With just a few days to go before the midterm elections the betting markets and the polls predict the Democrats firmly controlling the House of Representatives and with a good chance of controlling the Senate. If Republicans do as badly as is predicted and particularly if President Donald Trump’s picks, like Ken Paxton in Texas, lose, will there be much self-reflection in the GOP? What will the future of the Republican Party look like in the run up to the 2028 presidential elections if Trump’s party is the midterm loser and the GOP has nothing to show for the final two years of his term? Will any moderates emerge that tack back to a more centrist, traditional policy platform? Will there be a move away from the national conservatism, big government agenda championed by Vice President JD Vance? I certainly hope so, but don’t bet on it.

As importantly, if the Democrats romp home with significant wins, such as winning the Senate seat in Michigan, will their lesson be to run further to the Left on a socialism, anti-Israel, and, frankly, an anti-America ticket? The Democrats will no doubt be cheering if they score some big Senate wins on Tuesday night, but they may well rue those celebrations if they end up driving the party further towards socialism.

We don’t have to wonder too hard what this country would look like under socialist rule. Seattle was once a great city that was home to Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, Boeing, and countless other great companies that have created untold wealth and prosperity for billions of people around the world. Seattleites elected socialist Katy Wilson earlier this year and she has raised taxes, pushed up the minimum wage, and embarked on an anti-business crusade. Seattle’s residents are now paying for their foolish election choice. Thirty-five percent of Seattle’s office space is now standing empty and downtown properties have lost half their value since 2020.

The good news for Seattle residents is that they can move to lower tax cities and states where they and their families can prosper. But if the entire Democratic party is taken over by Katy Wilsons and it does to the country what she is doing to Seattle, where do we go? Singapore and New Zealand can only take so many of us. Perhaps I’m a foolish optimist, but I continue to think that socialism won’t sell country wide. The United States (US) remains a centre-right country that still believes in property rights, the rule of law, meritocracy, and in its founding values.

Although it is likely too little too late to help the Republicans, we just learned that in the last quarter the GDP grew by a healthy 3.4%. This is good news indeed, but the problem for President Trump is that persistently high inflation means most Americans are not feeling the growth in their wallets, and our expectations, based on Trump’s first term, were for more stable higher growth and wealth creation. Trump’s second term has disappointed on that front, which I discuss below. I also delve into some shenanigans in the United Nations (UN) over Cuba and the prospects for free and fair elections in Venezuela. But first, election advertisements have been getting a bit out of hand, particularly in Ohio and Michigan, but before you clutch your pearls, don’t worry, elections were way nastier in the 1800s, and we survived.

Election Ad Nastiness

In Ohio’s governor’s race the entrepreneur and one-time presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy is running against the Democrat Amy Acton, a centrist Democrat who, if she wins, will be that state’s first Democratic governor in 16 years. Acton has claimed that she suffered from childhood neglect as well as sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Ramaswamy’s campaign ran an ad featuring Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, who came out claiming that her daughter is a liar and that no such abuse or neglect took place.

The ad is extraordinary and probably the first of its kind in a political environment that seems to be getting more personal and vicious by the day. Aside from the questionable political tactics in running an ad featuring your opponent’s own mother, the spot did Ramaswamy no favours. Acton’s mother does not come across as credible. Perhaps if Mother Acton looked like Martha Stewart standing in front of a white picket fence, she’d be persuasive. Instead, and I know that looks can be deceiving, she comes across as exactly the kind of person who might neglect her own child.

Since running the ad, Ramaswamy’s prospects for a win have dipped, with Acton now is running more than four points ahead in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.

Meanwhile things are far nastier over in Michigan after a political action campaign (PAC) supporting Democrat Abdul El-Sayed ran what must be one of the most antisemitic ads in living history. The PAC, which is run by podcaster and media personality Cenk Uyger, released an ad featuring a couple shopping for groceries in a supermarket. The woman tells her partner to put the eggs back “because we have to put that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.”

The ad pushes the line that food is more expensive because of Israel, and that the US taxpayer is subsidizing everything in the Jewish homeland, including healthcare. Over the centuries the Jews have been blamed for everything, from the black death and financial collapses to wars and natural disasters, so this latest calumny is perfectly in line with past calumnies.

