Joel, More food for thought. Is President Trump on the right track, don't know yet. Maybe if he watches and talks to President Milei more, he may absorb more "common sense" and realize you can attract people to ride your train by having simple plans and being honest with them.
OMG!!! Has there been a more perfect sentence penned in 2025?? Me thinks not…. 👌
“Alas, as History shows, there is no situation so favorable, no bounty so vast, no natural endowment so generous, that a hard working government can’t ruin it with sophisticated ideas and the irresistible, managerial impulse.”
Joel, You always write an interesting and informative article. I am interested in knowing how much time and research it takes you because you come across as an authority on what you write about Argentina’s history and you haven’t lived there your whole life.
You are an amazingly gifted writer and to keep an old guy like me entertained is quite an accomplishment.
I think Trump would respond by saying that as long as other countries take advantage of relationships with this country, there has to be a boundary set to rectify the damage done. We can’t unring a bell and all that $$$ sent out abroad, while developing policies that favor other markets at the expense of working class people here, needs a remedy. Genuine free trade cannot happen with any preferential markets getting special treatment. It will be the “free trade” we’ve had, borne on the backs of the working class. So I support the move away from income tax to tariff. Once we are solvent and strong, we can worry about tariffs.
Does anyone actual believe Trump when he speaks? His knowledge of anything other than a real estate transaction seems to be at middle school level. Maybe his talking points are fed to him by similarly illiterate staff. As you mention Joel, just maybe the prosperity was due to a sound money system, the explosion in new inventions and just before the ushering in of the Progressive Era. Hmmm
OMG!!! Has there been a more perfect sentence penned in 2025?? Me thinks not…. 👌
“…there is no situation so favorable, no bounty so vast, no natural endowment so generous, that a hard working government can’t ruin it with sophisticated ideas and the irresistible, managerial impulse.”
Joel great article. Just keep in mind that Trump believes in fair trade meaning a balance and equal tarifs. Yes some things most diffenitely need to be made in the US like drugs and other things for our on national security. Let's hope he will downsize government but we shall see. In the meantime at least it's way more entertaining then anything on the tube.
Thank you for this and many of your other articles on Substack. Always a pleasure.
In this regard, I am writing to you as an Argentinian (I have lived abroad for many years) and as an economist. And my comment is that I find your views somewhat ideologised and not based on reality. As a renowned economist would say, if there had been no protectionism in the US, this would still be Britain's farm. Obviously, I am not commenting on the Civil War and its aftermath.
Basically, my comment in your article on protectionism and import substitution is simply that it all depends. On what? Basically on the commodity cycle, what Prebisch called the terms of trade, which are not immutable and which, when favourable to the producing countries, have made it possible to create the conditions for industrialisation and improvements in general living conditions.
The other major dependencies are the institutional conditions, mainly the legal framework and a society that respects it. In Argentina, protectionism and import substitution, in an institutional framework that has favoured the friends of the day, have benefited those few friends to the detriment of the population in general. It is also true that when there was a strategy that took into account Argentina's resources and its development, which also benefited the friends of the day, it allowed the creation of competitive industries (for example, petrochemicals).
Economists and commentators often quote David Ricardo and the comparative advantages he wrote about without having carefully read what he wrote. It is true that Ricardo encouraged each country to concentrate on producing what was most efficient, but with the caveat that there would not be free mobility of capital and people. The latter is not taken into account by today's neoclassical economists. And it has huge consequences.
This paper and the one written by Mike Every "Macrostrategy vs. 'Grand Macro Strategy'" allow, in my opinion, to understand this phase of the Fourth Turning and why Trump and his policies exist at this time. It's not that I support or don't support Trump's policies and him as a person, simply that he represents a strategy and a policy that needs to be understood in its historical context.
Joel, More food for thought. Is President Trump on the right track, don't know yet. Maybe if he watches and talks to President Milei more, he may absorb more "common sense" and realize you can attract people to ride your train by having simple plans and being honest with them.
From your pen to angels’ ears…
OMG!!! Has there been a more perfect sentence penned in 2025?? Me thinks not…. 👌
“Alas, as History shows, there is no situation so favorable, no bounty so vast, no natural endowment so generous, that a hard working government can’t ruin it with sophisticated ideas and the irresistible, managerial impulse.”
