William F. Shughart II is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, the J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice at Utah State University, past President of the Southern Economic Association, and editor of the Independent book, Taxing Choice.

President Biden apparently wants Americans to believe that the major producers and distributors of fossil fuel energy (“Big Oil”) are responsible for recent price increases at the pump and looming sticker shock on home heating bills. 

On March 31, in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, American mattress manufacturers and labor unions, claiming “dumping,” petitioned to impose prohibitive duties on mattress imports from seven countries. They are banking on precedent. In 2019, the International Trade Commission ruled against mattress imports from China—applying an unprecedented 1,731 percent duty. China had...
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Wednesday, July 29, witnessed the virtual browbeating (via video conference) of the CEOs of four of America’s top companies, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, by members of the House Judiciary Committee, most of whom never have produced anything other than intrusive statutes and convoluted regulations from which Congress often exempts itself.

Selective excise taxes may raise revenue for the public sector by targeting the consumption of things that elites disdain, but they do not save millions of lives.

Policymakers need to re-evaluate the effectiveness of controlled burning for managing future forest fires.

E15 may buy votes in Iowa but does so at a serious cost.

If ethanol truly were a good substitute for gasoline, no mandate would be necessary.

Trump’s legislation will offset the regulatory barriers but will likely incite retaliation from our trading partners.

If you wonder why prices at the gas pump have been climbing recently and are expected to continue to climb, look no further than the sharp drop in crude oil production in Venezuela, the Saudi Arabia of the Americas.

The world is still a long way from a future of zero carbon emissions, but that goal can be achieved sooner if nuclear energy plays a much larger role in generating electricity.