Global free trade is about individual, not national, freedom—for consumers and producers who import raw materials, tools, and semi-finished products. Aside from its role as an aspect of personal liberty, free trade's efficiency benefits have been well-established...
Foreign Policy
A Temporary Calm in the South China Sea
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
After a particularly fraught period, complete with water cannons, near collisions, and an actual melee where a Filippino sailor apparently lost a thumb, things in the South China Sea look set to settle down following Manila and Beijing’s reaching of a "provisional...
TGIF: The Populist Trap
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 19, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
If you care about individual freedom and general prosperity, you'll want to avoid all shades of populism like the plague. It is economic illiteracy proudly proclaimed and writ large. As an alternative to libertarianism, it is bad in its own right—freedom is not on its...
The U.S. Continues to Undermine Its Own Interests in Iran
by Ted Snider | Jul 17, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
The American-led isolation of Iran is springing leaks all over. It seems that wherever Iran knocks, everyone answers. Except the United States. Instead, the U.S. continues to close the door, following a long pattern with Iran of undermining its own interests. In 2016,...
TGIF: Culture without Romance
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 12, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
"The entire history of the human race, the rise of man from the caves, has been marked by transfers of cultural advances from one group to another and from one civilization to another." So said economist, social philosopher, and historian Thomas Sowell in a 1990...
Washington Takes Another ‘L’ in China Policy
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 10, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
In the September 15, 2020 edition of The New York Times, the American Enterprise Institute’s Chris Miller crowed that with its barrage of sanctions Washington would “Decapitate” the Chinese telecom giant Huawei. In this premature pronouncement Miller, whose book Chip...
Parody of a Statesman: Antony Blinken, Secretary of War
by Laurie Calhoun | Jul 8, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
For Halloween last year, the United States’ highest ranked diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dressed his son and daughter up as Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian flag, respectively. At a White House event on that day, Blinken’s...
We Need Rational Patriotism
by Christopher Coyne and Abigail R. Hall | Jul 4, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
As we observe Independence Day, you will see patriotic displays everywhere. U.S. flags, red, white, and blue clothing, patriotic décor, and calls to appreciate our freedoms will greet us in the news, in stores and restaurants, and even in our workplaces. Some 67% of...