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Breaking up and Regulating Facebook: Unfair, Un-American, Unacceptable
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, former publisher of The New Republic, argues in a long essay for The New York Times that the company should be…
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Sharing Economy Is Opposite of Servant Economy
In a bleak take on the sharing economy, Atlantic writer Alexis C. Madrigal says it has created a “servant economy,” where sharing economy platforms provide…
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Move Slowly and Establish Rules: Facebook’s Call for Regulation
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s motto used to be “Move fast and break things.” Now that his company is under increased political scrutiny—and facing calls for…
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America’s Tech Regulators Should Not Follow Europe’s Lead
This week The Economist endorsed European “tech doctrine”—a combination of antitrust, tax, privacy, and regulatory policies that is rapidly being imposed on a mostly American…
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Brexit Brinkmanship
There is plenty of blame to go around for Britain’s current Brexit chaos. In a recent post, I pointed to how the Prime Minister’s handling…
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Trade, Job Losses, and Comparable Wages
One of the frequent objections posted by those who are concerned about free trade is that it leads to job losses. This is true. However,…
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Administration Looks to Make Household-Level Imports More Expensive
One of the consistent problems with the Trump administration’s trade policy is an obsession with reciprocity—if goods aren’t treated exactly the same way as imports…
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Economics of Green New Deal: More Red Than Green
My colleagues have written elsewhere about the energy and environmental components of the “Green New Deal” proposals that have been enthusiastically agreed to by most…
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Jobs Numbers Continue Generally Positive Trend
The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the economy is continuing on a steady course, at least as far as…
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Brexit: The EU’s Gordian Knot Strangles May’s Government
When Rory Broomfield and I were examining the prospects for Britain leaving the European Union in 2014-16, we recognized that there was no easy way…
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Great Jobs Numbers Don’t Assuage Trade War Worries
Today’s jobs numbers were a surprise to everyone—312,000 jobs added in December was almost twice the consensus view of economists of 176,000. Strong wage growth…
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Year in Review 2018: Trade Policy
2018 was the year in which President Trump began to implement his campaign promises of using tariffs to change America’s trade policy. The ostensible reason…
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Year in Review 2018: Antitrust
If 2018 was a bad year for antitrust skeptics, 2019 promises to be worse. We must hope that the Federal Trade Commission and Department of…
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Don’t Blame Google for a Feature Consumers Want
It’s very rare I disagree with the great freedom-loving journalist John Stossel, but his column at Townhall this week made me raise an eyebrow. In…
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Britain’s Treaty of Versailles
“Vote leave, take control” was the slogan of the “leave” campaign during the run-up to the vote on whether the United Kingdom should exit the…
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What Do the Midterms Mean for Big Tech?
For the big technology firms, the midterm elections were never going to change much. Whatever the result, they were going to face more scrutiny over the…
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August Brought 201,000 New Jobs, but Future Gains Threatened by Trade Restrictions
The U.S. economy added 201,000 jobs in August, the U.S. Labor Department announced today. Good news, but impending trade restrictions could put a damper…
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U.S. Should Re-engage with World Trade Organization for Everyone’s Sake
Last week, President Trump threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization, which he called “the single worst trade deal ever made.” …
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Will New NAFTA Be More Protectionist or Less?
This week has seen some swift movement in the talks surrounding the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). On Monday, the President held…
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Brexit Britain Provides Opportunity for New Style of U.S. Trade Agreement
Despite its reliance on raising tariff barriers as a weapon in trade negotiation, the U.S. will soon have the opportunity to negotiate a new free…
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World Trade: The Special Case of China
While free trade with all nations is the avowed goal of both free traders (as we outline in our paper, Traders of the Lost Ark)…
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Rediscovering a Moral and Economic Case for Free Trade
In our new paper, “Traders of the Lost Ark,” my Competitive Enterprise Institute colleagues and I attempt to articulate a strong moral and economic…
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New Jobs Numbers Suggest There’s More Work to Do on Free-Market Reform
At an unemployment rate of 3.9%, it should be expected that job growth will slow. Employers around the country are reporting that they are unable…
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The Platform Economy Can Change the World
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute launches its new video about the platform economy. Platforms are an ancient way of doing business—think of matchmakers, city fairs,…
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Continue Supply-Side Policies to Maintain Economic Growth
As my colleague Ryan Young says, four percent economic growth is wonderful news. It provides yet more evidence that free-market, supply-side policies work, and…
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Driving Innovation: Timbro Index Charts Scope of Global Sharing Economy
The Swedish think tank Timbro has published the first global index of the sharing economy. The Timbro Sharing Economy Index (TSEI) is the…
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Britain’s Brexit Challenge Gets Harder—and It’s Britain’s Fault
Leaving a regional trade bloc is much more difficult than entering it, as the United Kingdom is finding out. The European Union has integrated itself…
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It’s Magna Carta Day!
In a peaceful English meadow made riotous by armed camps, King John sealed Magna Carta, the Great Charter of English liberty, 803 years ago…
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It’s Not “Us vs. Them” at the G7 Meeting
Tit-for-tat retaliation for trade tariffs is a losing game for both sides. Exports are the way we pay for imports of the things we want.
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A New Bibliography for the Platform Economy
The future has arrived, and it is a radically different economy. Havas Media’s Tom Goodwin pointed out in 2015, “Uber, the world’s largest taxi…