In his recent State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Trump touted the strong US economy and low unemployment rate, claiming credit for a “great American comeback” driven in significant part by his trade policies. The president was right about the general health of the US economy, but not about the role of his trade policies.

The recent U.S. Treasury’s semi-annual report on the exchange rate policies of China and other major trading partners is an exercise in intellectual gymnastics. The report reiterates that China was indeed a currency manipulator, as Treasury declared in August 2019, but then stated it has magically ceased to be one just prior to the two nations signing the “Phase One” trade deal in Washington.

In 2019, the U.S. unemployment rate reached record lows while the stock market hit record highs. But not everyone has benefitted. According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center, most Americans believe the economy is helping the rich, while hurting the middle class and poor. What does this mean for the future of U.S. capitalism?

A novel feature of the Trump administration’s “Phase 1” trade deal with China announced December 13, is that it would require China to increase its purchase of US goods and services by a total of $200 billion in the next two years. It’s a demand that, even if met, won’t accomplish President Donald Trump’s China-trade goals of promoting US exports and liberalizing the Chinese economy.

Americans are about to enter the third full year of President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff regime, which aims to promote US manufacturing, protect key industries, and prompt other nations to reduce their trade barriers. So, it’s a good time to stop and ask whether tariffs are producing the results desired by the president and other supporters of his trade policies.

The immigration debate in the United States has obscured a host of neglected legislative issues. The anti-immigrant sentiment in the nation belabors the notion that immigration is an issue that only encompasses illegal border crossings. Rather, legal immigration impacts economic considerations as a net gain, perhaps well beyond the potential economic burdens of illegal migrant issues.

When I crossed through Checkpoint Charlie from West Berlin to East Berlin nearly 30 years ago, the failures of former East Germany were immediately obvious. The grey unkempt landscape and dilapidated buildings looked as though that country hadn't been repaired since American and Soviet tanks faced off yards apart decades earlier in one of the most tense nuclear showdowns.

How illegal immigrants affect crime is one of the most contentious subareas of debate in the entire immigration issue. Cato scholars have produced much original research on this topic, finding that illegal and legal immigrants both have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans and lower criminal conviction rates in the state of Texas, the only state where data are available.

When it comes to international trade, China hasn’t always played by the rules. So the question begs: How do you change that behavior? Engaging in a trade war by imposing tariffs isn’t ideal. To save face, Chinese President Xi Jinping must appear strong and that means responding to U.S. tariff increases with Chinese tariff increases. This tit for tat strategy, which escalated again on September 1, is increasing volatility and uncertainty, while hurting economic growth. But it gets worse.

This past week was an eventful one for trade policy, and not in a good way. In the trade world these days, no news is good news, and any tweets are probably bad news. President Trump’s trade policy has been stridently protectionist, abusive of the constitutional separation of powers, destructive to U.S. alliances, and fundamentally flawed as a strategy to achieve its stated goals.