Category: Current Affairs
Peter Marks Forced Out at FDA
Peter Marks was key to President Trump’s greatest first-term achievement: Operation Warp Speed. In an emergency, he pushed the FDA to move faster—against every cultural and institutional incentive to go slow. He fought the system and won.
I had some hope that FDA commissioner Marty Makary would team with Marks at CBER. Makary understands that the FDA moves too slowly. He wrote in 2021:
COVID has given us a clear-eyed look at a broken Food and Drug Administration that’s mired in politics and red tape.
Americans can now see why medical advances often move at turtle speed. We need fresh leadership at the FDA to change the culture at the agency and promote scientific advancement, not hinder it.
This starts at the top. Our public health leaders have become too be accepting of the bureaucratic processes that would outrage a fresh eye. For example, last week the antiviral pill Molnupiravir was found to cut COVID hospitalizations in half and, remarkably, no one who got the drug died.
The irony is that Molnupiravir was developed a year ago. Do the math on the number of lives that could have been saved if health officials would have moved fast, allowing rolling trials with an evaluation of each infection and adverse event in real-time. Instead, we have a process that resembles a 7-part college application for each of the phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical trials.
A Makary-Marks team could have moved the FDA in a very promising direction. Unfortunately, disputes with RFK Jr proved too much. Marks was especially and deservedly outraged by the measles outbreak and the attempt to promote vitamins over vaccines:
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote in a resignation letter referring to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Thus, as of now, the FDA is moving in the wrong direction and Makary has lost an ally against RFK.
In other news, the firing of FDA staff is slowing down approvals, as I predicted it would.
Is Mexico falling into recession?
Mexico’s economy is slowing sharply and will soon fall into recession, several economists predict, as Donald Trump’s changing tariff plans cast uncertainty over the relationship with its largest trading partner.
Mexico is one of the countries most vulnerable to the US president’s drive to reshore investment and close trade deficits. The country’s economy was already fragile, with the government cutting spending due to a gaping budget deficit and investors spooked by its radical judicial reforms.
Mexico’s GDP shrank 0.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year from the previous three months, while economic activity fell 0.2 per cent in January.
The central bank cut its key interest rate by 50 basis points on Thursday, warning that the economy would show weakness in the first quarter and that trade tensions posed “significant downward risks”.
Here is more from the FT.
Canada and America in Better Times
On November 4, 1979, a mob of radical university students and supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini, surged over the wall and occupied the US Embassy in Tehran. Fifty two Americans were taken hostage but six evaded capture. Hiding out for days, the escapees managed to contact Canadian diplomat John Sheardown and Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and asked for help. The Government of Canada reports:
Taylor didn’t hesitate. The Americans would be given shelter – the question was where. Because the Canadian Chancery was right downtown, it was far too dangerous. It would be better to split up the Americans. Taylor decided Sheardown should take three of hostages to his house, while he would house the others at the official residence. They would be described to staff as tourists visiting from Canada. Taylor immediately began drafting a cable for Ottawa.
…Taylor’s telegram set off a frenzy of consultation in the Department of External Affairs….Michael Shenstone, immediately concurred that Canada had no choice but to shelter the fugitives. Under-Secretary Allan Gotlieb agreed. Given the danger the Americans were in, he noted, there was “in all conscience…no alternative but to concur” despite the risk to Canadians and Canadian property.
The Minister, Flora MacDonald, could not be immediately reached as she was involved in a television interview. However, when finally informed of the situation, she agreed that Taylor must be permitted to act…[Prime Minister Joe Clark was pulled] from Question Period in the House of Commons, she briefed him on the situation and obtained his immediate go-ahead. Soon after, a telegram was sent to Tehran – Taylor could act to save the Americans. He was told that knowledge of the situation would be on a strict “need-to-know” basis.
The CIA reports:
The exfiltration task was daunting–the six Americans had no intelligence background; planning required extensive coordination within the US and Canadian governments; and failure not only threatened the safety of the hostages but also posed considerable risk of worldwide embarrassment to the US and Canada.
…After careful consideration of numerous options, the chosen plan began to take shape. Canadian Parliament agreed to grant Canadian passports to the six Americans. The CIA team together with an experienced motion-picture consultant devised a cover story so exotic that it would not likely draw suspicions–the production of a Hollywood movie.
The team set up a dummy company, “Studio Six Productions,” with offices on the old Columbia Studio lot formerly occupied by Michael Douglas, who had just completed producing The China Syndrome. This upstart company titled its new production “Argo” after the ship that Jason and the Argonauts sailed in rescuing the Golden Fleece from the many-headed dragon holding it captive in the sacred garden–much like the situation in Iran. The script had a Middle Eastern sci-fi theme that glorified Islam. The story line was intentionally complicated and difficult to decipher. Ads proclaimed Argo to be a “cosmic conflagration” written by Teresa Harris (the alias selected for one of the six awaiting exfiltration).
President Jimmy Carter approved the rescue operation.
The American diplomats escaped and all the Canadians quickly exited before the Iranian government realized what had happened. The Canadian embassy was closed. The story of the ex-filtration is told in the excellent movie, Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck. (The movie ups the American involvement for Hollywood but is still excellent.)
The CIA reports on what happened when the Americans made it back home:
News of the escape and Canada’s role quickly broke. Americans went wild in celebrating their appreciation to Canada and its Embassy staff. The maple leaf flew in a hundred cities and towns across the US. Billboards exclaimed “Thank you Canada!” Full-page newspaper ads expressed American’s thanks to its neighbors to the north. Thirty-thousand baseball fans cheered Canada’s Ambassador to Iran and the six rescued Americans, honored guests at a game in Yankee Stadium.
I remember this time well because my father, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto, happened to be giving a talk in Boston when the news broke. He was immediately mobbed by appreciative Americans, who thanked him, clapped him on the back, and bought him drinks. My father was moved by the American response but was also somewhat bemused, considering he was also Iranian. (Though, in truth, my father was the ideal Canadian and he had his own experiences exfiltrating people from Iran—but that story remains Tabarrok classified.)
Argentina’s DOGE
Cato has a good summary of Deregulation in Argentina:
- The end of Argentina’s extensive rent controls has resulted in a tripling of the supply of rental apartments in Buenos Aires and a 30 percent drop in price.
- The new open-skies policy and the permission for small airplane owners to provide transportation services within Argentina has led to an increase in the number of airline services and routes operating within (and to and from) the country.
- Permitting Starlink and other companies to provide satellite internet services has given connectivity to large swaths of Argentina that had no such connection previously. Anecdotal evidence from a town in the remote northwestern province of Jujuy implies a 90 percent drop in the price of connectivity.
- The government repealed the “Buy Argentina” law similar to “Buy American” laws, and it repealed laws that required stores to stock their shelves according to specific rules governing which products, by which companies and which nationalities, could be displayed in which order and in which proportions.
- Over-the-counter medicines can now be sold not just by pharmacies but by other businesses as well. This has resulted in online sales and price drops.
- The elimination of an import-licensing scheme has led to a 20 percent drop in the price of clothing items and a 35 percent drop in the price of home appliances.
- The government ended the requirement that public employees purchase flights on the more expensive state airline and that other airlines cannot park their airplanes overnight at one of the main airports in Buenos Aires.
- In January, Sturzenegger announced a “revolutionary deregulation” of the export and import of food. All food that has been certified by countries with high sanitary standards can now be imported without further approval from, or registration with, the Argentine state. Food exports must now comply only with the regulations of the destination country and are unencumbered by domestic regulations.
Needless to say, America’s DOGE could learn something from Argentina:
Milei’s task of turning Argentina once again into one of the freest and most prosperous countries in the world is herculean. But deregulation plays a key role in achieving that goal, and despite the reform agenda being far from complete, Milei has already exceeded most people’s expectations. His deregulations are cutting costs, increasing economic freedom, reducing opportunities for corruption, stimulating growth, and helping to overturn a failed and corrupt political system. Because of the scope, method, and extent of its deregulations, Argentina is setting an example for an overregulated world.
China fact of the day
Buried in China’s latest government budget were some numbers that add up to an alarming trend. Tax revenue is dropping.
The decline means that China’s national government has less money to address the country’s serious economic challenges, including a housing market crash and the near bankruptcy of hundreds of local governments…
Tax revenue fell further last year than ever before…Overall tax revenue fell 3.4 percent last year.
…Fitch Ratings calculates that overall revenue for the national and local governments — including taxes and land sales — totaled 29 percent of the economy’s output as recently as 2018. But this year’s budget indicates that overall revenue will be just 21.1 percent of the economy in 2025.
Roughly half of the decline comes from plummeting revenue from land sales, a well-documented problem related to the housing-market crash, but the rest comes from weakness in tax revenue, a new problem.
That adds up to a huge sum of money. If overall revenue had kept up with the economy over the past seven years, the Chinese government would have another $1.5 trillion to spend in 2025.
China announced this month that it would allow its official target for the budget deficit to increase to 4 percent this year, after trying to keep it near 3 percent ever since the global financial crisis in 2009. But analysts say the true deficit is already much larger, because China is quietly counting a lot of long-term borrowing as though it were tax revenue.
Comparing spending only with actual revenue, without the borrowing, the Finance Ministry’s budget shows a deficit equal to almost 9 percent of the economy. In 2018, it was only 3.2 percent…
Income taxes collected from individuals were 7.5 percent below expectations last year, the Finance Ministry said in its budget.
Good thing they still are growing at five percent! Here is more from Keith Bradsher at the NYT.
Carney seeks internal free trade for Canada
Carney said removing barriers to the free movement of workers, goods and services across the country would increase the size of Canada’s economy by $250 billion…
Carney said his government would table legislation by July 1 to allow goods to travel across the country barrier-free. He said his government would also remove labour mobility restrictions in federally regulated professions and eliminate duplication by recognizing provincial assessments for major projects.
Here is the full story, which has further points of interest. It is good if Canada learns that tariffs are bad! And here is a new Carney ad with Mike Myers.
Maui is Not Abundant
City Journal: A year and a half since fires devastated the historic town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, Hawaii, only six houses have been rebuilt—six out of more than 2,000.
Why is the recovery effort taking so long? Initially, the biggest hurdles were the pace of debris removal and damage litigation. Both were overcome only last month. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleared the final lots on February 19, while the Hawaiian Supreme Court ruled that a $4 billion settlement for victims can begin to move forward.
The main challenge now is dealing with a crushing permitting regime that slows or outright bans construction. But local political dysfunction has discouraged state and local leaders from taking emergency action to cut through this red tape.
Many of the buildings are illegal to rebuild under the current zoning laws. CA at least exempted reconstruction from California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and Coastal Waters Act review.
Not the precedent I have been looking for
The Federal Communications Commission is prepared to block mergers and acquisitions involving companies that continue promoting diversity, equity and inclusion policies, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Friday.
The vanishing male writer
It’s easy enough to trace the decline of young white men in American letters—just browse The New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list. In 2012 the Times included seven white American men under the age of 43 (the cut-off for a millennial today); in 2013 there were six, in 2014 there were six.
And then the doors shut.
By 2021, there was not one white male millennial on the “Notable Fiction” list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men). There were no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s. Esquire, a magazine ostensibly geared towards male millennials, has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.
Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down. Between 2001 and 2011, six white men won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions prize for debut fiction. Since 2020, not a single white man has even been nominated (of 25 total nominations). The past decade has seen 70 finalists for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize—with again, not a single straight white American millennial man. Of 14 millennial finalists for the National Book Award during that same time period, exactly zero are white men. The Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, a launching pad for young writers, currently has zero white male fiction and poetry fellows (of 25 fiction fellows since 2020, just one was a white man). Perhaps most astonishingly, not a single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker (at least 24, and probably closer to 30, younger millennials have been published in total).
Here is more from Jacob Savage at Compact.
Thwarted arbitrage?
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has intercepted an increasing number of eggs from Mexico, where a carton of a dozen costs about $2. For comparison, the cost in many parts of California is just under $10 per dozen, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Nationally, there has been a 48% increase in eggs being detained at ports of entry this fiscal year compared with the same time last fiscal year, according to CBP. In San Diego, these “egg interception” cases have increased by a whopping 158%.
