Blog

I’ve learned that it’s difficult driving a race car with clown shoes on your feet. Costco Pants and Tariffs: The idea that tariffs are inherently good might be the Costco pants of international trade theory -- everything feels comfortably, nice and snug...

Good afternoon. A bit of a longer rant today. This one is in my wheelhouse, and really irks me. My goal is to convert the skeptic on international free trade. How’d I do? ________________________________________ “An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly...

If tariff news was a banana it would be a nice firm, sweet yellow specimen at 9:00 am, but by around 10:30 that morning it will have morphed into a brown-spotted leathery lump. Bees knees, Bananas and Battlestar Galactica: A study in the March 2023 Science...

Hi again. With apologies for the intrusion, here’s another fresh report on the unfolding (and ever-changing) Tariff situation, in case you just can’t get enough! This one draws on the 2018 experience for potential echoing hints, and features Joseph Wu...

Red Button: It was at the end of a 2-week summer vacation – the cheapo Ryan Family version, where our 7 kids slept on the floor at our friends’ place. We had said our goodbyes the night before and I was tip-toing around just prior to our 5:00 am departure...

If tariffs were baseball, I’d have struck out by now. Let me explain. It’s a two-day process of writing, editing, and regulatory approval for one of these messy compilation pieces. On tariffs – I’ve recently rejected two of my own articles, two weeks...

Good afternoon – somebody took a bite out of the century, and next week, it’ll be a quarter gone! When did that… what the…? Well… Hmm... Wow. The Christmassy quote below, from a veteran Wall Street Journal opinion columnist, Peggy Noonan, reflects my...

Good afternoon, Our Global Insight for 2025 is now available. Since this is already a very extensive report, I won’t clutter it up with a bunch of local input today. But we’ve segmented it in such as way as you can a bite or two, nibble on a series of...

Good afternoon, Some world trade leaders -- who shall remain unnamed -- remind me of that kid who literally picked up his soccer ball and went home after his team started losing. He ran home to his mom rather than face the music like a… real boy. The...