ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- As you have likely figured out, President Donald Trump loves tariffs. It's just too bad the businessman doesn't understand them -- and the destruction they cause.

This week, a new round of tariffs is set to take effect. There is an across-the-board 10% tariff on U.S. imports from any country. And there are even higher tariffs on ...Read more

Anyone who's studied Adam Smith should understand the downside of President Donald Trump's new tariff plan.

In "The Wealth of Nations," Smith spelled out the benefits of the division of labor. He wrote that someone working alone might be able to "make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty." But production greatly increased ...Read more

HOMER CITY, Pennsylvania -- Eleven days after the massive smokestacks and cooling towers of Pennsylvania's largest coal-fired power plant came down in a dramatic fashion in this Indiana County village, causing both emotional and economic distress and a sense of hopelessness, Homer City Redevelopment announced that an even bigger natural gas ...Read more

We have the dire wolf again.

Thanks to the heroic work of Colossal Biosciences, the canine species that went extinct more than 10,000 years ago has been revived in a stunning act of so-called de-extinction.

The dire wolf is a bit of a Late Pleistocene celebrity thanks to its role in the "Game of Throne" series as a symbol of the Stark family...Read more

WASHINGTON -- "Don't be a PANICAN," President Donald Trump cautioned on social media. Critics have questioned the universal tariffs he unleashed last week, and Americans have had to steel themselves before checking the balance of their 401(k)s.

The Trump tariffs came fast and larger than expected. The markets responded.

Now Republicans and ...Read more

Remember Rosa Parks? She took a stand to bring attention to racism and discrimination against black Americans by sitting at the front of a bus -- at a disgraceful time in America's history when blacks had to sit at the back of the bus. Bravo.

Rosa Parks is an American hero.

Remember the #MeToo movement? Feminists said women have a right to say...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Former President Joe Biden is a bitter man whose ambition outstripped his abilities while Vice President Kamala Harris was unusually loyal. Those are two of my takeaways from the 2024 campaign autopsy book "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.

By comparison, the drama that ...Read more

Whenever the subject of trade comes up, many right-leaning free traders and left-leaning neoliberals alike trot out the same talking point: "The economists all agree tariffs are terrible!" And perhaps they do -- or at least most of them do. Barriers to free and unfettered trade may well appear "inefficient" as a matter of an economic model's "...Read more

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cautioned last month that Americans will likely experience "a detox period" after President Donald Trump implements his wide-ranging tariffs.

What are we detoxing from, exactly?

From an abundance of affordable goods and the world's highest living standards? From consistent economic growth? From leading the ...Read more

One need not rely on experts to know tariffs are typically not a good policy. Going back to Adam Smith writing "The Wealth of Nations," we know it is better to manufacture cheap commodities in areas that can make them cheaply so that wealthier nations can spend their wealth more productively. Adding tariffs historically disrupts that balance ...Read more

Our media elites love to tout themselves as "independent" and "fact-based." But on almost any story on Donald Trump, they can't help but put those words in the shredder.

The Kennedy Center illustrates one major difference between the two Trump terms. In the first term, the president deferred to the leftists who gave all the Kennedy Center ...Read more

Is President Donald Trump bent on political self-harm? It often seems that way. His overall job approval rating still hovers within a point or two of the 50% popular vote he received last November. But he is losing support on the economy and inflation, the No. 1 issue last year, while his overwhelming success in reducing illegal immigration has ...Read more

A Wall Street Journal editorial described President Donald Trump's tariffs as the "dumbest trade war in history." It's important not to overrate intelligence, even in leaders. Judgment and maturity may be more crucial. But Trump is no ordinary dunce. He displays a stubborn stupidity that threatens to plunge the world into chaos and potentially...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a new baby, and it's the talk of the state.

Newsom recently launched a video podcast, and he's done a great job of getting it the oxygen necessary for every one of the more than 3 million shows that currently populate the podcast universe: publicity.

No surprise there. As those of us who are ...Read more

The U.S. Constitution was crafted in 1787 both to establish a new central government and to limit it. Some of the limitations are direct, some are subtle, and some are hidden. The chief instrument of limitation is the separation of powers, the brainchild of James Madison.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia called the separation of powers the most ...Read more

Civil disobedience practiced by the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one thing. Crimes against people or property for political ends are quite another. The latter risks return to the law of the jungle, a cure worse than the disease.

That provides the framework to assess the proliferation of criminal attacks on ...Read more

At this writing, President Donald Trump plans to impose sweeping new tariffs on imports from around the world. We're told that "Liberation Day" tariffs will raise $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade, plus another trillion from automobile tariffs. But the only true "liberation" will be us Americans -- consumers and taxpayers -- ...Read more