Category Archives: Economy

04/22/25

Spotted Owl Soup — A Jobs Creator And Tariff Buster

If you are of a certain age, you will recall the saga of the Pacific Northwest spotted owl — strix occidentalis caurina. This was the classic logging/timber/lumber v environmentalists controversy that castrated the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest.

It is an apochryphal environmental story and one that demonstrates the impact of regulation on industry and the unanticipated impact on foreign trade. It is also indicative of the “winner-take-all” nature of politics.

What happened, Big Red Car?

Continue reading →

04/7/25

Non-tariff Barriers To Trade Because Tariffs Are NOT Enough

If you have been following the events in the global economy since Liberation Day you have undoubtedly been confronted with many opinions as to the wisdom or folly of the actions of President Donald J Trump — the Tariff King/Emperor. Like everything in our complicated trade picture, there is far more than meets the eye.

If you own equities, it is even possible you are choking on some meaningful paper losses.

WTF is actually going on, Big Red Car?

Well, dear reader, what you are seeing is a massive global trade RESET just like re-booting your computer when it fails to operate as it is supposed to do. President Trump, as he promised, hit the RESET button and imposed tariffs based on a concept of reciprocity.

This is part of Candidate Trump’s suite of financial campaign promises: to right size the government, to get rid of fraud, waste, and corruption, to reduce spending, to conquer inflation, to lower interest rates, and to put international trade on a fair and free footing. 

Leader of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, meeting with President Trump — first in line to discuss tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. The parade is coming.

Part of that is fair, reciprocal tariffs. But, it is not just reciprocity, it is also what are called NTBs — non-tariff trade barriers — that have the same impact as tariffs, they restrain the ability of American manufacturers to obtain access to foreign markets and to have a fair chance to do business on a level playing field.

At its core, the Trump RESET is all about fairness. Continue reading →

03/20/25

Tariffs, A Little Context And Analysis

Since President Trump’s inauguration — is it really still less than the first 100 days — there has been much talk of tariffs. Trump has threatened them, imposed them, modified them, and removed them. New concepts — such as “reciprocal” tariffs — have flooded the space.

Tariffs are in play, baby.

Here’s a link to the Federal Register where you can look up all of President Trump 2.0’s Executive Orders. Federal Register

Trump 2.0 has made tariffs into a sharp-edged weapon. And, yet, we are still only in the early innings. Continue reading →

10/16/24

Some Thoughts On TARIFFS

Tariffs — a tax or customs duty imposed by a country at its border on goods imported from another country — are wildly misunderstood and have come into the lexicon since their use by the Trump admin and during this presidential election campaign.

They are not wildly understood, sort of like calculus, differential equations, and how doorbells work. Let us reason together, dear reader.

Traditional reasons to impose tariffs

Tariffs have been traditionally used (and taught in business schools) in the following situations:

 1. Tariffs are used to protect strategic industries — industries with national security implications — such as high tech, steel, or aviation.

 2. Tariffs are used to protect fledgling, startup businesses during their period of incubation and infancy, again, often technology related.

 3. Tariffs are used to punish bad actors such as China for its theft of technology, its use of slave/prison/child labor to manufacture goods, and to offset low environmental standards.

Pretty straightforward stuff, no? But, there’s more. Continue reading →

06/7/24

The Texas Stock Exchange

The creation of a new “CEO friendly” and “un-woke” stock exchange to challenge the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ has been festering for some time, but TXSE Group recently announced publicly its plans to apply to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to operate a stock exchange in Dallas with a launch date in 2026.

The United States formerly had a number of regional stock exchanges, but since 2000 most of those regional exchanges have been bought up or merged with the NYSE or NASDAQ. The Texas Stock Exchange (founding CEO James Lee, E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year 2001, President Houston Symphony Endowment, financial advisory guy, a financial player, nobody’s huckleberry) would be a new entrant in what had been a collapsing industry. Continue reading →