I agree with everything that Phil Gramm and Donald J. Boudreaux say in their latest Wall Street Journal op-ed about tariffs. Here’s a sample:

It’s true that America had high tariffs throughout the 19th century and experienced substantial economic growth. But tariffs were the nation’s primary revenue source until the ratification of the 16th Amendment—which authorized income taxes—in 1913. Alexander Hamilton, who supported industrial subsidies that Congress rejected, was skeptical of high tariffs since no tax revenue is collected on goods that tariffs keep out of the country and tariffs funded about 90% of the government.

and

Proponents of more government spending used the politically expedient argument that tariffs helped infant industries by protecting them from foreign competition. But in 1831 the nation’s longest serving secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, rejected the conclusion that high tariffs promoted economic growth. He wrote that “the American people, amidst all the fluctuations and vicissitudes incident to human affairs, had never ceased to make the most rapid progress in agriculture, arts, and commerce. To ascribe that unexampled and uninterrupted prosperity, which even legislative errors cannot arrest, to a tariff is one of the most strange delusions by which intelligent men have ever suffered themselves to be deceived.”

In 1875 the great British economist Alfred Marshall visited the U.S. to see whether protective tariffs fueled economic growth. Before his visit, Marshall thought the infant industry argument for tariffs might have merit. What he observed in the U.S. changed his mind. In 1903, reflecting on his trip, Marshall wrote: “I found that, however simple the plan on which a protective policy started, it was drawn on irresistibly to become intricate; and to lend its chief aid to those industries which were already strong enough to do without it.”

I agree that tariffs are lousy tools. I have two related questions for them though. First, let’s consider a simplified model of the U. S. economy. In this model we produce no actual physical products. No iron. No steel. No automobiles. No airplanes. No lumber. No minerals of any kind. No soy beans. No wheat. No physical products at all—just services.

We continue to need things to survive. How will we pay for the goods we need? Continue to inflate the currency? Won’t China refuse to take it eventually? Not to mention everyone else. Sell Land to China? That’s what we’re doing now. Here’s a pretty balanced primer on Chinese ownership of prime U. S. farmland. It’s also true of mines and timberland.

Here’s my second question. President Biden has said that if China attacks Taiwan, we will defend Taiwan. Every major U. S. weapons system requires components made in China. How would we fight a protracted conflict with China?

I think the answers to both of those questions is that we can’t and that it is an economic and security necessity that we make a lot more of the stuff we need and that we shouldn’t be using components made in China in our weapons systems at all. How do Mssrs. Gramm and Boudreaux propose that we accomplish that?

For thirty years I have been saying that it would be a lot less fun and a lot more expensive to reindustrialize than it would be not to deindustrialize in the first place.

At RealClearPolling Sean Trende doubles down on his complaints about the vice presidential picks of both parties:

When the election is over, one side will claim that the selection was obviously correct, given that the candidate won. Someone has to win, though, so let’s do a little pre-mortem.

Let’s recall that there are a handful of things that a pick can do. It can shore up a wavering portion of the party base, as Mike Pence did for Donald Trump in 2016. It can reinforce a message, as Al Gore did for Bill Clinton in 1992. Or it can help deliver a state, as LBJ likely did for JFK in 1960.

Walz still doesn’t seem to have delivered any of this. The polling in Minnesota is roughly where it was prior to the Walz pick. This means that Harris-Walz will carry the state, but Democrats were already poised to do that. Republicans haven’t won Minnesota since 1972. If they win it this cycle, the election is already over.

Moreover, there’s an opportunity cost here. Pennsylvania has continued to be the state with the closest polling. There is a charismatic, popular governor of the state who was passed over for the nod. Vice-presidential picks can’t do much, but they can move a state a point or so. In Pennsylvania, that difference appears to be meaningful.

What about Vance? He seems to have done his job, debating Walz skillfully and carrying the MAGA flag. But he also doesn’t seem to have energized voters beyond the party faithful.

I think that Sean is missing what has, sadly, become an additional distinctively contemporary motive for picking a vice presidential candidate: impeachment insurance. Don’t like the president? Would you like the vice president better? No—impeachment may not be a good choice.

I don’t think that’s the only reason that Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris for his vice president. He had promised to pick a “woman of color”. But Kamala Harris was not the only possible pick. However, she was clearly the most assertively progressive candidate he could pick. She didn’t help Biden carry a state or “shore up” a wavering part of the base. To the extent that she “reinforced a message” that message was clearly identity politics. Did that need reinforcement? I don’t think so.

However, she did discourage Republicans from pursuing impeachment proceedings against President Biden. It’s hard not to think that the choice was deliberate.

Now consider the vice presidential picks in that light. Republicans, would you prefer Tim Walz as president over Kamala Harris? I don’t so. Democrats, would you prefer J. D. Vance over Donald Trump. I doubt that even more.

In the Wall Street Journal Paul Kiernan and Anthony DeBarros report something that may surprise some of you:

WASHINGTON—Most economists think inflation, interest rates and deficits would be higher under the policies former President Donald Trump would pursue in a second administration than under those proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a quarterly survey by The Wall Street Journal.

