Investing

Gabriella Beaumont-Smith and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon

On May 31, 2023, legislation was introduced to lower U.S. barriers to imports of infant formula and infant formula base powder. As we and our colleague Scott Lincicome have explained (repeatedly), eliminating tariffs is one of several smart policy reforms that would not only help American babies and parents, but also ensure a more stable U.S. market in the future.

Unfortunately, some U.S. interest groups oppose such commonsense reforms, while their allies in Congress echo industry claims (and thus demonstrate the longstanding link between American protectionism and constituent service). As we’ll explain, however, these groups’ five main arguments are as sour as month‐​old milk.

1. Trade liberalization must always be reciprocal.

Lowering U.S. trade barriers benefits Americans. When the U.S. reduces or removes a tariff on an import, that good or service becomes cheaper. At the same time, heightened market competition encourages domestic firms to innovate and accelerates U.S. economic growth. The U.S. government should not deny its residents these and other benefits, just because our trading partners do so to their residents.

Moreover, the U.S. should not cede control of its economic policy to that of other countries. The U.S. was built on the foundation of liberty and should maintain the freedom to improve its economy without waiting for other countries to do the same. Ceding U.S. sovereignty in this way also undermines important reform. While most countries in the world have lower barriers than ever before thanks to multilateralism, the last few rounds of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations to continue liberalizing trade (especially in agricultural goods) have been mired as members are less willing to expend the political capital necessary to lead the way. The same idea applies to reciprocity, promising future inaction on trade reform and hence the argument’s popularity with protectionists.

In short, the U.S. should not maintain high trade barriers that impoverish Americans because other countries lack the economic insight or political strength to stop impoverishing their citizens, nor should the U.S. abandon its fundamental values and stall reforms, promoting lower standards of living.

2. Reducing tariffs on infant formula imports hurts dairy farmers.

Given the highly protected nature of the U.S. infant formula market and, more broadly, the U.S. dairy industry, it is possible that allowing more formula imports could decrease demand for some U.S. dairy products. However, it’s far from certain that liberalization would significantly harm the dairy industry.

First, formula production accounts for a small fraction of total U.S. dairy consumption. Domestic farmers would continue to service the overwhelming majority of dairy consumption in the United States, and as Figure 1 suggests, tariffs on other dairy products would remain high.

Second, and more importantly, it does not necessarily hold that trade liberalization would undermine the U.S. dairy industry. As the examples of Australia and New Zealand show, a country can liberalize its market for dairy products and host a thriving industry. Both countries not only apply low tariffs on dairy imports (see Fig. 1), but also removed farm subsidies. In response, many dairy farmers adapted their organizational structure and practices to be successful in both domestic and global markets. Given the increases in U.S. dairy farming productivity witnessed in recent years (largely due to the integration of more advanced technology in the sector), there is little to suggest that American farmers would not be able to do the same.

3. Freeing up trade in infant formula would have spillover effects for other products and expose U.S. dairy farmers to unfair trade practices.

Interest groups opposed to tariff liberalization often suggest that foreigners will respond with “tariff engineering”—physically manipulating a higher‐​tariff product in non‐​commercial ways so that it qualifies for a lower tariff under U.S. law. Some U.S. dairy farmers are reportedly concerned that this could be done with the infant formula base powder that is liberalized under the new bill, but this claim is far‐​fetched. Infant formula base powder is not a product that will be used in anything other than infant formula, and any milk solids incorporated into other products, including in U.S. infant formula, will remain protected by other dairy program provisions.

Furthermore, other U.S. laws and enforcement actions can address trade practices that might arise from eliminating basic U.S. tariffs. This includes “trade remedies”—anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVDs)—that address harms to domestic producers caused by surges of “unfairly traded” imports. As Cato scholars have long explained, the U.S. trade remedies system is flawed, but in ways that benefit domestic industries. Thus, while these laws should be reformed, their existence today would act as a check on illegally “dumped” or “subsidized” formula imports allegedly harming the U.S. dairy industry.

