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Larry Kudlow: In Europe, Biden Forsook the American Founders



It looks like President Biden is the Group of Seven’s favorite member now. And no wonder. He gave up American tax sovereignty to let the Europeans impose on American companies big tax hikes that will do great damage to workers’ wages, costing jobs and undermining the economy.

Mr. Biden also gave up American energy sovereignty by reaffirming the Paris climate targets, which will decimate our fossil-fuel, America-first energy independence — thereby doing even greater damage to the economy and to jobs.

Then, in the semi-summit with President Putin, Mr. Biden gave up American classified secrets by releasing 16 critical infrastructure sectors, a list developed at the highest level of American intelligence and national security experts, essentially providing enemies like Russia, China, and Iran with a target list.

Mr. Biden made no effort to respond to Mr. Putin’s CNN-MSNBC talking points on Black Lives Matter, January 6, deteriorating race relations, even election reform. Nor did he make a counterattack on Mr. Putin’s lie that Russia has nothing to do with cyberhacking.

Our president should have publically released the Russian cyberhacking criminal groups that we know all about. He didn’t, though, and, by the way, going back to that critical industries target list — a couple things that went unmentioned is American security in space and under the waters. I’m sure the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians took note of that.

Mr. Biden lashed out at a CNN reporter with the kind of vehemence he should’ve saved for Vladimir Putin. On the grand international stage, at the highest levels of statecraft and national security, Mr. Biden consistently behaved as a weak, people-pleasing executive who preferred foreign handshakes and pats on his back rather than a staunch defense of the American economy, American security, and American values.

In all these ways it was a bad week. What a long, strange, and, let me add, counterproductive trip he had. Now he’s home just in time to help Nancy Pelosi pull together a “Select Committee on Economy Disparity and Fairness in Growth.”

Got it? The far-left Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal will be members. Connecticut left-winger Jim Himes will chair. The other Democrats are all far-left progressives.

Supposedly this will be a bipartisan committee, but if Republicans play in this socialist swamp they’d be nuts. It’s just a continuation of Europe’s socialist policies that have consistently failed down through the years.

G-7 Europeans may have filled Mr. Biden’s ears with the wonders of cradle-to-college entitlement spending without any link between work and benefits, but Mr. Biden didn’t really need any encouragement on this front.

He and his pal Chuck Schumer are now planning a $6 trillion welfarist package to run through a 51 vote reconciliation. Republicans be damned. I particularly like the charter of this Pelosi-AOC committee. It says “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power.”

Well I hate to break the news, but you can’t have a good paying job, which of course we all desire, without strong and healthy business. Businesses and jobs go together. Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels knew that, even though they didn’t particularly like it. And you can’t start a new business without investment capital.

In other words, cash. If you tax it all to death, literally with a new death tax, you’re not going to get businesses, jobs, wages, or healthy family incomes.

As we close in on our July 4 Independence Day, let’s remember that it’s no real coincidence that the same year that our Founding Fathers wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the economic rock star of the time, Adam Smith, was publishing his opus “The Wealth of Nations.”

That was all about free markets, free enterprise, and a market-based system for money, stocks, bonds, labor, or trade that was completely color blind and sex blind — free markets don’t have critical race theory and other forms of discrimination because of one’s color.

Adam Smith's universe also depended on the rule of law, applied equally to everyone regardless of race and religion, and overbearing governments cannot simply issue executive orders to tear down laws. Whether it’s racial preferences for debt relief for farmers or restaurateurs, oil and gas leasing on federal lands, ending deportations for illegal immigrants or banning state tax cuts.

That was the beauty of Adam Smith’s simple and clear-headed thinking that was copied by the American Founders to create the greatest democracy and the best free enterprise economy in the history of history.

To my way of thinking, virtually everything Mr. Biden did in this long, strange trip ran counter to what the Founders tried to teach us. Americans of all political stripes and colors have got to move our country back toward the Founders. It’s a fight worth making.

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From Mr. Kudlow’s Fox News broadcast.

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Posted: June 18, 2021 Friday 05:00 PM