[d]enying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” as well as “[d]rawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

“Jews” (who, by the way, are not the only “semites”) and “Israel” are two entirely different things.

Jews are an ethnic group bound together partly by ancestry and partly by ancestral religious beliefs.

Israel is a Middle Eastern nation-state which clearly, unambiguously, and openly bases itself on a supremacist ideology (Zionism) exploiting that ethnic bond. The Israeli regime treats non-Jews as, at best, second-class citizens in Israel and as rightsless non-citizens in large swaths of occupied territory next door. Comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany or apartheid-era South Africa aren’t unreasonable.

Most of the world’s Jews choose — in individual acts of “self-determination” —  to live outside Israel. In fact, more Jews live in the United States than live in Israel. Many of those Jews  oppose Zionism on principle, and Israeli policies toward neighboring Arab populations in practice.

Under the “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” a university could lose its federal funding if it allowed Jewish students and faculty to express their political opinions. Not because those opinions are “antisemitic,” but because those opinions don’t toe a pro-Israel line.

We already have laws against violence and harrassment, which apply whether the victims are Jewish or not.

We also have a First Amendment which protects the right to free speech, even if that speech criticizes Israel — and even if that speech is ACTUALLY antisemitic — whether the speakers are Jews or non-Jews.

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education,” the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In early May, the Libertarian Party’s national committee announced a prominent speaker at the party’s convention over Memorial Day weekend in Washington, DC: Former US president Donald Trump.

A few days later, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a post on X (formerly Twitter), issued a challenge:

“We’re both going to be speaking at the upcoming Libertarian convention on May 24 and 25. It’s perfect neutral territory for you and me to have a debate where you can defend your record for your wavering supporters. ”

The party hasn’t publicly confirmed any invitation (offered or accepted) to Kennedy, but maybe that’s coming.

I’m not going to argue — here, anyway — over the wisdom of a political party inviting two of its most prominent opponents to use its national convention as a campaign rally location or debate venue.

I do, however, want all you voters out there to know three things about this … things that the media coverage seems to either leave unmentioned or gloss over:

1. Donald Trump isn’t a libertarian;
2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn’t a libertarian; and
3. Neither Trump nor Kennedy will be the Libertarian Party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

We’ve got a pretty big field of announced candidates for that presidential nomination.

Neither Trump nor Kennedy have declared for that nomination (in fact, after flirting with doing so, Kennedy publicly rejected the idea).

Neither Trump nor Kennedy are eligible for that nomination … or at least they won’t be if they address the convention prior to the nominee being selected. According to the Libertarian National Committee’s policy manual:

“No person shall be scheduled as a convention speaker unless that person has signed this statement: ‘As a condition of my being scheduled to speak, I agree to neither seek nor accept nomination for any office to be selected by delegates at the upcoming Libertarian Party convention if the voting for that office occurs after my speech.'”

Since we haven’t selected our nominee yet, I’m not going to sing his or her praises to you or try to convince you to vote Libertarian . I just don’t want you to be surprised when you look at your ballot in November and don’t see the name “Trump” or “Kennedy” next to the name “Libertarian Party.”

Between now and November, I hope you’ll take time to familiarize yourself with libertarian ideas and with the Libertarian Party’s candidates for office across the US. They deserve your attention and consideration.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY