In his Washington Post column Marc Thiessen introduced something I found thought-provoking:

The blockade allows the president to twist Iran’s arm to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Moreover, because he is now blocking Iran’s energy exports to China, which gets 45 to 50 percent of its crude oil and 30 percent of its liquefied natural gas imports through the strait, Trump can give Beijing incentive to join him in that pressure campaign.

That evoked a two-part question.

First, should China offer to help the U. S. keep the Straits of Hormuz open? I think it would be in China’s interest to do so. Do the Chinese? There are risks as well as benefits in the move. It could preserve China’s access to Middle Eastern oil and confirm China’s position as a world power. But it would also be seen as abandoning Iran and there is always the risk of losing a ship which would be embarrassing to say the least. It would also implicitly accept blockade as a tool of statecraft. That would have implications for Taiwan. Perhaps China could secure the rewards without bearing the risks.

It also assumes Beijing would see the pressure as directed at Iran rather than itself.

The second is should the U. S. accept China’s help? I think it should but, as I have said before, I have difficulty in figuring out what President Trump will do. Whether the U.S. would accept such help depends on whether it prioritizes immediate leverage over long-term strategic position. There are risks and rewards here, too. It would drive a wedge between China and Iran but it would, as noted, confirm China’s position as a world power. It also would establish a precedent for shared spheres of influence.

Pope Leo XIV and President Trump have been engaging in a war of words. Like many political figures before him, President Trump is severely underestimating Leo. No, he does not command any divisions. But he does have the oldest existing “bully pulpit”.

I agree with Leo in this. The war against Iran is not a just war, as I have pointed out in detail. War is destruction and death. It should be a last resort, not just one more arrow in a foreign policy quiver.

That doesn’t imply that Trump is entirely wrong. Leo is in a long line of popes that have declined to condemn even the most murderous, reprehensible of regimes. It was true of Pius XII with respect to Hitler. It was true of John Paul II with respect to China. They have routinely prioritized diplomatic access over moral clarity. I try to refrain from psychoanalyzing anyone but I think popes see themselves as “playing a long game”. That’s true but I don’t believe that this particular game is in the Church’s favor. When the Church condemns some forms of state violence while remaining silent or muted on others, it inevitably appears to be taking sides. That erodes the very moral authority on which its influence depends.

The president is thinking in news cycles while the pope thinks in centuries. As in virtually all such exchanges in the last century or so, they are talking past one another.

The topic of the day seems to be the defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal all have editorials, columns, and op-eds about it. Rather than commenting on specific opinion pieces, I’m going to comment on their existence.

Hungary has a population of fewer than 10 million people. These people speak a distinct language, unrelated to any of the languages of their neighbors. From the 16th to the 20th centuries it was ruled by a succession of empires, Ottoman, Hapsburg, etc. It should not be surprising if at least some Hungarians view the European Union in that same light.

Most of the opinion pieces I have seen are primarily equal and opposite reactions to President Trump’s verbal support for Orbán and attempting to draw lessons from that election for the United States. Most of their writers clearly know little about Hungarian politics or Hungary’s problems, treating the country primarily as a cautionary tale or a model for American politics. How can such a small country with a culture of its own continue to survive with a declining population? How can it accept mass immigration of immigrants who don’t speak their language or even have much interest in doing so? The election is over but those challenges remain.

Hungary is not being discussed on its own terms. It is being used. Migrants use it as a transit country on their way to Germany or Sweden. American commentators use it as a proxy for their own domestic arguments. In both cases Hungary is a means to an end rather than an object of understanding.

When I speak even a little Hungarian to my Hungarian-speaking neighbors, they are astonished and delighted. That reaction says more about the country’s linguistic isolation than any number of policy papers. It also helps explain why assimilation is not a trivial matter there.

I am American. I did not support Orbán. I do not support his successor. Hungary’s problems are its own and I’m content to let the Hungarians solve their own problems in their own ways. I wish more Americans would do the same.

We appear to be in a fallow period for opinion writing not because nothing is happening but because very little being said is worth responding to. Most of my posts are reactive in nature, that is, I am reacting to something I have read. Right now very few are writing anything I find worth reacting to.

