Once again, I’m away from my post in Washington, DC and am in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to hear from the great Lord Daniel Hannan. Hannan is the newish head of the Institute of Economic Affairs in the United Kingdom and he’s here as a guest of the Fund for American Studies to talk about America’s 250th birthday and the gift of liberty that is the great legacy of the English-speaking peoples.

While I’m here it’s possible that I’ll be sampling some of the famous bratwurst sausages and fried cheese curds for which Milwaukee is known, thanks to the Germans who settled this part of the country. Milwaukee isn’t a beautiful city in the traditional sense; the buildings and infrastructure were built for commerce and industry. But that practical architecture and the wealth it produced is, in its own way, very beautiful. Perhaps the centrality of commerce to the city makes Milwaukee a very friendly place; commerce is, after all, about cooperation and trust. I say Milwaukee is friendly, and it is, unless you happen to be from the city’s great rival, Chicago.

Dan Hannan posted a photo on X of a billboard he saw on the drive in from the airport that captures the political sentiment of the moment. The billboard read: “What’s Worse than Chicago? Tariffs.” Dead right. It’s not for nothing that a city filled with people who produce things are incensed by the trade agenda coming out of DC, a city that produces nothing but bad policies and overspending. More on that below.

Just as The Common Sense marked the third anniversary of October 7, so did millions of Americans who gathered to remember the those brutally murdered and the many families whose lives were forever changed. This past Wednesday I happened to be at Adas Israel Congregation, one of DC’s largest synagogues, where Hersh Goldberg Polin and his family had deep ties. On October 7 Hersh was gravely injured when a hand grenade blew off his left arm. He was then kidnapped and held in tunnels for 328 days before he was executed by the terrorists. The rabbi spoke about Hersh’s positive, upbeat, curious, loving nature; one that was snuffed out so brutally and senselessly. Hersh’s mother Rachel Goldberg Polin has written an astonishingly moving book, When We See You Again, which I can’t recommend highly enough.

But this being a morally confused time, there were also marches celebrating Hamas and the October 7 attacks. New York City’s mayor once again showed his cards by creating an equivalence between Israel and Hamas, which I get to below. In other news this week, the Supreme Court started its 2026/27 term and heard a controversial case from Boulder, Colorado; Marco Rubio gave yet another forceful speech in Athens; the United States (US) trade deficit widened along with the budget deficit; and finally, the latest Economic Freedom of the World index was released. Let’s get to it.

Mamdani’s October 7 Libels

As a reminder, New York City is home to more Jews than any other city outside Israel. You’d think this is something the city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, would be sensitive to, especially given the fact that most Jews are Zionists and support the State of Israel. Yet on October 7, when Mamdani spoke at a vigil to remember the attacks, he used the opportunity to libel Israel, characterising it as an “apartheid” state that is committing “genocide”. These lies were not enough to placate the hateful radicals to the extreme further left of the already extreme far-left mayor, who seemed outraged that he even mentioned those murdered by Hamas.

The mayor’s lies about Israel were raised at a press conference, and Mamdani doubled down on the “genocide” nonsense. He also drew an equivalence between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The mayor said: “I believe that there must be room to mourn every single life. There must be room to mourn the lives of the more than 1 100 Israelis that Hamas killed three years ago. There must be room to mourn the 74 000 Palestinians that the Israeli government has killed since. There must be room to reckon with the ways in which so many New Yorkers’ lives have been shattered. And that to me is a part of what it means to believe in a sense of humanity. That we need not choose between which death we will mourn, and which we will ignore. That we can reckon with the fact that all is to be opposed. And what I have so appreciated about being at the vigil yesterday evening, as I had the year before, is that it was a vigil that brought together and brings together New Yorkers to read testimonies of their own family members, testimonies of others who have those killed, either on the day or in the genocide since. And ends with a shared vision for peace and for an end to the genocide and that to me is the future that we have to fight for.”

I, for one, do not believe that the good mayor wants peace. I think his past actions and statements indicate that what he really wants is the destruction of the state of Israel. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume he does want some kind of peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. That peace will never be achieved when people like Mamdani consistently lie about Israel and then draw moral equivalences between the two sides.

In case anyone has forgotten: Hamas invaded Israel and went on a bloodthirsty spree of murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping, targeting civilians. Hamas then retreated to Gaza, where its terrorists hid in tunnels while forcing civilians to live above ground and in danger. The IDF had to respond and in doing so achieved the lowest civilian-to-combatant death ratio achieved in modern urban warfare. The IDF did that even though Hamas deliberately used women and children as human shields. Not only that, but the Israeli government distributed millions of tons of aid to the enemy and even vaccinated children. These are not the actions of genocidaires.

Of course, civilians were killed in Gaza. That is the tragic nature of war. But to draw an equivalence between the deaths of innocent Israeli civilians deliberately targeted because they were Jews and the deaths of Gazans, to include thousands of Hamas terrorists, in the war they started is utterly repugnant. We have several more years of Mamdani’s rule and this, sadly, will not be the last time he libels a people and their nation.

Mamdani’s calumnies will, I’m almost certain, inspire violent nutjobs to attack more Jewish New Yorkers. And has been true for centuries, what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Mamdani is the tip of an antisemitic and anti-Western spear that seeks to destroy the West entirely. He cannot be allowed to succeed.

Boulder’s Bold Move

The city of Boulder, Colorado, is a gorgeous university town not far from the majestic Rocky Mountains. It’s also a little hotbed of leftism and so it’s not surprising that the city took two oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, to court over climate change. The city alleges that both companies knowingly contributed to climate change while misleading the public about the risks of fossil fuels.