4. Foreign suppliers of infant formula are unreliable and make the supply chain less resilient.

There are several problems with this argument. First, there is little support for the notion that foreign suppliers are inherently unreliable. The fact that formula imports rose throughout the formula crisis in 2022, particularly after tariff‐ and non‐​tariff barriers were suspended by the federal government (see Fig. 2), shows that the U.S. market is attractive to foreign producers and they are willing to export to the United States. Moreover, amidst last year’s shortages, the country turned to suppliers from countries like Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—all longstanding U.S. trading partners and countries with some of the highest health and safety standards in the world. That the federal government authorized these suppliers to ship formula without having to go through the onerous Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) inspection and approval process is suggestive that U.S. policymakers are confident about the safety and quality of the products imported from these countries.

On a more fundamental level, both economic theory and recent events have debunked the idea that trade liberalization would undermine the resiliency of the U.S. infant formula market. While openness to trade and global markets might increase exposure to foreign competition, last year’s crisis showed how a highly concentrated and closed U.S. market—where trade barriers caused domestic suppliers to satiate 98 percent of domestic demand—turned a single domestic shock into one of the deepest and longest supply chain crises of the last decade. Since domestic production remains highly concentrated and the underlying policies remain largely unchanged, a future shock to any domestic producer would likely cause widespread shortages again. Openness to international trade, by contrast, would mitigate this risk by diversifying the pool of suppliers that can service the market, and thereby increase the resiliency of the infant formula supply chain in the face of future disruptions. Indeed, both the White House and Congress recognized this fact by lifting trade restrictions and flying in formula from overseas to alleviate the formula crisis.

5. Stock levels are almost fully recovered, if not better than before Abbott’s recall.

While the fact that stock levels are returning to pre‐​crisis levels is certainly a welcome development, it does not by itself assuage concerns that a future shock to domestic supply would again lead to nationwide shortages.

Aggregate stock levels may also obscure the fact that access to formula post‐​crisis continues to be relatively unequal. According to the latest iteration of the U.S. Census Bureau, 26 percent of households with an income below the median (i.e., $75,000) reported having difficulties in finding infant formula within the previous week, a rate slightly higher than the 20 percent of above‐​median income households that responded similarly. Moreover, 34 percent of Hispanic/​Latino and 27 percent of Black households reported such difficulties compared to only 15 percent of White households. While importing more formula alone would not solve inequality, it appears illogical to oppose trade liberalization, which would help ensure adequate levels of supply. Further, liberalizing trade guarantees a reduced risk of another crisis by providing American consumers with more options and allowing new supply and distribution relationships to develop before another crisis could occur.

Conclusion

The legislation introduced by Senators Mike Lee (R‑UT), and Bob Menendez (D‑NJ), and Representatives Adrian Smith (R‑NE), and Don Beyer (D‑VA), is a refreshing change from the seemingly ubiquitous political messages for onshoring and isolationism. Last year’s formula crisis was a glaring reminder of the risks of protectionism and American parents should not have to continue paying the price to protect a handful of dairy farmers.

Nicholas Anthony

Last week, I wrote about how there is a lack of official statistics regarding the effectiveness of the Bank Secrecy Act and how what little information exists is troubling.

However, a few folks were kind enough to point out that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) defines money laundering under a broad umbrella, so I wanted to follow up to make sure readers had the full picture available. The figure below provides the complete list of subcategories that FinCEN defines as money laundering in its suspicious activity report (SAR) statistical database.

Much like I explained last week, the vast majority of reports are not filed because Americans are suspected of crimes such as human trafficking or terrorist activity. Instead, financial institutions file most of these reports to the government because they’re not sure where a customer’s funds came from, they suspect the transactions were out of the norm for the customer, or they see that the customer used multiple accounts.

We can also add some more context to the number of IRS investigations that FinCEN cited in its report. My colleague Chris Edwards was kind enough to point out that although FinCEN only cited the percentage of IRS criminal investigations that were initiated, we can figure out the exact number by turning to the IRS Data Book. There we see that the IRS conducted 2,552 criminal investigations during the 2022 fiscal year. Therefore, 15.8 percent of that total represents 403 investigations.

In other words, despite financial institutions spending $46 billion a year complying with this regime and filing over 26 million reports, these reports only initiated 403 criminal investigations (Figure 2).