I’ve said my piece about the war in Iran. The objectives may be just. The initiation was not. And if just ends cannot be achieved by just means, the war itself is unjust.

I don’t disagree that our immigration laws were themselves enforced unjustly on occasion. Sadly, human beings being what they are that is true of all laws. No serious immigration regime can rely solely on border enforcement; interior enforcement is unavoidable. And once you accept that, some degree of unjust application is inevitable. That is the dilemma critics rarely confront. Given those realities I have serious reservations about the Democrats’ opposition to funding ICE.

I have yet to see proposals that genuinely increase affordability only ones that defer costs. Any plan built on subsidies without corresponding taxes simply pushes the burden forward. To truly increase affordability we cannot transfer our problems to our heirs.

I could go on but you get the point. What’s missing are neither anxiety nor activity but proposals that survive first contact with reality

I’m thinking of dropping my subscription to the Washington Post. Historically, the Washington Post has been a good barometer of the prevailing wisdom in Washington, DC. Getting the point-of-view of the nearly official inside the Beltway view was worth paying for. Since its acquisition that has become decreasingly the case. What I have paid for was insight into the Washington consensus; I wonder if the Post still reflects that consensus.

That’s less something I can document than a feeling, a vibe. What sparked this reaction in me was two recent editorials. The first was strongly in favor of the construction of data centers. The other was in support of the construction of nuclear reactors. It’s not so much that I disagreed with either editorial than that I couldn’t imagine the Post running either editorial five years ago and I don’t believe they reflected the prevailing wisdom in Washington. Five years ago both positions were at best contested and often politically radioactive within the Democratic coalition that largely defined Washington’s policy center of gravity.

I can’t tell from my outsider position 2,000 miles away whether the new publisher is intervening directly, the WaPo’s reporters and editors are trying to anticipate the view that the publisher would take in an effort at securing their jobs, or the Washington consensus has changed. From the standpoint of a subscriber, the mechanism matters less than the outcome; either would produce the same shift I sense.

I also subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Some consider that a pro-Trump, pro-Republican media outlet but I don’t think that’s fair. I think that the Wall Street Journal is a stubbornly pro-business, anti-tax (because they see higher taxes as anti-business) journal. They frequently run editorials against Trump and the Republicans when either take positions that the editors see as anti-business. You would think that Democrats would draw a lesson from that but apparently not. The WSJ gives me a consistent, intelligible pro-business lens. The WaPo used to provide such a lens for the Washington consensus. If those converge, one becomes redundant.

The brutal truth is that I don’t need to pay to get a pro-business libertarian viewpoint. If the WaPo is no longer giving me something distinct, specifically, a reliable read on the Washington consensus, then it has become substitutable. And substitutable products are not worth paying twice for.

Opinion pieces in out-of-town journals tend to capture my attention and this one in City Journal by Thomas Savidge is no exception. I’m inclined to agree with him that despite its fiscal problems the federal government should not bail Chicago out:

Six years ago, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon sent a letter to the Illinois Congressional Delegation detailing a federal bailout request. Most requests in this letter pertained to budgetary issues that long predated Covid-19, including a $15 billion “no-strings-attached block grant.”

While the feds rejected that specific item, Illinois and Chicago received billions of federal dollars through various stimulus programs. Illinois also received a first-of-its-kind loan from the Federal Reserve. Many proponents of the Covid-19 fiscal expansion still defend this massive spending, with former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stating last year that the stimulus was necessary.

The door is open, then, for Illinois and Chicago to return to D.C. and ask for federal assistance. If granted, taxpayers nationwide will pay for the Windy City’s fiscal recklessness. And the bailouts likely won’t stop there. Officials in other cities, such as Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, will be watching closely. If Chicago can get a bailout, why not the Big Apple?

Rather than properly manage their budgets, city and state officials may scramble to secure the next spot in line at the federal trough. Fiscal responsibility will erode as state and local officials pay more heed to federal policymakers and the terms of federal funding than their obligations to their constituents.

The only constructive way forward is for federal officials to make an explicit warning against bailouts. When fiscally mismanaged states and cities see that Washington won’t enable their behavior, they may finally make the necessary and painful adjustments to restore fiscal solvency.

The federal government should not bail Chicago out even less than it should bail New York City out. I do think that the State of Illinois for a couple of important reasons.