Boulder seeks compensation for the costs of infrastructure repairs and protection against wildfires and floods, and droughts. The case found its way all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard the case this week. The hearing didn’t deal with the underlying facts, but with whether federal law allows state lawsuits to seek damages.

For starters, the idea that these two companies should be held responsible for damages to Boulder’s infrastructure is ludicrous. Any prosecutor would have to prove that emissions from these two contributed to damage from a global warming, and not say, the emissions from China, India, Brazil, or any other territory. Aside from that you’d have to prove that the changes were attributed directly to CO2 emissions, and not from natural variations in climate, which are constant and, to my understanding, dwarf any puny efforts by man to change the climate.

But the problem that Boulder faces is that there is just no limiting principle here. If it were allowed to proceed with the case, you would have a local jury essentially setting energy policy for the whole nation. Where would that end? We already have elected congresspeople and an elected president, and we expect them to set federal energy and environmental policy, not some random jury from Boulder.

What would US energy policy look like if juries all over the country started to set it? Energy is the foundation of any modern economy. The growth and prosperity we value is only possible if we ensure access to cheap and reliable energy, which is exactly what fossil fuels are. If you want to know why Europe has barely grown since 2008 while America’s economy has doubled, just look at the diverging energy policies. Europe makes its energy expensive and unreliable, while the US does the opposite. And something the good city of Boulder might be overlooking is that a clean environment is a luxury good; it’s only possible with prosperity, which is only possible with cheap and reliable energy.

So, I hope the Supreme Court Justices rule against Boulder. The alternative will be energy policy chaos.

Marco Rubio 2028?

Once the midterm elections are over in November, all eyes will be on who will succeed President Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for the 2028 presidential elections. Even though Vice-President JD Vance is the obvious choice, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a strong candidate, and he gave himself a big boost this week with a speech in Athens. As Rubio stood below the spectacular Parthenon, he reminded his European audience of the great gift to the world that is Western civilization and how we need strong partners to defend it against the barbarians that seek to tear it down.

In one notable passage Rubio said: “And now today we find ourselves at a crossroads because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either chose to act now or lose the choice to act at all. […] We chose the unapologetic pursuit of national power, to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialise our economies, to rebuild our defence, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future. We choose to reach for new frontiers in advanced manufacturing and super intelligence; in drones, weapons, and warfare; in chips, and minerals, and cyber and every other domain of human possibility; to unleash our energy, to rebuild our factories, to return our astronauts to the moon and launch a new age of exploration in space.”

This is inspiring stuff and Rubio is being praised widely, but I take issue with his statements about supply chains and reindustrialisation. I get the foreign policy objective of not wanting to be reliant on our enemies, such as China, but the Trump administration has set back efforts to improve supply chains and reindustrialise with its capricious and economically illiterate trade policy. The Trump administration, in which Rubio serves, has alienated our allies and harmed our local industries through tariffs.

If Rubio wants a stronger West that is productive, prosperous, and better able to defend itself, he should be arguing for more trade and greater cooperation between allies. Rubio can eloquently defend Western ideals, but he needs to start changing the Trump administration’s policies if he wants to translate those ideas into reality.

Which Deficit Matters?

We learned this week that the trade deficit – the difference between goods imported and exported – widened in August to the biggest deficit since March 2015, when companies were racing to import ahead of President Trump’s tariffs. US companies and consumers increased their imports of oil, gold, and semiconductors so that in August the deficit increased by 14% to $106 billion.

But here’s my question: who cares? Trade doesn’t occur between countries; it occurs between individuals. Individuals make decisions about whom to buy from based on many factors and some of them have decided that they are better off buying from individuals outside the country than inside. Those individuals value the goods they have imported more than the money in their bank accounts and with those imported goods they are able to produce more at home. That’s how economies grow and how people become more productive.

The people who are obsessed with the trade deficit forget that when we import, we send dollars out, and those dollars make their way back to the US in the form of investment. In any event, I have a personal trade deficit with my local supermarket. I buy a lot more from the supermarket than it buys from me … in fact it buys nothing from me. But that personal trade deficit leaves me better off, and it leaves the supermarket better off. So can we please stop obsessing with the trade deficit.

There is, however, another deficit we should care about. This week, we learned that the budget deficit – the gap between government spending and revenue – reached a record $2 trillion in the fiscal year ending September 30. This is the deficit that truly matters. The US has a severe spending problem, yet neither political party is willing to confront it. For now, a healthy economy allows us to sustain the debt. But a crisis – wherever it comes from – could make bond markets far less willing to finance our profligacy. Then, the deficit and our $40 trillion debt would quickly become a very serious problem.

Economic Freedom of the World

And finally … the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading free market think tank, just released its latest Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) report. As its name suggests, the EFW measures the extent to which governments around the world limit, or secure, economic freedom, as measured by the size of government, the legal system, and property rights, sound money, the freedom to trade, and regulation.

The report is always lagged by two years, so the 2026 report is based on data gathered from 2024, but it shows that overall economic freedom has declined, with Covid restrictions a likely culprit. Hong Kong remains the most economically free place on Earth, even though its overall score has declined. The rest of the top five are Switzerland, Singapore, New Zealand, and the US. I suspect that the US will fall next year as we take account of the Trump trade restrictions, to say little of federal government taking major stakes in private companies.

South Africa has fallen three spots, to 87 out of 165 jurisdictions. As this report and previous ones have shown, economic freedom is closely correlated with almost everything we value, such as human and environmental wellbeing. If South Africa’s government, or any government for that matter, cared about improving the lives of everyone, it would study the EFW and make appropriate reforms.

I live in hope.