To be clear, this chart only reflects the IRS’s criminal investigations—countless other government agencies have access to these reports. So more data is certainly needed to understand the full picture here, but from what we can see, the current state of financial surveillance looks far from justified.

Clark Packard

On the heels of Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine in early 2022, the Biden administration temporarily exempted Ukrainian steel from the Trump administration’s bogus “national security” tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (at the behest of the domestic steel industry). The exemption was set to expire on June 1, 2023, with tariffs snapping back to 25 percent. Last week, the White House announced it would maintain Ukraine’s exemption from tariffs and expanded it to cover Ukrainian steel processed within the European Union (EU). For free traders battered by ill‐​advised protectionism over the last two administrations, this announcement is what constitutes good news these days. As my Cato colleague Scott Lincicome rightly noted on Twitter, “… this exemption is a tacit admission that opening our markets to goods/​services from allies & other friendly nations is IN THEIR AND OUR OWN SECURITY INTERESTS, but admitting that wouldn’t be very ‘worker‐​centric’,” the latter of which has been a central talking point in the Biden administration’s protectionist trade policy. This (very) minor tariff relief is a positive relative to the status quo, but it also serves as a sad reminder of the domestic steel industry’s stranglehold on U.S. trade policy.

To recap, in 2018 despite a memorandum from his own Secretary of Defense who rightly noted that the Defense Department only needed three percent of steel produced domestically, President Trump imposed 25 percent “national security” tariffs on steel (and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum) imported from virtually every country in the world, including longstanding allies. Naturally those tariffs angered such allies and triggered predictable retaliation from trading partners. The tariffs also imposed enormous costs on downstream domestic users—raising prices of a critical input for manufacturers and builders. In 2020, economists Dr. Kadee Russ and Lydia Cox found that the steel and aluminum tariffs cost the U.S. economy about 75,000 manufacturing jobs, not including foreign retaliation. Meanwhile, the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the tariffs cost consumers about $650,000 for each steel job created.

We’ve been down this road before. In 2002, President George W. Bush imposed broad based tariffs on steel under Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the executive branch discretion to impose temporary tariffs to counteract an alleged surge of imports. The Bush tariffs ranged from 10 to 30 percent and applied to over 170 different steel products. A very recent Cato research brief written by Drs. James Lake of the University of Tennessee and Ding Liu of the Analysis Group, which is based on a longer working paper, found that the Bush steel tariffs “had large negative short‐​term effects on local steel‐​consuming employment but no notable effects on local employment in the steel industry.” Research from the Trade Partnership found that the Bush steel tariffs cost 200,000 jobs in steel‐​consuming industries at a time when only about 187,000 people worked in the steel industry and resulted in about $4 billion lost wages between February and November of 2002—the immediate six months following the tariffs’ imposition. Angered allies led by the European Union challenged the tariffs at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on grounds that they were inconsistent with the WTO’s Agreement on Safeguards. The U.S. eventually lost the case at the WTO and quietly withdrew the tariffs but not before substantial damage was done.

Those are just the discretionary tariffs politicians in the United States have imposed in recent decades to protect the domestic steel industry. The rot is much deeper. Indeed, the United States aggressively uses anti‐​dumping (duties designed to counteract the alleged scourge of a foreign producer selling below cost) and countervailing duties (designed to counteract foreign government subsidies) (AD/CVD)—so-called “trade remedies”—under the Trade Act of 1930 (infamously known as Smoot‐​Hawley) to protect the domestic steel industry. Cato scholars have long criticized the sordid history and application of AD/CVD laws in the United States—see here, here, here, here, here, and here. Unlike the Section 232 and 201 tariffs imposed by the Trump and Bush administrations respectively, AD/CVD duties are imposed through a complicated quasi‐​judicial process involving the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce after a petition is filed by a domestic firm or industry group. Irrespective of the process by which they are imposed, these duties can reach astronomical levels—324 percent on steel nails from Kosteel Vina, a Vietnamese steel producer, for example. Today, there are nearly 670 AD/CVD orders on the books in the United States and some form of steel is involved in 305. In other words, nearly half of the U.S. trade remedies are protecting the domestic steel industry. Not only that, there are currently 16 AD/CVD investigations involving steel ongoing according to the International Trade Administration.