The results of the Oct. 4-8 survey echoed those of the Journal’s survey in July, when Trump was facing President Biden. Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, and Harris became the nominee shortly afterward.

Since then, both Harris and Trump have released significant new policy proposals. Harris, for example, has called for new credits for newborn children and home buying, while Trump has proposed tax cuts on overtime pay and Social Security benefits, and breaks for auto-loan interest and state and local taxes.

The upshot: Economists still say Trump’s policies are more likely to add to inflation, deficits and interest rates. If anything, the margin has grown since July.

No word on how many of those economists failed to predict the inflation produced by Trump’s tax cut, Trump’s COVID lockdown spending spree, followed by Joe Biden’s spending spree in quick succession.

I think both Trump and Harris have awful economic policies with only a few glimmers of hope. One of those is that neither one of them is likely to follow through on their campaign promises. Another is that we may have no choice.

This is the worst presidential election in my adult life. I am being deluged with phone calls, text messages, and emails—sometimes as many as 20 a day. Nearly every video I watch and most web pages I read are interrupted by pleas for political contributions.

In my opinion the two presidential candidates are objectively the worst of my lifetime. I have said many times that I have not and will not vote for Donald Trump. My reasons are somewhat different from those of most people. Many people complain about his lying but I don’t think that’s true. I think he lives in a world of his own imagination, something the Japanese call kizoku no sekai in reference to their own aristocracy. It is a malady of the rich and powerful. In addition he is remarkably poorly informed and incurious.

Furthermore, I believe that those who think that Kamala Harris is just being cagey during the election are kidding themselves. I think she’s vapid, even vacant.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter what she believes or if she believes in anything at all beyond getting elected. Perhaps she’s just a placeholder for those who are actually running our government. That’s not a relief to me since they are wrong about so much.

Jury selection on the corruption trial of long-time Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan continues to day. They need one more juror and several alternates. The challenge is finding people who a) don’t know anything about the case or b) are willing to lie about what they know and say they haven’t formed an opinion.

Mr. Madigan was the longest-serving speaker of a state legislature—any state legislature—in U. S. history. He was speaker from 1983 on (with a small gap when the Republicans held the Illinois legislature for two years) and was chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party for 23 years. It is simply not credible than anyone in his district, anyone in the Illinois Democratic Party leadership, or anyone in the national Democratic Party leadership did not know about his corruption. That includes Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. They all knew. They just didn’t give a damn as long as he kept delivering votes.

Mr. Madigan presided over the decline of the State of Illinois which is ongoing and the decline was due in large part to the policies he championed. Those included not just reckless spending and taxation but extended to not paying into public employees retirement funds over lengthy periods of time.

and Indigenous Peoples Day.

I found the report from ABC 7 Chicago encouraging. At least it’s better to have Italian-Americans and Native Americans celebrating their own and each others heritages than at daggers drawn.

Today is my dad’s birthday. It’s not his centenary—that was quite a while ago. Although it has been well over a half century since he died, I still miss him, particularly since he and I were just beginning to develop a mature relationship when he died.

I’ve written quite a bit about him over the years. Phi Beta Kappa, Summa cum laude, editor of the college newspaper in his senior year. Graduated from law school, law review, graduated with a JD (somewhat unusual all those years ago). Spent a year in Europe (1937-1938!). Arrested as a spy in Serbia. Was in Munich on November 9, 1938—left Europe shortly thereafter.

It was still the Depression so he had some difficulty getting a job as a lawyer when he returned from Europe. Worked as an insurance adjuster. Tried unsucessfully to join the military during World War II although the OSS asked him to join after the war. Got a job with the (then) biggest law firm in St. Louis as an associate. The firm dissolved in scandal and he went off on his own. Taught law school

He was the smartest, wisest, hardest-working, most decent man I’ve ever known.

Many of the opinion pieces yesterday and today have been on the anniversary of Hamas’s attack on the Israelis. For example, in his Washington Post column David Ignatius speculates:

Perhaps Israel’s sword of vengeance has broken the power of Iran and its boldest proxies, as Netanyahu and his supporters seem to hope. But this is the Middle East. A more likely outcome is that, at a cost of so many thousands of dead, this war has restored the old paradigm of a strong Israel that can crush its enemies — until the next round.

Perhaps the saddest legacy of this war will be that it could so easily happen again. We all know the adage about those who don’t learn from history. When we see the hardened faces of Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese, we know that many of them are thinking about the next conflict, even as they fight this one. The displaced Gazans, the stunned Hezbollah fighters, aren’t likely to forget. And in the Middle East, memory is an addictive drug, and a poison.

while the editors of the Wall Street Journal declaim:

The reply of respectable liberalism has been to urge de-escalation, cease-fires and a two-state solution, and to blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they don’t materialize. It’s as if Hamas, Hezbollah and their patron in Iran don’t exist. Hamas has refused to engage with mediators for weeks, and a Palestinian state at peace with Israel has never been its objective or Iran’s. They want Israel destroyed and the Jews expelled or murdered.