Every day, more than 200,000 cars cross the border from Mexico to the United States.
…Once confiscated, the eggs are destroyed by officials in oven-sized incinerators.
Here is the full Guardian story.
Some history of higher education
To Dr. Damrosch, who has studied academic culture at colleges, the current turmoil was vaguely reminiscent of a 1940s episode at the school now known as Iowa State University.
The school’s economics department — in a paper on economic policy for wartime food production — had proposed replacing butter with margarine, said Dr. Damrosch. The dairy industry and its supporters in the state legislature “went ballistic,” he said, pressuring the school’s president to place the department under receivership.
The move triggered an immediate backlash and mass departure of faculty members.
It might have also played a small role in the reshaping of the higher education landscape: At least six professors fled to Chicago, where they helped build one of the most renowned economics departments in the world.
Here is the full NYT piece, mostly about Columbia, via Anecdotal.
Those new service sector jobs, China market of the day
A tour guide is raking in the cash by carrying fatigued females up a mountain.
Xiao Chen, 26, who works at Mount Tai in Shandong Province, China, accompanies tourists on their trek to the peak – but many of his female clients often want to be carried up the last 1,000 steps.
He starts by holding their hand along most of the route and when they become tired, Chen carries them in a fireman’s lift, across his shoulders.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site stands at an altitude of 5,029ft.
Chen reportedly earns more than CNY 300,000 – about $42,000 USD — as a ‘climbing companion’ for his clients, aged between 25 and 40 years.
He climbs the mountain twice a day, earning around CNY 600 – $83 USD – per trip during daylight hours and $54 USD at night.
Here is more from The New York Post, via Greg Roemer. Elsewhere, from the Chinese MIE scene, the excellent Samir Varma points us to “China online shops sell ‘bank soil’ from top institutions for US$120, claims it brings wealth.”
Caleb Watney on risk and science funding
Right now, DOGE is treating efficiency as a simple cost-cutting exercise. But science isn’t a procurement process; it’s an investment portfolio. If a venture capital firm measured efficiency purely by how little money it spent, rather than by the returns it generated, it wouldn’t last long. We invest in scientific research because we want returns — in knowledge, in lifesaving drugs, in technological capability. Generating those returns sometimes requires spending money on things that don’t fit neatly into a single grant proposal.
While it’s true that indirect costs serve an important function, they can also create perverse incentives: When the government promises to cover expenses, expenses tend to go up. But instead of slashing funding indiscriminately, we should be thinking about how to get the most out of every dollar we invest in science.
That means streamlining research regulations. Universities are drowning in bureaucracy. Since 1990, there have been 270 new rules that complicate how we conduct research. Institutional Review Boards, intended to protect people from being unethically experimented on in studies, now regularly review low-risk social science surveys that pose no real ethical concerns. Researchers generate reams of paperwork in legally mandated disclosures of every foreign contract and collaboration, even for countries such as the Netherlands that present no geopolitical risk.
We must also rethink how we select scientific research to fund.
Caleb is co-CEO of the Institute for Progress, here is more from the NYT.
Public Choice Outreach Conference!
The annual Public Choice Outreach Conference is a crash course in public choice. The conference is designed for undergraduates and graduates in a wide variety of fields. It’s entirely free. Indeed scholarships are available! The conference will be held Friday May 30-Sunday June 1, 2025, near Washington, DC in Arlington, VA. Lots of great speakers. More details in the poster. Please encourage your students to apply.
The Institute for Museum and Library Services is going away
Last year the agency provided $266.7m in grants to libraries, museums and related institutions across the country and its territories. Those grants ranged widely in value and purpose, such as $343,521 to support an internship and fellowship programme at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico or $10,350 for the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho to develop new curricula for groups of visiting schoolchildren.
The Wilson Center at the Smithsonian will be gone, and:
The other agencies targeted for elimination in Trump’s executive order are the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the United States Agency for Global Media (which operates the Voice of America media network), the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency.
Here is the full story, I do not regard these as tragedies.