First, the state has been leeching off Chicago for most of the last century. The preponderance of state revenues are derived from Chicago and that has been true for a very long time. Turnabout is fair play. The downstate belief that Chicago is the leech is poorly founded as the table at the bottom of this post documents.

Second, a considerable portion of the city’s budget is devoted to public employee pensions, making up for decades of fiscal profligacy. The state is compelling Chicago to make up for profligacy of which it is itself guilty.

And neither the city nor the state can tax its way out of the consequences of having kicked the can down the road too long. Tax increases would only hasten the flight of those with the income and wealth on which their revenues depend. No, the only remedy is allowing the city and state to restructure public employee pensions, something presently barred by the state’s constitution.

[continue reading…]

Although the U. S., Iran, and Israel agreed to a temporary ceasefire in Israel and the U. S.’s war against Iran, any ceasefire seems to be largely on the part of the U. S. Israel openly declared that for its part the ceasefire did not include Lebanon and its attacks there seem to have escalated if anything as have Hezbollah’s. According to the Institute for the Study of War there has been no material change in Iranian attacks against the Arab Gulf States and it continues to threaten traffic through the Straits of Hormuz.

As has been the case since the start of this war I have little idea of what is happening beyond press releases, which I consider to be largely propaganda, and what I can garner from open source outlets like the ISW.

My reaction to Iran’s “10 point plan” was different from that of the “unnamed official” that Axios said was “maximalist”. Demanding an end of economic sanctions and reparations for damages, Iran’s offer was more than that. My interpretation was that it was an insult bid.

Here’s how an insult bid works.

Seller: I want $1,000 for it.

Buyer: How about $500?

Seller: $900.

Buyer: How about 50 cents?

In commercial settings, an insult bid usually signals negotiations are over. Given his career experience I strongly suspect that President Trump understands them that way. His response (raise the asking price) supports that. In diplomacy it can sometimes be posturing but it often serves the same function. That is supported by reports that Iran has cut off negotiations.

I have never known it to be a good sign. It suggests to me not only that Iran is not ready to concede but that at least one side may be misjudging its leverage in the negotiations and therefore the range of outcomes actually available to it.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal observe:

The Trump Labor Department to its credit has taken steps to make it easier and less costly for farmers to hire seasonal guest workers on H-2A visas. Last fall the department relaxed a Biden wage mandate that required farmers to pay guest workers on average $17.74 an hour—and as much as $19.97 an hour in California—in addition to providing housing and transportation.

The United Farm Workers (UFW) sued, arguing that easing the wage mandates for guest workers will undercut pay and demand for American workers. Vice President JD Vance makes a similar argument in support of reducing legal immigration.

and

Restrictionists say farmers could attract more U.S. workers if they increased wages. DOL disagrees: High wage mandates have “not resulted in a meaningful increase in new entrants of U.S. workers to temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs.” Farmers received applications from U.S. workers for only 182 of 415,000 positions advertised in the last fiscal year.

I see no way that we could spend the last 35 years declaiming that everyone needed college educations, that the future belonged to knowledge workers, subsidizing higher education, and discouraging manual labor without its decreasing how appealing American workers find such jobs. Those jobs were performed overwhelmingly by native-born workers relatively recently. It is something that has been happening for a long time and cannot be reversed immediately. While working conditions, seasonality, and geography plainly matter, they cannot by themselves explain the near-total collapse of domestic applications; that points to a deeper shift in perceived status and life trajectory. Or the timing, which coincides nearly perfectly with the sharp decline in native-born manual laborers. In multiple regions and across decades, the pattern has been consistent: when native-born agricultural workers attempted to organize, they were rapidly replaced often within a single season by more vulnerable labor pools. The difference is the enduring and persistent propaganda program in which we have engaged, misguidedly in my opinion.

Higher wages might increase the number of applicants at the margins but their very low number strongly suggests something else at work.

We also need to recognize that there are some economic activities in which we have no absolute advantage, which are unsustainably costly to do here, and which should not be performed domestically. From my point of view that implies closer, friendlier relations with neighboring countries, particularly Mexico.

It also highlights something I have advocated repeatedly: the need for a true guest worker program especially for Mexican workers without paths to citizenship or other embroidery.