As long as Iran pursues war, Israel must defend itself aggressively to survive. Mr. Biden has supported Israel, but he has also tried to cut short its defense. He withheld weapons from Israel even while Hamas ruled Rafah and its brigades controlled Gaza’s smuggling routes to Egypt.

and Walter Russell Mead says:

Oct. 7 has come and gone. The one-year mark since Hamas’s butcheries brought more of what we’ve come to expect—rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, anti-Israel protests at Columbia. Not to mention the warnings about World War III if President Biden can’t persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to exercise the right the president says the Jewish state has to defend itself. It is the perfect capstone to Mr. Biden’s legacy: a foreign policy that projects American weakness.

and

The irony is that Mr. Biden was elected president on his own version of Make America Great Again. Drawing on his foreign-policy chops, he saw himself as restoring America’s global standing by repairing alliances that had been ruptured by Donald Trump and recultivating ties with foreign leaders—many of whom he knew personally from both his days as vice president and his long service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But his managerial approach assumes the status quo is always worth preserving.

Thus Mr. Biden was willing to supply military arms in conflicts that broke out provided doing so wouldn’t seriously threaten the status quo, which is why he gave Ukraine what it needed to fight but not what it needed to prevail. It’s worth recalling that before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Mr. Biden was assuring the world that a “minor incursion” by the Russians wouldn’t be a big deal. Unfortunately, when maintaining the status quo becomes paramount, all the initiative goes to the bad actors who are always more than willing to disrupt it.

Let’s ask a question. Is it in the U. S. interest for Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza? I don’t think so but maybe our diplomatic experts think it is. I recognize it’s terribly indiscreet but maybe if that’s U. S. policy we should say so.

Here’s another question. Is it possible for the U. S. to encourage Israel’s attacking Iran without that transmogrifying into a direct conflict between the U. S. and Iran?

In what seems like a non sequitur I wonder if those urging the U. S. to give the Ukrainians missiles capable of reaching deep into Russia recognize that they are encouraging the U. S. to get involved directly in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine? That’s how those missiles work—U. S. technicians are required to configure them. That’s direct involvement.

A final question. Do those in favor of greater U. S. involvement in attacking Iran recognize that conflict, particularly in combination with direct U. S. involvement in the war between Ukraine and Russia, is likely to draw China as well?

To summarize my views:

• I think that Israel has a right to defend itself
• I do not believe that a “greater Israel” is a vital interest of the U. S.
• I think that radical Islamists like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Iranian mullahocracy are our enemies
• I think we should tread lightly to avoid a regional war

I haven’t filled you in on the latest shenanigans in Chicago politics. The entire board of the Chicago Public Schools is resigning. Sarah Schulte and Eric Horng report at ABC 7 Chicago:

CHICAGO (WLS) — The entire Chicago Board of Education will resign, the office of Mayor Brandon Johnson said Friday.

The Chicago Public Schools shakeup with the mass resignation of all seven members of Johnson’s hand-picked board paves the way for the mayor the reappoint a board who will be willing to act on Johnson’s wish to oust CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

Messages left by ABC7 for the school board president and multiple board members have not been returned, so ABC7 hasn’t heard directly whether the board members resigned in protest or were forced out.

The mayor is moving quickly to name new board members. That will happen Monday morning. However, the action is still unsettling to many in the district.

“It’s shocking,” CPS parent Sarah Strasser said. “We’re all, I guess, going to have to find out what comes out in the wash. I would love to know what was said behind closed doors.”

The outrage over which the board is resigning is the mayor’s insistence on the CPS CEO’s resignation which Mr. Martinez, also appointed by the mayor, has refused to do. The basis of the mayor’s displeasure is Mr. Martinez’s refusal to do something egregiously stupid: borrow to pay operating costs.

I had thought that no mayor could possibly be as bad as our previous mayor, Lori Lightfoot, but I obviously was wrong. Not that I voted for Brandon Johnson. I voted for the other guy. Mayor Lightfoot’s mistake was in not doing what she was elected to do—reform the Chicago Police Department. The problem with Mayor Johnson is that he is doing precisely what anyone who was paying attention should have expected him to do.

This turmoil is more opportunistic than ironic. Democrats have long been striving for an elected Board of Education and they will get their wish in November at which time we will have the opportunity to elect some of the board members. Mayor Johnson wants to appoint a new Board of Education that will do his bidding before the November election.

Mayor Johnson’s approval rating has declined to 25% according to a recent NBC poll. His disapproval rating is 60%. I’m surprised his approval rating is that high.

I genuinely wonder what Mayor Johnson’s supporters, that 25%, expected him to do. He’s doing exactly what I predicted he would do—whatever the Chicago Teachers Union want him to do.

All of this highlights a desire I have mentioned before. I think that Illinoisans deserve the ability to recall any elected official. At present the only elected official whom we have the power to recall is the governor under the Blagojevich Amendment.