Owing to layers of protection, U.S. manufacturers and builders pay more for steel than their competitors in other countries. On May 22, 2023, for example, the benchmark price for a metric ton of hot‐​rolled steel in the United States was $1,170 compared to the world export price of $580 for a metric ton of hot‐​rolled steel. Given that steel is a vital input in the production of a wide swath of items, U.S. protectionism makes steel‐​consuming industries less competitive globally than firms in countries with cheaper access to steel.

Over the years, Washington has provided billions of dollars’ worth of protectionism and subsidies to the domestic steel industry. Despite this largess, the U.S. steel industry continues to shrink while at the same time its high‐​powered lobbyists and lawyers beg at the trough for more protectionism. Again, while the White House’s decision to extend Ukraine’s exemption from the steel tariffs is welcome news, the whole ordeal is a sad reminder that much of the domestic steel industry today defines “success” by bending government power in its favor.

Jeffrey A. Singer

Writing in the Australian journal The Quadrant a year and a half ago, I criticized the Australian government’s plan to prohibit residents from purchasing e‑cigarettes without first getting a state‐​licensed health care practitioner’s permission slip (aka, a prescription). I wrote:

It makes no sense to require medical permission slips for consenting adults to ingest nicotine via e‑cigarettes when doing so through combustible tobacco requires no such official nod. It makes even less sense when substances of equal or greater addictive potential are legally available without a prescription. Perhaps this is due to an irrational, zero‐​tolerance stance toward any activity, such as vaping, that resembles tobacco smoking.

Though e‑cigarettes are now only legal with a prescription in Australia, an essentially illegal and unregulated market has flourished nationwide in tobacco and vape shops. So now the Australian government will double down on its war on vaping. The Australian parliament is about to pass a ban on importing all non‐​prescription vaping products, including those that don’t contain nicotine. The government will also require makers of all legal vaping products to make their packages resemble other prescription products, and it will reduce the colors, flavors, volumes, and nicotine content of prescription e‑cigarettes.

The Australian press reports that wholesale vaping suppliers are urging customers, in social media posts and advertisements, to stock up before the ban goes into effect, warning that prices are likely to increase in response to a surge in demand. Many have made it clear that they are preparing to take the trade underground. Some have made creative online videos critical of the impending ban, frequently on Tik Tok. One innovative video borrows from the film The Wolf of Wall Street, with a gif of Leonardo DiCaprio shouting, “I’m not f***ing leaving!” in response to a caption that states, “When customers ask if we’re gonna stop selling due to the new vape laws…”

Ironically, unlike policymakers in places like San Francisco and New York State, the Australian government recognizes e‑cigarettes as an excellent harm reduction tool. Reporting in the Melbourne Herald Sun, Jack Evans writes that Australia’s Health Minister Mark Butler “emphasized that vaping was initially marketed globally as a therapeutic aid to assist long‐​term smokers in quitting but had transformed into a recreational product.” Policymakers are disturbed because many people vape for pleasure rather than for quitting tobacco. Said Butler, “It was not sold as a recreational product, and in particular, not one for our kids.”

To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, the Australian Health Minister has “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration, states, and municipalities have been prohibiting flavored e‑cigarettes based on the theory—now disproven by the evidence—that flavored e‑cigarettes are a gateway to teen tobacco smoking. But public policy toward adult behavior should not be based on minors’ tastes and proclivities. Moreover, there is good evidence that adults who are trying to quit tobacco smoking prefer flavored e‑cigarettes, and these bans may be causing many adults to abandon vaping and resume smoking.

Unlike Australia, the U.K. government does not require people to get permission from a government‐​approved health care practitioner if they want to vape. And unlike Australia and the U.S., the U.K. government does not restrict flavors.

