The more things change, the more they stay the same. I was recently approached by a marketing firm that promised to increase activity on our website. I usually ignore such calls, but for some reason I agreed to hear them out.
In the year 2000 there were ~2,000 companies owned by private equity; today there are more than 11,500. During this same period, the number of companies publicly owned and listed on a major stock exchange has gone from ~7,000 to ~4,500. This century has seen an explosion in private investing and simultaneously a decline in publicly traded companies. Why?
Navarro is one of President Trump’s economic advisers and the one most closely associated with tariffs. Navarro, who has a Ph. D. in Economics from Harvard, holds extremely strong beliefs in the positive power of tariffs. What are the pro-tariff arguments? Let’s break them down.
We must reject theories that cannot be backed up by facts, but we must also reject facts that cannot be explained by any theory. It isn’t enough to just know the data; one must also know the why of the data. If one can’t figure out the why, then the data should be noted as a mere coincidence. Theory matters.
Who wants to get more for less? I know what you are thinking: Who doesn’t want to get more for less? Evidently one answer is Peter Navarro, and any other economist who believes that a trade deficit is a bad thing. For those who are less familiar, Mr. Navarro is one of President Trump’s advisers…
