Trade war—what is it good for? If the Trump administration uses national security reasons to justify its announced steel and aluminum tariffs, other nations will use the national security justification for their own tariffs, and then we'd be living in a high-tariff world again. Simon Lester writes:
[T]here is a broad and vaguely worded exception for security issues in WTO rules, which gives a lot of deference to governments who invoke this justification. As a result, the U.S. might be able to avoid a WTO ruling against it.
But a win in such a case could lead to a much broader loss for the trading system. If the U.S. invokes national security here, on such a flimsy basis (the U.S. still produces a lot of steel and aluminum, and many imports come from trusted allies such as Canada, South Korea and Mexico), other countries are likely to follow suit and copy this approach.
Governments are constantly looking for a rationale to justify their protectionism. To date, everyone has generally avoided the open ended loophole of "national security" as a justification. But with the U.S. having opened the door, other governments may decide to rush through. We may spend the next few years fighting off a proliferation of trade restrictions justified as national security measures.
[Simon Lester, "This Threat of a Trade War Is the Opposite of 'Drain the Swamp'," Cato Institute, March 2]
How the Trump administration's announced steel and aluminum tariffs could backfire. Tori Whiting identifies three ways:
- Steel-using industries employ 17 million Americans in sectors ranging from automotive manufacturing to construction. An increase in the price of imported steel and aluminum would put these jobs at risk. This already happened in the recent past. Steel tariffs imposed in 2002 cost 200,000 hardworking Americans their jobs.
- Trade restrictions, by their nature, result in price increases for the goods in question. If the price of steel and aluminum goes up, manufacturers will be forced to pass those costs onto American consumers.
- In 2002, the United States faced threats of retaliatory tariffs from major trading partners. Oftentimes, agriculture products are the first target, and in the past, the European Union targeted Florida orange juice. Canada has already threatened retaliation should the U.S. move forward. Tariffs on U.S. exports in retaliation, in the agriculture sector for example, could lead to lower sales abroad for U.S. businesses, putting the jobs of additional American workers at risk.
[Tori Whiting, "3 Reasons Why Trump's Tariffs Would Hurt American Workers," The Daily Signal, March 1]
The forced union fee set-up is back at the Supreme Court. Twenty-two states allow government employees to opt out of contributing to their union's political activities while allowing public sector unions to charge them agency fees for representation. That arrangement supposedly finds the sweet spot between protecting employees' First Amendment rights to not fund messages with which they disagree and enabling unions to prevent free riders on their representation.
But, as Daniel DiSalvo observes, it's never been that simple because both collective bargaining and political campaigning are directed at government. And everything that a public employee union would bargain over also falls into the political sphere. Thus, DiSalvo estimates, in the states with the agency fee set-up, 20 percent to 30 percent of public sector workers are funding political messages with which they disagree.
The case Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, now before the Supreme Court, presents these points while challenging the agency fee set-up on First Amendment grounds. The unions, writes DiSalvo, are fearful of a loss for a good reason:
The general result of public-sector unions' outsize influence in politics over the last 30 years, especially at the state and local levels, is ever-larger and more expensive government. Bigger government means more jobs and money for unions, of course, but in places where unions are strong, public finances tend to be in rough shape. Research by political scientists Sarah Anzia of the University of California at Berkeley and Terry Moe of Stanford University shows that unions increase the cost of government by boosting the salaries and benefits of public workers. My own research finds that strong unions drive up liabilities for other post-employment benefits (OPEB), which consist mainly of retiree health insurance. Higher salaries and generous benefits yield higher government debt and higher interest rates on state and local bonds. Loosening the grip of public-sector unions on some state and local governments could thus create the political breathing room that policymakers need in order to address long-festering fiscal problems in some of the nation's most populous states and cities.