Joel, You always write an interesting and informative article. I am interested in knowing how much time and research it takes you because you come across as an authority on what you write about Argentina’s history and you haven’t lived there your whole life.
You are an amazingly gifted writer and to keep an old guy like me entertained is quite an accomplishment.
Cheers!
I think Trump would respond by saying that as long as other countries take advantage of relationships with this country, there has to be a boundary set to rectify the damage done. We can’t unring a bell and all that $$$ sent out abroad, while developing policies that favor other markets at the expense of working class people here, needs a remedy. Genuine free trade cannot happen with any preferential markets getting special treatment. It will be the “free trade” we’ve had, borne on the backs of the working class. So I support the move away from income tax to tariff. Once we are solvent and strong, we can worry about tariffs.
Does anyone actual believe Trump when he speaks? His knowledge of anything other than a real estate transaction seems to be at middle school level. Maybe his talking points are fed to him by similarly illiterate staff. As you mention Joel, just maybe the prosperity was due to a sound money system, the explosion in new inventions and just before the ushering in of the Progressive Era. Hmmm
OMG!!! Has there been a more perfect sentence penned in 2025?? Me thinks not…. 👌
“…there is no situation so favorable, no bounty so vast, no natural endowment so generous, that a hard working government can’t ruin it with sophisticated ideas and the irresistible, managerial impulse.”
Joel great article. Just keep in mind that Trump believes in fair trade meaning a balance and equal tarifs. Yes some things most diffenitely need to be made in the US like drugs and other things for our on national security. Let's hope he will downsize government but we shall see. In the meantime at least it's way more entertaining then anything on the tube.
Yes, the US definitely needs more drugs. But you're right, Trump is way entertaining, and should be president for that reason alone.
OK Freddie B.
But, the scribes who wrote that fiction-sugar work for the owner-wielders of the gov weapon that want the medicine to go down as easily as possible.
Sweets addicts are more the problem.
Unless the sweets are actually poison.
But bribes aren't poison ... taking them is.
And recurrent/recombinant Ronald Reagan's are still just pushers pretending to solutions.
Another well written piece . Some times I wonder if You could not write a speech for one deserving of Your abilities.
Don I’m not sure there is anyone deserving of Joel’s abilities.
You may be correct.
Thank you for this and many of your other articles on Substack. Always a pleasure.
In this regard, I am writing to you as an Argentinian (I have lived abroad for many years) and as an economist. And my comment is that I find your views somewhat ideologised and not based on reality. As a renowned economist would say, if there had been no protectionism in the US, this would still be Britain's farm. Obviously, I am not commenting on the Civil War and its aftermath.
Basically, my comment in your article on protectionism and import substitution is simply that it all depends. On what? Basically on the commodity cycle, what Prebisch called the terms of trade, which are not immutable and which, when favourable to the producing countries, have made it possible to create the conditions for industrialisation and improvements in general living conditions.
The other major dependencies are the institutional conditions, mainly the legal framework and a society that respects it. In Argentina, protectionism and import substitution, in an institutional framework that has favoured the friends of the day, have benefited those few friends to the detriment of the population in general. It is also true that when there was a strategy that took into account Argentina's resources and its development, which also benefited the friends of the day, it allowed the creation of competitive industries (for example, petrochemicals).
Economists and commentators often quote David Ricardo and the comparative advantages he wrote about without having carefully read what he wrote. It is true that Ricardo encouraged each country to concentrate on producing what was most efficient, but with the caveat that there would not be free mobility of capital and people. The latter is not taken into account by today's neoclassical economists. And it has huge consequences.
For example, as Russell Napier points out very clearly and well, China's economic strategy and policy since 1994, after the super devaluation, has created a new global financial "non-system". I highly recommend reading his paper "America, China, and the Death of the International Monetary Non-System" https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/11/america-china-and-the-death-of-the-international-monetary-non-system/
This paper and the one written by Mike Every "Macrostrategy vs. 'Grand Macro Strategy'" allow, in my opinion, to understand this phase of the Fourth Turning and why Trump and his policies exist at this time. It's not that I support or don't support Trump's policies and him as a person, simply that he represents a strategy and a policy that needs to be understood in its historical context.
Well done!