Alas, the Australian government is intent on fueling an underground vaping market. And, as with all black markets, consumers will be less sure about the purity and quality of the products they buy or whether they contain deadly compounds. This will make vaping more hazardous. Australians should also expect a surge in prohibition‐​related crime. And politicians will counter by making taxpayers fund new and expanding law enforcement efforts to crack down on the illegal e‑cigarette trade.

We have all seen this movie. We know how it ends. Sadly, prohibitionists never learn.

Walter Olson

I’ve written before about the set of state constitutional amendments known as “Marsy’s Law,” promoted as a bill of rights for crime victims. While the details vary from state to state, common provisions found in the package can deprive persons accused of crimes of information that is of legitimate use in mounting their defense, seal off access to information about crime that the public has valid reasons to want to know, and even in some states work to suppress the identities of police who shoot civilians, so long as the officers allege that they were themselves victimized as part of the episode. In an unsettling paradox, the laws bestow valuable rights on persons it designates as crime victims before any legal process determines whether a crime has in fact been committed against them and if so by whom.

Critics have gone to court to challenge Marsy’s Law enactments, with at best spotty success. Wisconsin’s high court has now upheld the law against one such challenge. It ruled that the package did not violate the state’s “single‐​subject” rule for constitutional amendments presented as ballot measures; high courts in Pennsylvania and Montana had struck down their state’s enactments on that ground, but application of single‐​subject rules is anything but predictable. And it ruled that the language presented to voters was not improperly misleading, though it could easily have left voters with the impression that the existing rights of criminal defendants would be left untouched (they weren’t).

I wrote a piece for the Brennan Center this spring about the Wisconsin challenge and another in Florida. An excerpt:

Marsy’s Law proponents regularly argue that the laws don’t weaken the rights of criminal defendants. But there’s little doubt that the Wisconsin package does exactly that. For example, it “limits discovery available to defendants by allowing victims [t]o refuse an interview, deposition, or other discovery request,” argues a brief from the ACLU of Wisconsin. A brief from public defenders says it’s “common for documents to be more heavily redacted or not disclosed in the name of ‘Marsy’s Law’” and that “the accused’s diminished discovery rights have been narrowed further with the amendment.”

In addition, the ACLU argues, a provision granting victims the right to attend all proceedings does so by deleting a previous qualifying phrase recognizing their right to attend “unless the trial court finds sequestration is necessary to a fair trial for the defendant.”

In the Florida case, which has not yet been ruled on, a police union sued to prevent the city of Tallahassee from releasing the names of two officers involved in fatal shootings, citing the law’s ban on disclosure of “information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family,” victim status in this case being asserted on behalf of the officers. Florida’s state constitution contains a celebrated “sunshine” provision guaranteeing the public access to a wide range of official records, but an intermediate appeals court ruled that voters’ approval of the Marsy’s Law package implicitly rolled back the public’s previously established sunshine rights.

Whatever the outcome of the Wisconsin and Florida challenges, I argue in the Brennan piece, “advocates and policymakers should be on notice that Marsy’s Law generates outcomes that are hard to defend in principle.”

Colleen Hroncich

Like many creative educational options, Sweetwater Scholé is evidence that necessity is the mother of invention. Despite a career working to advance educational freedom and school choice, Randan Steinhauser’s original education plan for her children was pretty typical. “When it came time for my husband and I to buy a house, the first thing we looked at was the local school district,” she recalls. “I grew up in public school. My husband did, too. So, I’m fighting for school choice for other families. But I never thought of it for myself.”

When her oldest daughter was one, Randan had twins. She sent her daughter to a part‐​time preschool to give herself a bit of a break. She was shocked when the teacher said her daughter was doing well but should be attending five days a week—as a two-year-old—to get kindergarten ready. Randan says that was a moment of clarity. She pulled her from the preschool, which for them was meant to be a fun outlet and a break for Mom. “That really led me on a journey to start to educate myself on what my choices were,” she says. “It was like a light bulb went off. No one knows my child better than I do, and I want to be a part of that educational journey for them. I started researching home education and fell in love with everything I was reading. I fell in love with the wild and free unschooling, all of this education by choice, not by coercion and child‐​led learning. And that led us to where we are now.”

