Nobel laureate @DAcemogluMIT joins @oren_cass on the @AmerCompass Podcast to discuss the crisis in liberal democracy. mag.commonplace.org/p/libera…

Really insightful conversation between Nobel laureate @DAcemogluMIT and @oren_cass about what’s driving the decline of liberal democracy on the @AmerCompass Podcast. @commonplc

Canada is treating a 5% weighted average tariff like the 82nd Airborne is invading Ottawa. They think of duty-free access to the American market as a component of Canadian sovereignty rather than a bargained-for privilege that America is free to renegotiate. I wrote for @commonplc about why Canada's perspective is flawed: 1. Canada wasn't uniquely targeted, it was included in a global policy to rebalance our trading relationships after decades of unsustainable service as the world's consumer of last resort. When we took measures to end this role, Canada got a better deal than virtually anyone else. 2. Every other country (notably including Mexico and the EU) was able to negotiate for reduced tariffs. Unlike those countries, Canada moved straight to retaliation, signed a "strategic partnership " with China, and then unilaterally broke off talks. This suggests that the Canada conflict is driven by Canada, not the US 3. What's driving Canada? Primarily a craving for the kind of grand national purpose that prosperous liberal societies - and perhaps Canada especially - aren't very good at generating. Carney and other members of the Western governing caste used to think that fighting climate change, inequality, and systemic racism might do the trick, but Trump has given them a more politically viable purpose: realignment away from the US and towards Europe. 4. Will it work? Not as a matter of trade policy. The EU is incapable of providing demand sufficient to replace what Canada could lose from the US. Canada-EU trade is already tariff-free, Canada doesn't have the infrastructure to export energy across the Atlantic, the European ag sector is too politically sensitive to open to Canada, and on manufactured goods Europe is a competitor rather than a customer for Canada. In exchange for this exciting trade opportunity, Canada will have to align with EU regulatory commitments, the most potent growth-killer in the Western world. 5. While Canada and the EU expend massive amounts of time and resources trying to extract an extra 0.1% of GDP from integrating two no-growth economies, they are sitting under a tidal wave of Chinese exports that are going to deindustrialize them both. This is the only problem that really matters, and failing to solve it obviates anything else Canada and the EU might achieve. 6. Many have made the point that this all hurts Canada far more than the US, but we should still care. Canada is unique among our trade partners because of the amount of supply chain integration we have in key industries. A weaker, poorer Canada isn't in our interest, and a Canada desperate for new commercial relationships will be likely to double-down on attracting Chinese investment. If China gets into the production system for Canadian energy, metals, critical minerals, etc. that's a huge L for the project of de-risking North American supply chains. 7. Conclusion: Canada's policy achieves the opposite of what it intends. Canada is seeking sovereignty, but it does so by degrading its chief geopolitical asset: duty-free access to the US market. That puts Canada in a position of bargaining from weakness, and that means any new relationships it forms with the EU and China will be either low-impact or extractive. Canada will become a price-taker on growth-strangling EU regulations and predatory Chinese capital, which is the opposite of sovereignty. You can't be sovereign if you're desperate.

Read @badvalorem in @commonplc: "Canada will likely end up deciding that it’s worth it to take a tariff haircut from the Trump administration, restrict Chinese investment, and continue to trade with its rich neighbor. That would certainly be in the American interest. The alternative is that Canada keeps going. It sacrifices privileged access to the U.S. market in order to prove that it can live without it, discovering along the way that Europe cannot replace the demand, China is purely extractive, and that policy has a hard time overcoming economic geography. At that point the economic crisis Carney manufactured will have become real. Canada will finally have the great national trial it was looking for—only the threat to its sovereignty may no longer be rhetorical." mag.commonplace.org/p/canada…

Temperature alone cannot be the only measure of the climate. Human flourishing is the benchmark. @commonplc has a great podcast episode this week on how the Right should approach environmental policy going forward. Ft. @ChrisBarnardDL, Taylor Myers, @oren_cass, and @Chris_Griz Link to the full episode below!

A special class of problems sends our thinking off the rails. The potential harm rises toward infinity as the likelihood falls toward zero. For the analytical mind, this, quite literally, does not compute... How to Worry About AI @commonplc mag.commonplace.org/p/how-to…

The first monthly issue of @commonplc dives into Climate. "Climate?!" the consultants say, "that's a terrible topic to drive interest among conservatives." Which is why essentially nothing useful has been said on the right-of-center in at least a decade about how we can lead on conservation and environmental issues. So that's exactly the sort of thing @commonplc focuses on. Rejecting the Left's climate catastrophism is a good first step, but conservatives also need to have a positive, inspiring vision for how we are going to address the real issues that exist and improve quality of life for Americans. In this issue, we publish: ✅ @ChrisBarnardDL @ACC_National on reclaiming the environmental narrative and agenda ✅@JosephMajkut @CSIS on the real science and legitimate issues of climate ✅Taylor Myers @BoydenGrayPLLC on a pragmatic agenda ✅ @NPinkoski @amrenewctr on the return of Nixon's environmentalism on the New Right Plus, podcasts with these authors and with @FirstSolar CEO Mark Widmar. Check it out here: commonplace.org/issues/1/

"Catastrophism abhors a vacuum. As the volume fades on 'corporate policies and consumer habits that hasten the destruction of the earth,' it has been cranked to 11 on 'AI could kill all humans.' The echoes from 2015 are eerie. 'No challenge—no challenge—poses a greater threat to future generations,' intoned President Barack Obama that year in his State of the Union address. At the Paris Climate Conference a few months later, French President François Hollande opened the proceedings by declaring, 'never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high. For the future of the planet, and the future of life, are at stake.'" @oren_cass on the parallels between today's AI doomers and yesterday's climate alarmists. mag.commonplace.org/p/how-to…

Decades of climate politics produced one durable result: most Americans have stopped caring. Yet 81% of voters in our ACC polling support an agenda built on clean air, clean water, and beautiful places. There's room for the right to answer that call. My latest for Commonplace:

Commonplace's first monthly issue is here and looks amazing. Huge congrats to the @commonplc team. My own contribution is on "How to Worry About AI," a well-timed antidote to @JensenHuang's aimless musings on the @ezraklein show. commonplace.org/