by Bob Barr | May 9, 2025 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerPresident Trump is right to make lowering drug prices one of his priorities. American consumers are sick of paying two, three, even five times more for medications than the prices outside our borders. A proposal the Administration is considering, however, threatens to make the problem much worse. It is true that the United States is in effect subsidizing the rest of the world’s drug costs. Since countries like Canada and France, with economies that are overtly socialist, impose strict government price caps on drugmakers, pharmaceutical companies charge Americans more to make up the difference – a situation that is neither fair nor free-market.So, when the Trump Administration reportedly began soliciting proposals to implement a so-called “Most Favored Nation” (“MFN”) policy for pharmaceuticals, it understandably attracted attention. On the surface, the move to a pharmaceutical most-favored-nation strategy sounds like a tough, Trumpian fix. In reality, it represents the same, discredited and dangerous idea the Left has been pushing for years, just repackaged in MAGA talking points.The positive, and practical solution to this inequitable treatment – one that actually is quintessential Trump — is to stop subsidizing drugmakers who treat American consumers like suckers and view our vast pharmaceutical market as a bottomless piggy bank. The problem is, no Big Pharma company wants to give up the substantial federal research dollars, tax credits, and government contracts now provided by Uncle Sam. The one action that would cause Big Pharma to stand up and take notice would be for the Trump Administration to seriously threaten to cut off that largess unless Big Pharma starts treating American consumers as fairly as it treats foreign governments. This actually could start to solve the problem...
by Bob Barr | Mar 27, 2025 | Uncategorized |
They’re Lying To You About The...
by Bob Barr | Mar 19, 2025 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerPresident Donald Trump’s planned executive order to bolster U.S. shipbuilding acknowledges a hard truth: China is winning the global economic battle, at least in the maritime sector. The U.S. defeated Japan in the Pacific theater of World War Two in large part because we could pump out new ships faster than the Japanese could sink them. America even flaunted its superior industrial base by launching vessels that served no purpose beyond boosting morale — most famously a floating ice cream factory. Today, however, our primary global adversary, China, has 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States, giving Beijing a significant advantage in any naval war of attrition. While the fact sheet accompanying Trump’s E.O. accurately notes that China achieved its “position of dominance in the global market through unfair non-market practices,” this isn’t a simple case of socialism versus capitalism. Unfair or not, it is a very real and serious problem we must acknowledge and confront.Ironically, American companies have a much harder time building anything than their counterparts in communist China. Not only do American shipyards face much stricter environmental reviews than many foreign competitors, but they also face the one-two punch of expansive regulations and organized labor. Instead of addressing workplace health and safety concerns through our legal tort system or through collective bargaining with workers, shipbuilding companies (and manufacturers of all stripes) are forced to spend billions — and years — complying with invasive government rules. These in turn create an elevated “floor” that serves as the new starting point for each future labor negotiation.Neither side in this geo-political contest is abiding by free-market principles. The difference is that while China stimulated its shipbuilding industry with state...