Fast forward a few years. Randan now has four children and decided to take a year off work when her youngest was born. That gave her more free time, so she decided to start a homeschool co‐​op that she calls Sweetwater Scholé. Inspired by Charlotte Mason, the co‐​op is designed around hands‐​on and creative learning. Children are introduced to an idea or concept and then use nature‐​based play, books, art, poetry, music, and conversation to explore it.

Sweetwater Scholé just wrapped up its first year in operation. There were more than 50 families involved, with around half of those attending on a weekly basis. “My goal was to have maybe a dozen kids. I thought it would be super quaint and intimate,” says Randan. “When we finished our school year—we did 10 weeks in the fall and 10 weeks in the spring—we ended up with 49 kids who consistently came, representing over 20 families.”

Randan notes the co‐​op has a wide range of diversity including various religions, ethnicities, homeschooling styles, and ages. But they’re united around a desire to see their children thrive in a learning environment that puts them at the center. Many families joined who had pulled their kids from public school for a variety of reasons, including to have more time together, foster a love of learning, escape bullying, avoid wasted time, and allow their children to learn at their own pace.

As Randan has gone back to work, other moms have pitched in. This spring, a different mom took the lead each week—one focused on space, one did oceans, one did weather, and so on. The group will continue to meet for free play over the summer with no lessons planned. “For the fall, I have some moms who want to continue to step up and lead,” Randan says. “The other cool thing about this is that as our group got so big—there were families driving to our co‐​op from 30–40 minutes away—I really started to cultivate those moms. I said ‘Hey, just take the leap. Put something out on your neighborhood page. Put something out in your local community.’ So from our co‐​op, we now have two new co‐​ops. Our little babies.”

Randan is very reflective about her experiences. For years, she worked to advance education freedom for children with special needs and lower income families, but she hadn’t thought of it in terms of her own family. “It really weighs on me that I was oftentimes talking about how other families should have choice or other families should have freedom. And it was only when I started to evaluate our own children’s education that I realized we, too, should be able to have that freedom. And that is really what has led me personally into being an advocate for universal education freedom.”

Nicholas Anthony

Although Americans often think that financial privacy is protected by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, financial institutions like banks and credit unions are required by the Bank Secrecy Act to regularly report financial activity to the federal government. Were this violation of privacy not enough to cause upset, the government has long been unable to prove that these reports are even effective in combatting crime.

For those that might be unfamiliar with the issue at hand, financial institutions file tens of millions of reports each year on customers for either “suspicious” activity or activity crossing reporting thresholds (e.g., $10,000). One major issue with this regime is that it doesn’t even appear to be effective for fighting crime. Despite all these reports being filed year after year, it’s unclear just how many criminals are being caught because of these reports. Therefore, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has been repeatedly asked to explain how many reports directly result in investigations, convictions, and the like.

FinCEN’s Suspicious Statistics

On April 25, 2023, FinCEN finally responded to years of requests—well, it partially responded.

The report opens with what should be a sobering statistic for supporters of the Bank Secrecy Act: despite financial institutions spending an estimated $46 billion a year in compliance and filing over 26 million reports, only 15.8 percent of all IRS investigations result from Bank Secrecy Act reports (see Figure 1). Yet, FinCEN does not say how many of these reports lead to a conviction.

While not the direct result of Bank Secrecy Act reports, FinCEN stated that 84.2 percent of all IRS investigations in general and 83.2 percent of IRS investigations recommended for prosecution had used information gained from Bank Secrecy Act reports. This finding may sound like a win for supporters of the regime, but it’s important to recognize the qualifier here: these investigations were not the result of Bank Secrecy Act reports. Rather, the investigations just benefited in some form from the existence of the reports. Without additional detail, one could make the same argument about a library card.

FinCEN also supplied select statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Here, however, all the numbers are largely meaningless because they too come with a significant qualifier: the reports “supported a significant portion” of select investigations. To be fair, both here and with the IRS, these numbers would be somewhat useful for establishing context in a larger report, but, at best, they overinflate the usefulness of Bank Secrecy Act reports when viewed on their own.