Everything about it is a lie and one designed to stoke Jew hatred. First, the US does provide military aid to Israel, but almost all of it is spent in the United States on defense contractors. Second, the US gets an awful lot in return for its military assistance, such as intelligence sharing and a continual improvement of military hardware and tactics. Third, foreign aid is not driving up prices, but if that is your argument, why not look examine our decades of support Jordan and Egypt. How about the fact that US troops are stationed across Europe? Finally, the jab about healthcare is just absurd. Israel funds its own healthcare services from domestic taxation. And as long as we’re on the topic of healthcare, it’s notable that the ad didn’t mention all the medical advances that have come from Israel and which have benefited American enormously.

And to simply state that the $7 is needed “to kill Palestinians” is revealing. Uyger never bothers to mention that this war was started by Hamas, a terrorist group. Hamas along with its partner Hezbollah and its benefactor, the Islamic Republic of Iran are not only determined to kill every Jew on earth and eliminated the state of Israel, the “little Satan”, but also to destroy the “big Satan,” the US. The Israel Defense Forces does not intend to “kill Palestinians” but to destroy Hamas, and it is doing so with the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in history. And while we’re on the topic of “killing Palestinians,” Uyger carefully avoids telling his audience that Hamas is in the business of killing its own people, not only by denying them shelter from attacks, but deliberately executing and torturing them as it clings to power.

The fact that the El-Sayed campaign has not denounced this vile advertisement is yet another reason he does not belong anywhere near the US Senate.

But before you get too depressed about nasty political campaigns, back in 2010 our friends over at Reason reminded us that electioneering was vicious in the extreme in the 1800s. Take a look to the way Thomas Jefferson and John Adams campaigned against each other. This country survived Adams’ charge that if Jefferson won the soil would be “soaked in blood” and we would enter an era of “murder, rape, adultery, incest, and robbery.” We also survived Jefferson calling Adams a “hideous hermaphroditical character with neither the force or firmness of a man nor the gentleness or sensibility of a woman.”

So, we’ll probably survive this latest political horribleness.

Cuban Diplomats Go Wild

The Common Sense reported this week on a vote at the UN calling for an end to the United States’ economic embargo against Cuba. One hundred and thirty countries, including South Africa voted in favour, with 17 against, and with 25 abstentions. The vote itself wasn’t particularly remarkable, what was notable was the way the Cuban delegation reacted to Ambassador Mike Waltz’s speech on the topic.

Waltz correctly highlighted the horrific human rights abuses that continue to be perpetrated by the Communist Cuban regime. The country holds 800 political prisoners and treats all its citizens as slaves to the ruling elite. And my, how well the elites live. As Waltz pointed out, the family of Fidel Castro have luxury homes, yachts, expensive watches, and lead a lifestyle that your run of the mill American billionaire might envy. The difference being, of course, that that ordinary American billionaire would have earned his money while the Castros and other Communist bigwigs in Cuba stole their wealth from Cuba’s poor while keeping them in unimaginable poverty.

Offended by Waltz fact-based presentation, Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez interrupted the speech, approached the podium, and called Waltz a liar. Cuba’s first minister to Cuba’s UN delegation swatted the phone out of the hand of one American diplomat and he has now been expelled from the country.

Communists don’t particularly like being criticised, at the UN or elsewhere. In 1960 Nikita Kruschev is reported to have removed his shoe and banged it on the table in response to criticism about the Soviet Union’s domination of Eastern Europe. As Waltz correctly pointed out, if Cuba’s representatives behave like children mid-tantrum in front of the world’s diplomats and with the cameras rolling, imagine how they respond to dissenters at home when no one can report on them.

The fact remains that hundreds of countries are free to trade with Cuba, and indeed they do. The US even trades with Cuba, with nearly $900 million worth of goods being imported to Cuba from the US. So, there is no “blockade” and it is not US policy that is impoverishing the Cuban people. There is something that is impoverishing Cuba however, and it is the same thing that has impoverished and tyrannized every country that has ever tried it: communism.

