This is CBSI and the world. I'm John Batchel. Trade, much in the news, tariffs, much in the news.

I welcome Bernic de Reggie of the Mercatus Center, an economist, who helps me understand these terms of art that are being used routinely in headlines and in lead paragraphs.

At the end of the day, we have remarks that are not entirely understandable

unless they connect to the turmoil in the markets.

I'm not sure, however.

Protectionism, I understand.

Veronique de Rieh, a very good evening to you writing most recently at Capital Matters for National Review, you've written of David

Ricardo, born 1772, died 1823, an economist, and you write of David Ricardo's comparative advantage,

the concept of comparative advantage. How does that connect to

Orrin Cass, who is quite proudly a protectionist? Good evening to you. Good evening. Well, the reason

why I wrote about Ricardo and the title of this article is called Poor Ricardo. It's because

it seemed that in the last few years, no one has talked as much about Ricardo as we have, but usually it's to actually totally distort his view.

So for instance, Oren Cass talks about the law of comparative advantage, which is this very simple idea, which is even if you're a country that produces

everything, it is still in your advantage to trade with others. So you can focus on the goods

that have the, where you have the highest advantage and buy from countries that can actually

produce that same good at lower price. And they mingle the concept all of the time.

But then I felt I had to write to write about Ricardo again because at a recent interview at the

economics club in New York, our friend Larry Cudlow was interviewing Secretary of Treasury, Scott

Besant, and they talked about the Ricardian equivalent in the context of trade, which is something that actually doesn't exist at all.

So I was thinking, oh, what's happening to this poor Ricardo, whose ideas are being overused, probably, and butchered?

I want to stay with David Ricardo then.

We'll stay with the 18th, 19th century. David Ricardo was

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