Tag: Trade

CIVPAC Endorses Josh Turek for U.S. Senate in Iowa

Centrist Independent Voter endorses Josh Turek for U.S. Senate in Iowa, with the U.S. Capitol and Iowa farmland.

This may be the closest thing CIVPAC has published to an endorsement by faint praise.

We have endorsed Josh Turek for the United States Senate from Iowa over Republican Ashley Hinson. But this is not an endorsement in which one candidate clearly reflects our views and the other clearly does not.

Both candidates have strengths. Both have weaknesses. And under different national circumstances, I can easily imagine CIVPAC reaching the opposite conclusion.

Ashley Hinson has positions we like. She is generally more market-oriented than Turek. She supports right-to-work laws and school choice, positions substantially closer to our views on labor unions and K–12 education. She voted to accept the certified results of the 2020 presidential election and supported the Respect for Marriage Act. She is not simply an election-denying MAGA caricature.

Josh Turek, meanwhile, has plenty of positions we do not like.

He supports a wealth tax on billionaires. We do not. Our taxation, spending and debt policy favors a progressive tax system but puts considerable weight on economic efficiency, broad tax bases and long-term fiscal balance rather than new taxes on accumulated wealth.

Turek also supports federal food-price-gouging restrictions. We generally distrust price controls and laws that attempt to suppress price signals rather than address the underlying causes of scarcity.

He supports the PRO Act, which conflicts with our view that workers should be free to organize but that states should remain free to enact right-to-work laws. He would end school vouchers, while CIVPAC supports carefully designed experiments with vouchers and charter schools subject to common transparency and testing standards.

His foreign-policy views are also less developed than I would like in someone seeking a seat in the United States Senate.

So why endorse him?

Partly because endorsements are comparative judgments, not ideological purity tests.

Turek has demonstrated something we value enormously: an ability to represent people who do not necessarily share his party affiliation. Donald Trump carried his Iowa House district, yet Turek won it. He has crossed party lines on consequential votes and has been effective in a legislature overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans.

He is also substantially closer to us on abortion and personal liberty. And his combination of stronger border enforcement with a legal path for long-established undocumented residents is much closer to the compromise reflected in our immigration policy than either open-ended permissiveness or mass-deportation politics.

Turek also strongly opposes Trump’s broad tariffs. That puts him much closer to CIVPAC’s trade policy, which favors open trade, predictable rules and restoring greater congressional control over the use of tariffs.

Hinson, meanwhile, increasingly identifies herself with Donald Trump and his agenda. She has supported his broad tariff policies, which we regard as economically damaging and particularly inappropriate for an agricultural state.

She also voted against the 2026 Ukraine Support Act despite having previously expressed stronger support for resisting Russian aggression. CIVPAC’s Russia and Ukraine policy places considerable weight on deterrence, alliance reliability and denying Russia the benefits of territorial aggression.

Most importantly, the current political environment changes the weight we assign to these differences.

If Donald Trump and Trumpism were not dominant forces within the Republican Party, this endorsement might be different.

If Democrats controlled the presidency and Congress and the greater need were for a market-oriented check on the left, this endorsement might also be different.

In that environment, Hinson’s positions on taxes, school choice, labor policy and regulation might well carry greater weight.

But we do not make endorsements for an imaginary political system. We make them for the one that exists.

Today, institutional independence, constitutional restraint, respect for individual liberty, sensible trade policy, support for American alliances and a willingness by members of Congress to act as legislators rather than extensions of a president deserve unusual weight.

On balance, Turek comes out ahead.

Not by much.

That is why “endorsement by faint praise” seems about right. It is not meant as an insult to Turek. It is a recognition that serious political choices are often between imperfect alternatives.

CIVPAC’s purpose is not to find candidates with whom we agree on everything. It is to decide which available candidate is more likely to move government in a sensible, centrist and institutionally responsible direction.

In Iowa, by a narrow margin, we believe that candidate is Josh Turek.

“Galactically Stupid” Policy Ideas

Galactially Stupid Policy Ideas

The Centrist Independent Voter publishes a Rogues Gallery of candidates that we view as so extreme that we would never endorse them.

I think it is time for us to publish a list of policy ideas that are so counterproductive that we would never support them. To achieve this august status, a policy proposal has to not only be less than the best solution, it has to actually make the situation it is intended to solve, worse. I propose that we call these policies “Galactically Stupid.” The phrase is borrowed from “A Few Good Men,” a movie from 1992.

