What would a Mar-a-Lago accord look like? Just asking questions.

Phil Magness is an economic historian with the Independent Institute who has deeply studied the history of tariffs and trade. We invited him on the show to talk about the "global economic reordering" described by Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the president's escalating tariffs, the looming threat of a trade war, the shaky stock market, and the so-called "Mar-a-Lago Accord" that may shed more light on what the Trump administration's economic agenda really is.

Sources Referenced:

Trump's full speech wherein he floats replacing the income tax with tariffs
Magness' dissertation: From Tariffs to the Income Tax
Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, by Frank Chodorov
U.S. government revenue history with charts
Just Asking Questions with Tyler Cowen: "Why do we refuse to learn from history?"
Just Asking Questions with Phil Magness: "Who really pays the most taxes?"
"Full interview: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Trump's tariffs moves," by CBS
Just Asking Questions with Kelsey Piper: "The AI Race is Accelerating"
A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, by Hudson Bay Capital
U.S. dollar index chart
"David Sacks on Bitcoin Reserve, Auditing Crypto, AI," by Bloomberg Technology

Chapters:

00:00:00 Coming up…
00:00:27 Trump's Confused Tariff History
00:06:39 The Dual Purpose of Tariffs
00:09:44 Tariffs as Foreign Policy Tools
00:11:26 Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression
00:15:38 The Great Forgetting of Trade History
00:20:54 National Security Justifications for Tariffs
00:25:32 Debating Strategic Industries Like Semiconductors
00:30:06 J.D. Vance, Industrial Decline, and Economic Nostalgia
00:37:31 Auto Industry, Union Labor, and Protectionism
00:40:34 The Mar-A-Lago Accord Explained
00:45:58 Should Other Countries Pay for U.S. Security?
00:49:33 Can Tariffs Be Effective Negotiation Tools?
00:53:37 Will Weakening the Dollar Backfire?
00:57:08 Do Tariffs Cause Inflation?
01:00:41 The U.S. Government's Bitcoin Sovereign Wealth Fund
01:06:59 Final Thoughts and What We Should Be Asking

Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Phil Magness: The Problem With Trumponomics appeared first on Reason.com.

The income tax, root of all evil

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