The 2026 Jones Act waiver has not been shown to meet its legal test, opened America’s coastwise trade to Chinese- and Russian-linked ships, and produced no demonstrated national fuel-price relief. It should expire on August 16.
Trade structured to support production raises productivity, and rising productivity raises the incomes that fund consumption durably, out of earnings instead of borrowing. That is the only durable answer to the cost-of-living crisis: paychecks that can carry the price of housing, healthcare, and childcare.
One year after Liberation Day, the most aggressive tariff escalation since 2018, the United States collected just half of what its own policy prescribes.
The AI data center buildout has exposed three distinct failures in U.S. trade and industrial policy.
Founded in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1911, Whirlpool has spent more than a century building appliances on American soil while its competitors either left for cheaper production overseas or were sold outright to foreign buyers.
The race to commercialize nuclear fusion will define the next era of geopolitical power. By one estimate, a single glass of fusion fuel carries the energy equivalent of one million gallons of oil, enough to power a home for more than 800 years.
A recent 60 Minutes segment gave the Cato Institute a platform to argue that America’s shipbuilding crisis proves protectionist industrial policy has failed. The opposite is true: the crisis is the product of four decades without an industrial policy.
A new Federal Reserve FEDS Note finds a systematic link between Chinese industrial policy interventions and export growth. The 15 most policy-targeted sectors accounted for 76% of the increase in China’s aggregate trade surplus from 2017 to 2024.
To reduce the deficit in a durable way, the United States must do more than tariff goods. It must tariff the money.
Few economic policies generate as much conversation as tariffs. Supporters see them as a way to rebuild domestic industry and rebalance supply chains. Critics argue they are little more than a tax on American consumers. For years, economists have tried to settle the question of who actually pays – and they have not all come to the same conclusion.