Turning elsewhere, FinCEN’s public database regarding the number of suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed each year reveals more troubling insights. When it comes to reports from depository institutions, the top four reasons for filing a SAR were: (1) concerns regarding the source of funds; (2) transactions near reporting thresholds; (3) transactions with no clear purpose; and, (4) transactions out of pattern (see Figure 2).

Things like money laundering, human trafficking, and terrorist financing only rank as the 18th, 63rd, and 72nd reasons for filing a report. Yet, maybe the most concerning insight is that nearly 2.5 million transactions were reported for being below the reporting thresholds. It calls into question why these thresholds exist at all. As Representative Andy Ogles (R‑TN) pointed out when Acting Director Das appeared before Congress this year: financial surveillance under FinCEN, and the Bank Secrecy Act writ large, has effectively targeted millions of innocent Americans over actual threats.

Conclusion

Later at the oversight hearing, Representative Warren Davidson (R‑OH) said,

Give us some metrics.…Give us the evidence.…How do you measure the effectiveness? …Show me a case where what you collected resulted in a solved crime.…I’m looking for cause and effect. If you want to keep spying on American citizens, you’re going to have to show why.

Between the requests from the public and congressional inquiries, FinCEN is certainly aware of the pressing need to supply statistics on the effectiveness of the financial surveillance it oversees. At this point, however, it’s clear that Congress needs to double down on the government reports required in Title LXII of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 and require FinCEN to publish a public report on the effectiveness of the Bank Secrecy Act.

Norbert Michel and Jai Kedia

Last week at Brookings, Ben Bernanke, former Fed chair, and Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, released an empirical study of the inflationary episode that followed the COVID-19 government shutdowns. According to the authors, the supply constraints caused by the pandemic shutdowns were initially a main factor, and the “easy fiscal and monetary policy” that followed made things worse.

While this conclusion shouldn’t surprise anyone, it’s their prediction for the economy’s outlook that generated some buzz.

Specifically, Bernanke and Blanchard conclude that the only way for inflation to come down is for the labor market to “cool off.” Essentially, they’re making a Phillips‐​curve type argument, suggesting that there will have to be substantial job loss/​wage declines (a so‐​called “hard landing” of the economy) before inflation comes back down to the Fed’s target.

Strangely, the Bernanke‐​Blanchard model results don’t really support this kind of prediction.

For instance, Figure 12 shows their “decomposition of the sources of inflation” from 2020 to the first quarter of 2023 “based on the solution of the full model and the implied impulse response functions.” The most obvious conclusion shown in the graphic is that the overwhelming majority of the inflation has been caused by everything other than labor market tightness.

Indeed, the contribution of their labor market variable to inflation is small, and the direction of that contribution is inconsistent throughout the period. From the 4th quarter of 2021 onward, for example, virtually the same size contribution from labor market tightness is associated with both increases and decreases in inflation. Aside from whether Bernanke and Blanchard have the “right” model, these results don’t clearly support their recipe for taming inflation.

To be fair, the authors note multiple times that the relationship between the unemployment rate and job opening rate (the Beveridge curve) has shifted dramatically in the economic chaos of the past few years. So, it is unlikely that their model will be valid in the coming months as the economy returns either to a pre‐​COVID‐​19 state or to an entirely different structure. Moreover, Bernanke and Blanchard offer several major caveats to their projections (on page 35), ones that go “beyond the usual statistical uncertainty surrounding the parameter estimates and the specification of the model itself.”

Given their model results, along with their extensive caveats, it would be wise to take their “hard landing” predictions with a grain of salt.

Norbert Michel and Nicholas Anthony

This April Forbes column describes why central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are a fundamental issue related to Americans’ freedom and much bigger than just politics. It argues that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, famous for being wrong about the Internet, was wrong for claiming presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis was merely playing politics with CBDCs.

Nonetheless, Krugman has doubled down. As Crowdfund Insider explains, now he’s taken to Twitter to re‐​promote his original opinion piece and to liken DeSantis’s warnings about CBDCs to former presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s fight against the National Weather Service.

Contrary to Krugman’s framing, DeSantis’s claims about the risks of CBDCs have merit. As the Forbes piece demonstrated, proponents of CBDCs, even some government officials who would be in charge of implementing CBDCs, have openly discussed using CBDCs for exactly the purposes DeSantis claimed. (Nick and I have a longer list here.)