Public-sector unions are powerful political actors because they're organized—largely by government, which solves the unions' collective-action problem by forcing all workers to pay them. Government eliminates competition among unions by designating a single union as the exclusive representative. It incentivizes workers to join unions by permitting agency fees. It subsidizes unions by collecting workers' dues and fees. It provides "release time" for workers to become union leaders, while keeping their jobs.
In sum, these unions have gotten organized not because public workers demanded it but mostly because government has encouraged such organization. In the process, government has trampled on some public workers' rights and fueled the rise of a muscular progressive interest group. The result is an imbalance of political power, with disastrous fiscal consequences for many states and cities.
A rebalancing is in order. The Supreme Court has a chance to provide it.
[Daniel DiSalvo, "Judgement Day for Public Unions," City Journal, Winter 2018]
What isn't a political message these days? On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, in which the court is asked to strike down Minnesota's laws against wearing T-shirts and buttons with political messages in polling places. The problem with the law, as George Will writes, is that it gives to election officials an arbitrary power—that of deciding what is and isn't a political message:
A lower court upheld the law used against Cilek's T-shirt as furthering Minnesota's legitimate interest in polling-place "peace, order and decorum" and "the integrity of its election process" and – the nanny state never sleeps – to protect voters "from confusion and undue influence." What is more offensive, the paternalistic condescension of the government assuming that "confusion" will somehow discombobulate voters who glimpse, say, an "American Legion" or "NAACP" sweatshirt, or the government's hubris as censor of influence that is "undue"?
It is one thing to ban, as the court has allowed, active "solicitation of votes" in or close to a polling place. It is, however, a bit much for Minnesota to forbid passive expression of political -- very broadly defined -- allegiances not associated with any person or issue being voted on. What about a shirt emblazoned with the words "America is the land of opportunity"? Those words, which a guide for University of California employees says can constitute a "microaggression," could trigger fainting spells among voters at polling places sniffing for the reek of unchecked white privilege.
And what about a T-shirt with a pristinely unpolitical message (e.g., "I despise cocker spaniels") that might disturb some sensitive souls in a polling place? The Supreme Court can try to enunciate what is unimaginable – clear standards concerning every conceivable language use in a hypersensitive America. Or the court can give its squint of strict scrutiny to all such polling-place laws, many of which will not pass muster. Otherwise, polling-place officials will have broad discretion to lay down the law, if it can be dignified as law, on an ad hoc basis concerning what is and is not a "recognizable" political view or "undue" influence.
[George Will, "Don't Tread on This Voter's T-Shirt," The Oregonian, February 28]
Pain pill prescriptions are not the source of the opiod crisis. Sally Satel on "[t]he myth that the epidemic is driven by patients becoming addicted to doctor-prescribed opioids, or painkillers like hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin) and oxycodone (e.g., Percocet)":
One oft-quoted physician refers to opioid medication as "heroin pills." This myth is now a media staple and a plank in nationwide litigation against drugmakers. It has also prompted legislation, introduced last spring by Senators John McCain and Kirsten Gillibrand—the Opioid Addiction Prevention Act, which would impose prescriber limits because, as a news release stated, "Opioid addiction and abuse is commonly happening to those being treated for acute pain, such as a broken bone or wisdom tooth extraction."
But this narrative misconstrues the facts. The number of prescription opioids in circulation in the United States did increase markedly from the mid-1990s to 2011, and some people became addicted through those prescriptions. But I have studied multiple surveys andreviews of the data, which show that only a minority of people who are prescribed opioids for pain become addicted to them, and those who do become addicted and who die from painkiller overdoses tend to obtain these medications from sources other than their own physicians. Within the past several years, overdose deaths are overwhelmingly attributable not to prescription opioids but to illicit fentanyl and heroin. These "street opioids" have become the engine of the opioid crisis in its current, most lethal form.
If we are to devise sound solutions to this overdose epidemic, we must understand and acknowledge this truth about its nature.
[Sally Satel, "The Myth of What's Driving the Opiod Crisis," Politico, February 21]
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