Reasonable folks are naturally appalled at the trade rhetoric and trade wars coming out of the Trump White House. Trump is sometimes portrayed as a shocking deviation from U.S. government support for free trade. In reality, Bill Clinton’s trade policies shared many of the same protectionist follies. Clinton’s showboating and legacy lust paved the way […]
Mises Brasil [thanks for translating! Original English version is here; my 1987 Wall Street Journal oped is here] Alguns fatos cômicos (e patéticos) sobre o comércio internacional dentro do bloco soviético by James Bovard, November 12, 2019 Quando não estão matando, socialistas são uma comédia de erros Uma das maiores contribuições de Ludwig von […]
Former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca passed away today at the age of 94. Since he was one of the most prominent protectionists of the 1980s and 1990s, I wrote about him often. Here’s a piece I did for the Detroit News in 1985. (I tip my hat to my late father, who kept my early […]
George H.W. Bush’s Forgotten Debacles and Demagoguery by James Bovard After former President George H.W. Bush died late last year, he was widely hailed as a great leader and patriot. At the National Cathedral funeral service, biographer Jon Meachan declared that Bush was a “twentieth-century Founding Father.” The minister of Bush’s church in Houston compared […]
Some folks thought I was too harsh on the late George H.W. Bush in my USA Today oped and on my Twitter comments. So here’s some of the articles I wrote on Bush’s protectionist debacles in the early 1990s. [The following piece was reprinted in two economics college textbooks] Wall Street Journal Wednesday, September 6, […]
Some critics believe that Trump’s horrendous views on trade are a novelty. Here is a 1992 article I wrote for New Republic on the trade follies that permeated the administration of the late George H.W. Bush. The New Republic, January 20, 1992 HEADLINE: Bush protection: the president and free trade. by James Bovard Inviting Lee […]
Here’s a link to my speech at the Mises Institute Austrian Economics Research Conference this past weekend in Auburn, Alabama. I appreciated the opportunity to pay my respects to Leviathan. I will be posting a few outtakes from this speech in followup blog posts. Mises President Jeff Deist featured much of the speech on his […]