A CBDC is not “just another form of money,” as some of its supporters have claimed. A fully implemented CBDC is a complete government takeover of money and payments. As the experience in China and Nigeria have shown, the introduction of a CBDC comes with the removal of people’s freedom to choose their methods of payment.

CBDCs mark a fundamental threat to both economic and political freedom. But it should surprise no one that Krugman is wrong on this issue.

Emily Ekins and Jordan Gygi

George Orwell’s 1984 is one of our society’s most frequently referenced illustrations of what life would be like under an authoritarian government. Actual government policies that are viewed as illiberal in varying degrees are often tied to this novel by opponents, an easy and effective way to call out government overreach and control. In the book 1984, citizens of the fictional nation Oceania are under constant government surveillance, including in their own homes. Devices called telescreens display propaganda and record peoples’ actions, allowing the government to monitor people even in what should be the most private place they know—their homes. This type of behavior is meant to be an extreme example of what can happen when a government gains too much power, and opposition to such surveillance has been assumed to be overwhelming and obvious. But is it?

In a newly released Cato Institute 2023 Central Bank Digital Currency National Survey of 2,000 Americans, we asked respondents whether they “favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Not surprisingly, few Americans—only 14 percent—support this idea. Three‐​fourths (75 percent) would oppose government surveillance cameras in homes, including 68 percent who “strongly oppose,” while 10% don’t have an opinion either way.

However, Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐​style in‐​home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor “the government installing surveillance cameras in every household” in order to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.

We don’t know how much of this preference for security over privacy or freedom is something unique to this generation (a cohort effect) or simply the result of youth (age effect). However, there is reason to think part of this is generational. Americans over age 45 have vastly different attitudes on in‐​home surveillance cameras than those who are younger. These Americans were born in or before 1978. Thus the very youngest were at least 11 before the Berlin Wall fell. Being raised during the Cold War amidst regular news reports of the Soviet Union surveilling their own people may have demonstrated to Americans the dangers of giving the government too much power to monitor people. Young people today are less exposed to these types of examples and thus less aware of the dangers of expansive government power.

It is also possible that increased support for government surveillance among the young has common roots with what Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt describe in the Coddling of the American Mind: young people seem more willing to prioritize safety (from possible violence or hurtful words) over ensuring robust freedom (from government surveillance or to speak freely).

Other demographics also differ in their tolerance of government surveillance in their homes. African Americans (33 percent) and Hispanic Americans (25 percent) are more likely than White Americans (9 percent) and Asian Americans (11 percent) to support in‐​home government surveillance. Democrats (17 percent) are also more likely than Republicans (11 percent) to support it but not by a wide margin. This issue divides Democrats between those who identify as “very liberal” in which only 9 percent support and “liberal” who are more than twice as likely to support (19 percent). Notably the issue doesn’t divide men (15 percent) and women (13 percent) who were about equally likely to support.

We asked this question as part of our survey on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in order to see whether there is a relationship between opinions on the government issuing a central bank digital currency and government installing cameras in homes. It appears that the two opinions are correlated. Interestingly, more than half (53 percent) of those who support the United States adopting a CBDC are also supportive of government surveillance cameras in homes, while only 2 percent of those who oppose a CBDC feel the same. This suggests there may be a common consideration that is prompted by both issues. Likely, it has to do with willingness to give up privacy in hopes of greater security.

It is important to emphasize that the overwhelming majority of Americans across demographic groups oppose the government surveilling people in their homes. Nevertheless, it is relevant to note the higher acceptance among younger generations to trade freedom and privacy for some added security and protection.

If these trends continue, the United States may confront a very different privacy landscape in the future. It is possible that at some point, the American public will be open to extreme government overreach in a world that feels scarier and more dangerous than before, whether or not it is. Thus, it is important to impart the learnings of the past (and present) about what can happen when government amasses too much power. Without explicitly telling younger generations about the risks and dangers of government surveillance they will forget these lessons and may find themselves repeating devastating mistakes of the past.