E16: Free-market economics is working, tariffs aren't, a breakthrough malaria drug for babies, switching off the doom, and much more:
Tony Morley, July 17th, 2025
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“In the race to impose ever greater tariffs, and turn our backs on globalization, we risk killing the golden goose because we've grown sick of collecting golden eggs.” — Factories of Progress, Tony Morley
Factories of Progress: National Review
In June, I wrote for National Review on the role factories have played in driving progress and prosperity while helping lift hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. A slightly longer and original edit was published on The Up Wing.
“Manufacturing and industrialization have lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty” “Policies and political positions that hinder trade and globalization risk jeopardizing the improvements in living standards for people in poorer countries.”
“What we can say, however, with historical certainty, is that, on the whole, factories and industrialization tend to bring improved economic opportunities, higher living standards, lower child mortality rates, and increased life expectancy.”
Tinned Soup and Tariffs
Tariffs raise the price of everything, from tinned soup to automotive parts, and it’s the individual, not the state, who is footing the bill. Something so obvious and demonstrably factual shouldn’t be unintuitive or controversial, but here we are. Dive into the story of what it takes to make something as simple as a can of soup, and how tariffs muddle every step of the process, with Ed Conway, author of The Material World.
“A mazy, unpredictable set of circumstances, all of which mean American consumers end up facing higher Campbell’s Soup prices.”
“Rather than trying to make every kind of steel, many countries now tend to specialise in certain varieties of steel, with the presumption that, since it’s a global market, they can just buy in the other stuff from elsewhere.”
Ed Conway
Free speech, “more radical than you may think”
Free speech is almost certainly an underrated key stone of liberty. The team at Kite and Key dive into the First Amendment, why it's “more radical than you may think,” and why we shouldn't let the government renege on the commitment to protecting that liberty.
“The right to free speech in America is closer to absolute than in any other country in the world. Why choose a standard this permissive? One of the most important reasons is that good ideas don’t always start out as popular ideas.”
"So, if you’re willing to make exceptions to free speech for people you don’t like … well, that’s no longer free speech."
Why are people switching off the news?
Forget left or right, nearly all mainstream media leans doom. A new Reuters survey of nearly 100,000 people across 48 countries found “39 per cent said that they purposefully turned away from news because it has a negative effect on their mood” Maybe it's time we switched it off?
“According to the report, younger respondents were more likely to say that they feel powerless in the face of existential issues such as economic insecurity and climate change,”
Anna Fleck
The Moral Case Against Protectionism
“Free trade enriches us and enables human flourishing, but it is also a moral imperative essential to a just society.” — Freedom to Trade, The Moral Case Against Protectionism, James A. Dorn for the Cato Institute
“Property, freedom, and justice are inseparable in the liberal constitutional order: When private property rights are violated, individual freedom and justice suffer. Governments that choose the path of protectionism diminish their moral authority.”
Free-market economics is working surprisingly well
Milei hasn’t yet won the war against inflation, bureaucracy, and state control of the economy, but he has won the vast majority of the battles, and his methodology continues to prevail. Inflation, poverty, and unemployment have declined significantly and continue to decrease.
“Macroeconomic theory says that if deficits are high and persistent enough, then they convince everyone that the government will eventually inflate its debt away by printing money (which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy”
Noah Smith
90% of medicines prescribed in the U.S. are imported
Tariffs aren't just economically ruinous at home and abroad; they raise the cost of critical medicines. Put another way, free trade is good for your health.
“Roughly 90% of medicines prescribed in the U.S. are imported from other countries”
Today, 40-45% of the critical antibiotic penicillin imported into the United States each year originates in China. “Since 2001, pharmaceutical imports have surged more than sixfold, and pharmaceutical goods now rank as one of the most-imported goods into the United States.”
Niccolo Conte
Breakthrough in the search for HIV cure leaves researchers ‘overwhelmed’
“Now researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, have demonstrated a way to make the virus visible, paving the way to fully clear it from the body.”
Kat Lay
Every year, 230,000 children are spared from HIV thanks to treatments that reduce mother-to-child transmission
“It’s hard to imagine many things that are more terrifying than your baby contracting HIV. This is the reality for around 130,000 families every year. Just a few decades ago, this figure was over half a million.”
Hannah Ritchie
The Kids Need Optimism, Not Doom and Degrowth
“Not only is the embrace of degrowth misguided, but research suggests that this doomsday mindset is causing widespread anxiety in young people.”
“Unfortunately, children today are often bombarded with messages of an impending apocalypse that can only be warded off by lowering living standards and embracing “degrowth.”
Chelsea Follett
The United States has just approved CRISPR pigs for food, and that's progress worth talking about
Farm-raised pigs with CRISPR edits that make them resistant to 99% of the known versions of the PRRS virus could be a significant commercial gene breakthrough.
“It’s going to save a lot of money if pigs are immune to the PRRS virus, which spreads quite easily, causing losses of $300 million a year or more in the US alone.” The breakthrough, if adopted globally, may prevent the loss of millions of pigs annually, particularly in China.
Antonio Regalado
“The pigs will join a very short list of gene-modified animals that you can eat. It’s a short list because such animals are expensive to create, face regulatory barriers, and don’t always pay off.”
The end of lead
“Lead has been all but eliminated in most of the developed world. Doing the same for the rest of the world might not be difficult.”
“Even at the height of that crisis, the exposure level was far less than historical levels. In 2015, the average child in Flint had a blood level of 1.3 micrograms per deciliter, one-seventh of what might have been expected a few decades before.”
wip-admin
Baby boy preference is declining sharply, restoring balance
The repugnant practice of aborting unborn girls in preference to boys has declined dramatically, particularly in China and India, since 2000. The number of missing girls has declined by 87.5%, from 1.6 million in 2000 to 200,000 in 2025, and is still falling.
First malaria treatment for babies approved for use
A newly available breakthrough drug from Novartis can help provide malaria protection for babies and the youngest and most vulnerable children, weighing under 4.5kg, or 10 pounds.
“Together with our partners, we are proud to have gone further to develop the first clinically proven malaria treatment for newborns and young babies, ensuring even the smallest and most vulnerable can finally receive the care they deserve.”
The Declining Time Price of Kilowatt-Hours
“Energy is essential to creating abundance.” The good news is that the time price of electricity in the United States has been falling, on average, for decades.
“Another way to understand electricity prices is to ask: how many kWh can you buy with one hour of work? This chart illustrates that relationship. In 1980, an hour of US blue-collar labor could buy 152 kWh; today, it buys 207 kWh—a 36 percent increase in energy abundance.”
Gale Pooley
Construction has just commenced on the world's tallest timber tower, in Wisconsin, of all places
“The Wisconsin build will rise to a height of 375 ft (114.3 m), which is significantly taller than the Ascent's 284 ft (86.6 m). Its interior will consist of 31 floors and 350 residences.”
Neutral
Have You Heard the Good News?
Politicians and journalists get elected and paid by the trafficking of doom culture. This wholesale cultural bombardment of pessimism erodes optimism, fogs our ability to make clear and effective personal and political choices. A more fact-based look at the world shows that it’s better than it looks.
“But the tenor of the public debate—from elected officials to pundits, journalists to public intellectuals—implies that we are living in something approaching the apocalypse. To them, the game is rigged, the system is broken, everything is awful, and life was better decades ago. That’s mostly bullshit.”
Clifford S. Asness
“The left blames rich people and corporations. (We have to redistribute your ice cream from them back to you.) The right blames free trade, immigrants —including legal ones, who came here just to take your ice cream—and, uh, also rich people and corporations.”
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