Niskanen Center

1 week ago | niskanencenter.org | Geoff Kabaservice

When U.S. President Donald Trump announced the imposition of his “Liberation Day” tariffs against most of America’s global trading partners in April 2025, he seemed to harken back to a centuries-old form of economic nationalism known as mercantilism, which sought prosperity through restrictive trade practices. Opponents of mercantilism from the eighteenth century onward, such as Adam Smith and John-Baptiste Say, became known as classical liberals.

1 week ago | niskanencenter.org | Matt Grossmann

The 2nd Trump administration has begun tearing down the administrative state, firing thousands, cancelling contracts, and shuttering agencies. But they have also used the power of the state to ramp up summary deportations, crack down on universities, and threaten prosecutions of their political opponents. So is this the culmination of Republican efforts to scale back government or a sign that they just want to redirect its goals?

2 weeks ago | niskanencenter.org | Damon Linker

This commentary originally appeared in “Notes from the Middleground” Every week since January 20, 2025 has felt like it’s been jam-packed with news, as Donald Trump and his team have acted on multiple fronts to seize unprecedented powers, attack the president’s myriad enemies, fundamentally shift the country’s geopolitical orientation, and establish a much harsher and more personalistic form of rule. But with the “Liberation Day” announcement on last Wednesday afternoon, something shifted.

3 weeks ago | niskanencenter.org | Geoff Kabaservice

The most important U.S. political trend of the 21st century, according to most observers, is the increasing tendency of college-educated voters to support the Democratic Party and for non-college-educated voters to support the Republican Party. In many ways, the two parties have swapped their historic bases. When John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, Democrats still considered themselves to be a working-class party.

3 weeks ago | niskanencenter.org | Matt Grossmann

We have the parties that we said we wanted: they compete over extensive policy programs, with voters making decisions among clear issue position alternatives. But how did they get here and have they now gone too far? Katherine Krimmel finds that the American parties became extensively programmatic as they lost vestiges of clientelism and became national parties after federal growth and civil rights. But Trump may be changing the nature of the party system.