Not all bad public policies are “Galactically Stupid.” Some policies are just bad because there are better ways of accomplishing the same thing. Regulations on emissions of pollution are worse than taxing pollutants but such regulations are better than doing nothing at all.

That said, some policy ideas are just dumb on an interstellar scale.

Galactically Stupid Ideas on the Left

Price Controls

Candidates for the status of Galactically Stupid on the left include: wage and price controls, “windfall” profits taxes, anti-price gouging laws, and rent controls. If you sense a common theme, you are right. All of these involve the government trying to regulate prices.

Prices serve a vital role in an economy. They signal goods whose production needs to be increased or decreased. They signal places where goods are in short supply and thereby direct supplies to those regions. They signal activities that require more investment, or less. Attempt to governmentally control prices and you create shortages, lines and other inefficient forms of rationing, including black markets.

Generally, price controls raise the real price of goods being regulated by making those goods more scarce. You may not see that price, but you will experience it through the difficulty of finding the regulated good at the official price.

President Biden’s implicit threat to regulate refinery margins qualifies as Galactically Stupid. Elizabeth Warren’s anti-price gouging legislation also falls into this group. To understand how bad these policy positions are, it is helpful to reflect on why refinery margins are high right now. Demand for gasoline and refinery margins cratered during the pandemic and many refineries were shut down. When gasoline demand rebounded, refiners were reluctant to invest in reopening those refineries or building new ones. Who would feel like doing so in a “heads I lose, tails you win” environment? Talk of eliminating fossil fuels doesn’t help either, in terms of incentives for refinery expansion.

So having created a problem by destroying incentives for refinery expansion or new refineries, left wing populists use the inevitably higher refinery margins that follow to justify price controls or windfall profits taxes that make the situation worse.

Non-Global Solutions to Global Warming

Unilateral approaches to climate change that fail to address the global nature of the problem also strike me as Galactically Stupid. Banning the use of fossil fuels in America is counterproductive if it simply shifts the production of energy intensive goods to China or India. Remember, the goods then have to be shipped back here with a net increase in green house gas emissions.

The Centrist Independent Voter does believe that climate change is a serious problem and supports a carbon tax with an associated tariff as the best way for dealing with the problem. We suggest that solution because it recognizes the inherently global nature of the problem.

Galactic Stupidity Ideas on the Right

So far, all of my suggestions for Galactically Stupid public policy solutions have come from the left. There is no shortage of Galactically Stupid ideas coming out of the right.

Intransigence on Gun Control/Gun Safety Laws

One that comes to mind is the position that no gun safety/control legislation can be justified. While the Centrist Independent Voter supports the Heller decision that the Constitution guarantees an individual right to bear arms, we also agree with the Supreme Court that this right is not unlimited. Refusal to even contemplate any restrictions on gun ownership only results in increased support for total bans on gun ownership with each mass shooting.

Isolationism

Right wing isolationists, like Sen. Rand Paul, also increase the likelihood that the United States will have to expend lives and money defending ourselves against emboldened and strengthened adversaries, made more powerful by America’s failure to confront them earlier. For these and other reasons, Rand Paul appears in the Centrist Independent Voter’s Rogues Gallery of candidates we can never endorse.

Galactically Stupid Populist Ideas

Protectionism

It has now become acceptable for both Republican and Democratic populist politicians to blame international trade for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. The policy suggestion is higher tariffs on imports and re-writing free trade agreements, like NAFTA, to reflect a more protectionist point of view. (This the purpose of Trump’s USMCA agreement.) The truth is that the relative decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs has far more to do with technological change than foreign competition. It is also important to remember that low cost supply chains are crucial for U.S. competitiveness in global markets.

So what happens when we institute protective tariffs? Well, first the world becomes poorer as other countries do the same and global manufacturing becomes more expensive. Second, the temporarily higher wages in the U.S. accelerate automation and those jobs are permanently eliminated.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not an advocate of unilateral adoption of free trade policies. Sensibly negotiated mutual trade pacts, like NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), we’re win-win situations for the participants. The Centrist Independent Voter supports expanding these efforts.

I am also aware that some technologies should not be shared with countries that are antagonistic toward U.S. interests, like Russia and China.

Any Recommendations?

If you can think of other policy proposals that deserve to be labeled Galactically Stupid, please submit them in the comment section below. Remember the key thing that qualifies a policy for this category is that it is counterproductive to solving the problem that the policy addresses.