Glimmers of Freedom in Venezuela

Speaking of communists, Venezuela has lived under the disastrous and brutal misrule of Hugo Chavez followed by Nicolas Maduro. Following the astonishing capture of Maduro by US special forces, the Trump Administration placed Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s deputy, as the interim dictator. Trump presumably backed Rodriguez because he knew he could reach a deal with her to secure US rights to Venezuelan oil reserves. Or perhaps it was a small demonstration project to show the Iranians that he could topple regimes and put his preferred people in place. Whatever the reason, true freedom still eludes the Venezuelans, until now perhaps.

Maria Corina Machado, the brave and indominable Venezuelan opposition leader, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, returned to her native land this week. She had escaped from hiding in Venezuela in December 2025 so that she could get to Oslo to accept her prize. She ended up missing the ceremony and her daughter accepted the prize on her behalf, but her bravery stood out to say little of the moral courage she has exhibited her entire life.

Trump had previously discouraged Machado from returning, claiming, incomprehensibly, that she didn’t have any domestic support. That is not true. In the October 2023 presidential primary election Machado won more than 93% of the vote. It is only because the Maduro regime refused to allow her to run in their sham election that she wasn’t elected to lead the country.

Now that she is back, with perhaps grudging US support, Machado will now push for free and fair elections, a return to normalcy, and the rebuilding of that once prosperous nation. The task Machado and her pro-freedom allies have is formidable and there must be an accounting of the crimes committed by the Chavez and Maduro regimes. The good news is that Cuba and Iran, Venezuela’s erstwhile allies, are less able to prop up the dictatorship. Now is the time for the democracies of the world to stand behind Machado and the Venezuelan people. Perhaps South Africa could also support the cause for justice; that might go a little way towards recovering its squandered moral authority after aligning with Hamas and Iran. South Africa might do well to show the world that it does have at least a partial commitment to liberty.

For more in Venezuela, check out the great new film, Escaping Venezuela, by the very talented producer Jim Epstein, the executive editor of Reason magazine.

The Seen and the Unseen

Last week while on a campaign stop in Macon, Georgia, President Trump announced that Audi would open its first car factory in that city, with construction to begin soon and with the first cars likely to roll off the assembly line in 2030. With 4 500 jobs slated to be created, producing among other things Audi’s largest SUV, the Q9, the announcement received loud cheers from crowd.

The new factory is good news for Georgia, the 4 500 potential new employees, and the local economy. Reportedly Audi has been considering a factory in the US for many years, and it is the only major German car manufacturer without US production. But we should be very cautious about ascribing any economic benefits to President Trump’s economic agenda, and particularly to his trade and tariff agenda.

There are some economic lessons that are timeless, and yet we must relearn them over and again. In 1850 the great French economist, Frederic Bastiat published an essay “That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen.” Bastiat cautions against focusing only on the visible economic activity, such as Audi opening a factory in the state of Georgia, and in the invisible activity that doesn’t take place.

Bastiat’s example was of a shopkeeper whose son breaks a shop window. Some people might look at the breakage as economically beneficial, as the glazier who has to come and fix the glass will be paid, and he in turn will use his earnings to buy other products in the local economy. Those would all be seen economic actions. The unseen activity, however, is the money the shopkeeper no longer has to invest in his business or use to spend in other more productive ways.

Last year the Trump Administration put out a list of companies that were expanding their production in the US in response to the Trump tariffs. Their visible investments attract attention, but it is impossible to know just how much investment hasn’t taken place and how many jobs haven’t been created thanks to those same tariffs. Aluminium tariffs, for instance, may boost domestic aluminium producers, but there are tens of thousands of companies that use aluminium and have not expanded due to higher input costs.

The Tax Foundation, one of the US’s most respected nonpartisan think tanks, estimates that the about 470 000 jobs have not been created thanks to the Trump tariff and trade agenda. The Tax Foundation estimates not just jobs not created, but reduced working hours thanks to the trade disruptions. Its economic model estimates that 338 000 full-time jobs have not been created directly due to the Trump tariffs and a further 131,000 haven’t materialized thanks to retaliatory tariffs from China and Canada. As The Wall Street Journal points out, “investment in manufacturing plants declined 4% in the third quarter and has fallen 36% in [Trump’s] second term.”

If we want to be fair, we could spend some time celebrating the 4 500 jobs created in Georgia, but we’d also need to spend much more time bemoaning the hundreds of thousands of jobs Trump’s economic policies have not created.

With that, I’ll wish you all a happy and peaceful weekend.