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Amazon Antitrust Lawsuit Dismissed
Last year, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon over its third-party seller program. On Friday, a judge…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The March Madness college basketball tournament began, continuing this month’s theme. Ukrainians continued to fight valiantly against Putin’s army, while ordinary Russian people are showing…
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New Anti-Merger Bill Not Indexed for Inflation
Yesterday, I wrote about four problems with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY)’s new antitrust bill, the Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers…
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New Antitrust Merger Bill Is Fatally Flawed
There is yet another antitrust bill in Congress. The Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act, sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones…
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Correcting a Couple of Inflation Whoppers
Over at National Review’s Capital Matters site, I have a piece pointing out that today’s high gas prices aren’t caused by inflation. They’re caused…
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Antitrust Is Political
Antitrust regulation is just as politicized as other forms of regulation. Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich’s just-announced investigation into investors whose politics he doesn’t like…
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Inflation Sets Another 40-Year High: Relief Is in Sight, with Caveats
Inflation set a new 40-year high in February. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 0.8 percent in February, which annualizes to 7.9 percent.
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The New Office Normal
What is the best workplace model for employers to follow as COVID-19 (hopefully) continues to wind down? In an Inside Sources op-ed currently being…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Ukrainian people have proven more resilient that the Kremlin anticipated, though Putin’s invasion continued. President Biden gave his State of the Union speech. Employment…
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What Do Workers Want?
Pundits and politicians are talking about how to get back to normal as COVID (hopefully) winds down into an endemic disease like the cold or…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress avoided a government shutdown by passing a continuing resolution to fund the government through March 11. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Russia invaded Ukraine last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from headlights to glucose monitors. On to the data: Agencies issued 44 final regulations…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation reached an annualized rate of 7.5 percent, with prices going up 0.6 percent just in January. This is highest reading in 40 years.
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New Export-Import Bank President Has Opportunities for Reform
Reta Jo Lewis is about to become the next president of the Export-Import Bank. The Senate confirmed her nomination yesterday. Called Ex-Im for short,…
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Steel Tariffs against Japan Lifted, Kind of
President Biden is taking a small step toward tariff relief. Japan’s first 1.25 million metric tons per year of steel exports to the U.S.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The U.S. government’s debt reached $30 trillion last week. Antitrust target Facebook lost users last quarter for the first time in its history,…
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Good News for Facebook Competitors, Bad News for the FTC’s Antitrust Case
Thursday brought some interesting news, none of which were kind to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust case against Facebook. First, Facebook’s number of…
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The COMPETES Act Is a Bad Idea. Here’s What Congress Should Do Instead
The 2,912-page America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521; the backronym is for ‘‘America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength’’) is the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
GDP grew 5.7 percent during 2021, giving further evidence of a strong economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, Congress is now considering…
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Better Ways to Fight Poverty than the Minimum Wage
Every January, states and cities across the country raise their minimum wages. There are also calls to raise the federal minimum wage, which has stayed…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A major antitrust bill from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is poised to hit the Senate floor without a proper hearing. Considering its contents, one…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone. Inflation hit a 40-year high last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from French dressing freedom to…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Teachers’ unions continued to make an eloquent case for school choice by shutting down schools in major cities like Chicago. The country also observed the…
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Retro Book Reviews: A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity by Luigi Zingales (Basic Books, 2012)
University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales’s book A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity, which celebrates its 10th anniversary…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Register took Christmas Eve off, and here’s hoping everyone had a happy holiday season. One more week to go in 2021. The Food…
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Best Books of 2021: Keith E. Stanovich, The Bias that Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking (MIT Press, 2021)
Today’s political polarization isn’t just annoying; it’s damaging important cultural and family institutions. And tensions won’t deescalate until people figure out the root of the…
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Best Books of 2021: Ryan Bourne, Economics in One Virus (Cato Institute, 2021) and Caleb Fuller, There Is No Free Lunch (Freiling, 2021)
Economists are an unpopular bunch. One reason for this is that much of their job is putting parameters on people’s utopias. Spending more money…
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What’s Ahead for Regulation in 2022?
There are two questions about the coming year in regulation. The first is what will happen. The second is what should happen. What will likely…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Two big pieces of good news last week were the Senate’s decision to shelve the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better spending bill and the…
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Have a Regulated Holiday Season!
The Code of Federal Regulations is 185,984 pages long, according to my colleague Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandmentsreport. It consists of 50 titles spread…
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Senate Shelves Build Back Better Spending Bill, For Now
The Senate will not vote on the Build Back Better (BBB) spending bill this year, though they might take it up again next year.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new regulations this year topped 3,000, ending the week at 3,068, and the 2021 Federal Register topped 70,000 pages. Inflation went up…
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Inflation Increases to 6.8 percent, Misery Index Reaches 11
October’s inflation reading was the highest since the recession of 1991. November’s is the highest since the 1982 recession, at an annualized 6.8 percent.
