The Cost of Protectionism

Phil Gramm and Pat Toomey at WSJ: While manufacturing jobs declined from 32% of total employment in 1953 to 8.7% in 2015, manufacturing as a share of real gross domestic product has remained virtually constant due to increases in productivity. As Mr. Trump found when...

China and Free Trade

Keith Bradsher and Ana Swanson at NY Times: After eight years of talks, China and 14 other nations from Japan to New Zealand to Myanmar on Sunday formally signed one of the world’s largest regional free trade agreements, a pact shaped by Beijing partly as a...

The Pencil and the Supply Chain

During the crisis, some are saying that we should not rely on foreign countries in our supply chains. That notion is chimerical.  Borrowing from a classic essay by Leonard Read, Milton Friedman once explained why it took thousands of people around the world to make a...