OpenMarket

Hurricane Florence, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault allegation, and a ten percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods dominated the news. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies issued new rules ranging from LED lamps to diabetic truckers.

Today’s unsubtle trade debate largely ignores a subtle, but vitally important concept: opportunity costs. Direct harms from tariffs are easy enough to point out. Steel and aluminum tariffs mean new buildings and cars cost more now, for example. But opportunity costs are more abstract. The economist Frederic Bastiat famously called them “the unseen.”

Securing America’s Energy Future (SAFE), a pro-regulatory “energy independence” advocacy group, this week released “The Military Cost of Defending Global Oil Supplies.” The report is intended to persuade the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to finalize tougher fuel economy standards than the agencies are proposing.

Free speech protections in the United States are pretty far reaching, including protections for commercial free speech and occupational free speech. If you make your living by giving tours or lecturing students or instructing trainees, the First Amendment still applies. Unfortunately, many states encroach on that freedom of expression when it comes to occupational licensing. The Institute for Justice is currently representing Jon and Tracy McGlothian of Virginia, who are challenging their state’s requirements that they be licensed and otherwise regulated for operating a vocational training business.

The excellent recent study on trade policy by my colleagues Iain Murray and Ryan Young, “Traders of the Lost Ark: Rediscovering a Moral and Economic Case for Free Trade” has been garnering some much appreciated media attention recently. We scored a nice mention in Politico’s “Morning Money” newsletter on the day of release with some excerpts from the text quoted, and Inside Trade provided a nice introduction with this article.

For the first time in twenty-five years, Americans can legally wager on the outcome of sporting events outside of Nevada. Thanks to a Supreme Court decision in May that deemed a federal law banning states from legalizing sports betting, five states now offer legal, regulated sports betting markets. After more than two decades of stagnation at the federal level, it took four states fewer than four months to roll out licensing and regulatory systems for the activity.

In a joint letter released this week, thirty free market groups urged House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) to oppose “any effort to expand the current electric vehicle tax credit in any way.” The federal government currently provides a tax credit of up to $7,500 for the purchase of a plug-in electric vehicle. The credit begins to phase out for a manufacturer’s EVs when 200,000 of those vehicles have been sold in U.S. markets.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is not the only group making a principled case for free trade. The UK-based Initiative for Free Trade, headed by Member of European Parliament Daniel Hannan, in conjunction with the Cato Institute’s Daniel Ikenson and Simon Lester, have released a draft for an ideal UK-U.S. trade agreement. Nine other groups contributed to the draft agreement, and CEI’s Iain Murray is a contributing author. Iain also wrote a column about the effort for National Review.

Last week, the Competitive Entrerprise Institute released a major new study by Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner, “Government for Rent: How Special Interests Finance Governors to Pursue Their Climate Policy Agenda,” on the practice of political donors buying influence in state government. The infographic below lays out how this process works.

There are a lot of confusions on both sides of the trade debate. A short CEI WebMemo, published today, seeks to clear up three of them. Here’s the gist: Trade barriers cause short-term job losses but have little long-term employment impact. Higher trade barriers do not improve other countries’ behavior. Finally, lowering trade barriers benefits a country’s economy, regardless of what other countries do.