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2 months ago | 
thedispatch.com | Scott Lincicome |Jonah Goldberg |Paul Matzko |Kevin Williamson
Published February 19, 2025 Among the now-regular Trump tariff announcements is his plan for eventual “reciprocal tariffs”—a concept championed by the president and his loyal trade adviser Peter Navarro that would, if enacted, set U.S. tariffs on goods from foreign counties at levels approximating the countries’ tariff and nontariff discrimination against American exports of the same products.
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2 months ago | 
thedispatch.com | David Drucker |Jonah Goldberg |Paul Matzko |Kevin Williamson
Editor’s Note: If you’re receiving this email, that means you were subscribed to our Dispatch Politics newsletter, which was published regularly from early 2023 through last November. In the lead up to the 2024 election, there was so much campaign-related news that it made sense for us to have a vehicle for quicker updates from our reporters out on the trail. For the final few weeks of the race, you heard from them essentially every single day.
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2 months ago | 
thedispatch.com | Paul Matzko |Gary Schmitt |Nick Catoggio |Philip A. Wallach
Policy And DOGE is like CREEP, but on steroids. Published February 19, 2025 “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”—Richard Nixon, 1977“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”—Donald Trump, 2025Hollywood has led us to believe the myth that authoritarians are hyper-competent, ideologically driven supervillains. The reality is more often the opposite.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
cato.org | Juan Londoño |Gary Winslett |Paul Matzko
Digital trade is globalization’s hottest area today, and gaming is a huge part of that trend. Millions of people regularly compete, collaborate, and conduct business in massive virtual worlds that seamlessly cross international borders. They are the new, fresh faces of 21st-century globalization, and they’re part of an industry that’s more than three times the size of music and movies combined.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
theunpopulist.net | Paul Matzko
Dear Readers:We are used to politicians seeking to regulate speech for ostensibly beneficial reasons like preventing hate speech or protecting children from harmful content. But very few openly suggest doing so to silence and punish critics and political opponents. Yet in the final few weeks before the election, former President Donald Trump is publicly announcing his plans to do just that.
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Sep 16, 2024 | 
matzko.substack.com | Paul Matzko
This week the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing arguments over the TikTok ban passed earlier this year. My lawyer friends tell me that the case is likely to be decided on national security grounds rather than First Amendment considerations. These claims of national security are entirely notional; the government’s own filing shockingly acknowledges that they have “no information” that Chinese officials have manipulated the platform in the US.
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Jul 16, 2024 | 
kentucky.com | Paul Matzko
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Jul 16, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Paul Matzko |Kevin Williamson |Paul Miller |David Drucker
Today’s political environment recalls an era marked by assassinations and upheaval. Published July 16, 2024 The shocking attempt on Donald Trump’s life this weekend has prompted comparisons to similar attacks on past U.S. presidents. Trump’s defiant, bloodstained fist pump is perhaps closest in visual form to the moment in 1912 that Teddy Roosevelt took a bullet in the chest yet still finished his stump speech. Others have pointed to John F.
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Jun 1, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | James Pethokoukis |Will Rinehart |Paul Matzko |Stephanie Murray
I have some sympathy for the left-wing Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, author of the recent book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. I, too, found myself in the middle of writing a book about technology and economics just as OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT, an advance in artificial intelligence that may be the most powerful digital innovation to emerge since the internet birthed the New Economy in the 1990s—if not far more consequential.
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Mar 20, 2024 | 
cato.org | Paul Matzko |Jennifer Huddleston
One possible outcome from the bill would be a forced sale of TikTok in the U.S. It would be messy, granting a $250 billion global company only six months to sell its operations to a competitor in one of its most valuable regional markets. That would create the perfect conditions for a hasty fire sale at submarket pricing and likely draw the scrutiny of regulators, given the size of the acquisition. China has also threatened to block any sale, making a ban more likely. It is a recipe for failure.