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Can Regional Trade Agreements Replace the WTO?
Trade policy is in a bad place right now, with two consecutive protectionist administrations in the U.S. and the World Trade Organization (WTO) possibly damaged…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new final regulations this year will pass 3,000 this week, with more than three weeks still to go. The Omicron variant gave…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a short work week because of Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from blood lancets to crash test dummies. On to the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The House passed a $1.85 trillion spending bill, which a 50-50 Senate will now consider. An Alzheimer’s vaccine began human trials. If it…
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Court Strikes Down Trump Tariff: Precedent for Institution-Level Changes?
Pessimism reigns for trade liberalization in the short run, but there is fresh hope for the long run. A new court decision over solar panel…
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Review of Michael Munger, The Sharing Economy: Its Pitfalls and Promises (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2021)
Transaction costs are one of the most overlooked ideas in economics. They are also one of the most important. The lowering of transaction costs is…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Children can now receive COVID-19 vaccinations, which is good news all around. The economy gained 531,000 jobs in October, showing once again why Congress’ big…
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How to Fill 10 Million Vacant Jobs
Would raising the minimum wage help to fill the more than 10 million job vacancies currently open? It makes some intuitive sense—higher pay will attract…
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Steel, Aluminum Tariffs to Remain Above Pre-Trump Levels
It is not asking much to undo President Trump’s doubling of U.S. tariffs, which are a major contributor to today’s supply network crisis. But apparently…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Third quarter GDP growth was an estimated at 2 percent, down from about 6 percent the previous two quarters. The 2021 Federal Register topped…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved COVID-19 booster shots for adults over 65, or with certain medical conditions, or who have job-related…
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I, Pencil Meets Today’s Political Realignment
Conservatives are different than they were just a few years ago, and it isn’t just because of Trump, who is more a symptom than a…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
In a four-day week, the economy got mixed news on employment and inflation, a dubious new antitrust bill was announced, and…
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The Radicalism of “Build Back Better” Is the Crisis that Classical Liberals Must Not Let Go to Waste
If the mantra of the day is, “Never let crisis go to waste,” then what are we to do when artificial crisis is being created…
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Sen. Klobuchar’s Half-Baked Antitrust Bill
A famous scene in the 1990s comedy movie Half Baked has a young Jon Stewart musing about how different everyday activities can be while…
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IRS Licensing of Tax Preparers Is Ripe for Abuse
Roughly a quarter of all jobs in America now require some sort of occupational license. Sixty years ago, it was about one job in…
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September Inflation Remains High and Fixable
Inflation remains high, with September’s numbers coming in at a 5.4 percent annualized rate, the highest number in a decade. The Federal Reserve’s target…
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The 2021 Economics Nobels: The Importance of Empiricism, and its Limits
The economics Nobel is given to individuals, but it often really intends to recognize schools of thought or methodological approaches. That is the case with…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Katherine Tai, the new U.S. Trade Representative, gave a major speech affirming President Biden’s commitment to former President Trump’s trade protectionism. Facebook’s website…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress averted a government shutdown and continued to negotiate over nearly $5 trillion in combined spending. Merck announced an antiviral pill for COVID-19 that…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
CEI held its Julian Simon Award dinner, honoring the development economist William Easterly. We also paid remembrance to 2020’s winner, the late, great…
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Not Always an Antitrust Issue: Airline Edition
The Justice Department is gearing up to file an antitrust case against JetBlue and American Airlines over an alliance they recently formed. The Wall…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation remains high at over 5 percent, California’s governor will finish out his term after a recall attempt failed, and culture warriors got outraged at…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2021 Federal Register surpassed 50,000 pages in a short Labor Day week. Fresh off a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, Congress began work on a $3.5…
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Jobless Claims Are Down, but Tensions Remain in COVID Recovery
Jobless claims are at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic; 310,000 people filed first-time claims last week, down roughly 95 percent…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The United States officially ended its military occupation of Afghanistan. Hurricane Ida killed at least 40 people in the Northeastern U.S., while in the New…
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Fighting Bias and Misinformation, from Pierre Bayle’s 17th Century to the Social Media Age
Many people insist that media bias and misinformation are getting worse in the social media age, and we need to do something about it. Depending…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress seems to have reached a deal to combine the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. A $6 trillion budget bill remains…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The big story of the week was the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Back home, a new school year began and the economic…
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The Progressive Playbook? Thoughts on a Slippery Slope
Is there a master plan behind the blunders of governments? Or are politicians just making it up as they go along? The cabal model…
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FTC Re-Files Facebook Antitrust Complaint
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) submitted a revised antitrust complaint against Facebook today. In June, a judge threw out the initial complaint for…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Senate passed the big infrastructure bill in a dramatic marathon vote. It now goes to the House. Up next is a $3.5 trillion spending…
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New Inflation Numbers: Still High, Still Fixable
July’s inflation numbers are out. The annualized Consumer Price Index came in at 5.4 percent, compared to a 2 percent target. The month-to-month increase…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Nearly 1 million jobs were created in July, while Congress put the finishing touches on an infrastructure bill that will add about $250 billion…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Second quarter GDP grew at a 6.5 percent annualized pace, although COVID’s delta variant, inflation, and massive deficit spending could dampen growth going forward.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Olympic games began in Tokyo, after being delayed a year due to COVID-19. Congress is working its way through a $3.5 trillion spending bill…
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Carbon Tariffs Would Hurt Consumers, Slow Recovery
Over in the Washington Examiner, I take a look at the carbon tariff proposal that will likely be in the $3.5 trillion spending bill…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
CEI announced that renowned development economist William Easterly will receive its 2021 Julian Simon Award at a two-day event in Washington, D.C., on…
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Green Protectionism on the Rise?
