We are not talking enough about Uruguay. That small South American country boasts impressive results in its handling of the coronavirus. It is also signaling that it wants to prosper and that it understands more freedom might be the way to go about it. Under President Luis Lacalle Pou, Uruguay has suffered a very low number of deaths from coronavirus (23 as of June 15) and the number of confirmed cases (848) is small. At no point did the government decree a national quarantine, preferring instead to let individual responsibility, guided by accurate and transparent information that originated...
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The Return of Protectionism
There are different ways to gauge the rise of protectionism. An obvious one is to count, as Global Trade Alert does, the number of measures adopted by various countries affecting competition from outside. Some 4,000 new barriers to trade have been adopted worldwide since 2008. Another way is to look at the trend in political discourse in developed countries—and the response of the electorate. The effect that Bernie Sanders has had on Hillary Clinton’s views on trade in the current U.S. presidential campaign, and the fact that the most protectionist candidate, Donald Trump, obtained some...