The $3.5 trillion budget proposal that the Democratic leadership in Congress is putting together will reportedly include the world’s first carbon tariffs, which are…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
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Relevant Markets, A Dozen Keystrokes, and the Google Play Store Antitrust Lawsuit
Yesterday, after markets closed, 36 state attorneys general announced another antitrust lawsuit against Google. This complaint centers around Google’s Play Store, in which it…
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A Sustained Recovery Needs a Deregulatory Stimulus
Over in The Hill, Wayne Crews and I argue that more deficit spending won’t help the COVID recovery. Regulatory reform is more powerful stimulus…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The CEI community mourned the loss of Steve Horwitz, a principled classical liberal, a fine economist, and an even finer person. We’ll miss you, Steve.
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The 2021 Edition of Ten Thousand Commandments Is Out Now
How much does regulation cost? It’s hard to tell, due to a lack of transparency. The government is legally required to tell the public how…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Negotiators reached a deal on a bipartisan infrastructure bill, at least for now. There were also marathon committee markup sessions for five antitrust bills. Meanwhile,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Members of Congress introduced five antitrust bills last week. Antitrust activist Lina Khan was confirmed to a seat on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and…
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A Better Approach to Tariff Diplomacy
In diplomacy, carrots tend to be more effective than sticks. Yet, two consecutive administrations have used tariff threats to try to achieve their objectives. Former…
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Boeing-Airbus Dispute Remains Unsolved: Tariffs Gone, Subsidies Stay
The European Union and the United States eagerly announced today that they had resolved their 17-year dispute over aerospace subsidies. They exaggerate their claims.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The economic recovery continues, but Congress is still intent on passing unneeded stimulus and infrastructure spending. Inflation is also up, and five antitrust bills are…
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CPI Inflation Indicator Hits 5 Percent: Not Stagflation, But a Useful Warning
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for May came out this morning. At 5 percent, it was higher than expected. CPI has its flaws…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Unemployment is back under 6 percent, and it’s looking more and more like the economy is reverting back to trend. We’re not there yet, but…
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Steel Companies Lobby for Steel Tariffs, Biden to Double Lumber Tariffs
One of the first things President Biden should have done upon taking office was to eliminate the Trump tariffs. This would have provided potent economic…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
CEI’s Wayne Crews looked at the Biden administration’s dismantling transparency reforms for guidance documents and warned that political spending on scientific research would…
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Microsoft to Retire Internet Explorer: Lessons for Today’s Antitrust Cases
Microsoft just announced it will retire its Internet Explorer browser next year. This is the same program that was at the heart of an…
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What Inflation Is, and What It Isn’t
It looks like we’re in for a bit of inflation. After decades of stable 2 percent inflation, the latest indicators say it’s moving up…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The best news of the week was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advising that vaccinated people can safely go mask-free pretty much anywhere.
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One of Google’s Antitrust Cases Dismissed, for Now
A District judge on Thursday dismissed a private antitrust case against Google brought by a group of advertisers. It does not affect separate cases…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Facebook Oversight Board conditionally upheld former President Trump’s Facebook ban. Many Republican responses showed that they either do not understand the First Amendment or…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The economy bounced back in a big way, according to numbers released on Thursday. Things are not quite back where they were, but the trend…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The big news of the week was the guilty verdicts in the Derek Chauvin murder trial. Senate Republicans continued their longtime strategy of bargaining with…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress played a round of good idea-bad idea last week. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) introduced a bill for a regulatory budget, similar to the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen floated the idea of a global minimum corporate tax and Amazon workers in Alabama voted against unionizing. The Biden…
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Who Pays Corporate Taxes?
Congress is considering increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent to help pay for the big infrastructure bill it is currently…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Washington’s attention flitted back and forth between beginning work on a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and a brewing sex scandal allegedly involving Rep. Matt Gaetz and…
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U.S. Trade Representative Tai Should Rethink Keeping China Tariffs in Place
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Katherine Tai, the new United States Trade Representative. She has a lot of work ahead of her…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A massive container ship turned sideways and blocked the Suez canal, halting roughly $10 billion worth of international trade per day, or about $400…