Libertarian: Joe’s Formula Stunt, Not Solution

The baby-formula shortage “is a crisis created, in significant part, by the failures of government policy aimed at protecting domestic companies from foreign competition,” argues Reason’s Eric Boehm. Biden’s solution: Airlifting formula from Europe. Yet the shortage “isn’t the result of there not being enough planes to transport baby formula from Europe,”; “it’s the result of the federal government making it nearly impossible to transport” due to Food and Drug Administration labeling requirements. And America “imposes huge tariffs on imported formula,” making us reliant on domestic production. So: “If you let markets work, there would be no need for a performative baby formula airlift orchestrated by the White House.”

Liberal: “Disinfo” Focus Is a Dodge

Sam Adler-Bell at New York magazine flags a “pernicious problem with liberals’ fixation on ‘disinformation’ ”: “It allows them to lie to themselves.” Donald Trump’s 2016 win “suggested the possibility that many millions of Americans were motivated by deep, venomous dissatisfactions with the world” liberal elites “helped create, that our cultural disagreements were profound, not superficial.” And “ ‘Disinformation’ was the liberal Establishment’s traumatic reaction,” “an answer that evaded the question altogether.” It pretends “large swaths of the country had been duped, brainwashed by nefarious forces.” The answer: give “the best minds . . . new authority to regulate the flow of ‘fake news.’ . . . The rise of Trump called not for new politics but new technocrats.” Sorry: “If faith in our institutions is to be restored,” it won’t be “by stigmatizing doubt.” “After all, faith is not a matter of fact and fiction.”

Progressive: Dems Need Economic Vision

Democrats’ eroding “support among Hispanic and even Black voters without college degrees” is “mortifying,” wails Will Marshall at The Hill. “Workers who live paycheck to paycheck don’t think the party establishment listens to them.” Witness the “fixation on canceling student debt,” which “doesn’t even register when voters are asked to name their top concerns.” Dems need “suburban moderates and independents” and “Hispanic voters (who had a 16-point margin shift toward Trump in 2020)” and “non-college whites.” To get them, “champion US economic dynamism and growth” and “make economic patriotism . . . the centerpiece of a new growth and opportunity agenda aimed squarely at working Americans.”

Foreign desk: Why Europe Hedges on Ukraine

“High-ranking EU representatives are regularly visiting Kyiv and promising President Volodymyr Zelensky immense military, economic and diplomatic aid,” notes Ralph Gert Schöllhammer at The Wall Street Journal. “These promises will be hard to keep once they collide with the cold realities of European politics.” Indeed, it’s “become obvious” that “many European states care more about ending the war than about who wins.” The continent “hedges its support for Ukraine” because the European Union “is built around Germany and France, and both” have “jealously guarded their position as” Europe’s “ultimate decision makers.” Allowing Ukraine into the union “could lead to a competing Warsaw-Kyiv axis,” with the Paris-Berlin axis “replaced by growing Eastern European influence.”

From the right: Fleeing Blue America

“America is sorting itself out by class and kind, back to blood and political pedigree,” contends Gilbert T. Sewall at Spectator World. “The demographic trend favors the so-called red states” and their “metro nodes.” “Austin, Reno, and Nashville beckon.” Big-city dwellers “white and non-white” are fleeing thanks to “fatigue with misgovernment, ill-spent government largesse and racial disorder.” They seek “uncrowded real estate” and “courts, authorities, teachers and stable neighbors whom they can trust,” not “power-juiced officials” who order “lockdowns and masks.” Sure, “many coveted jobs and glam professions will remain in the marquee coastal cities for now, but metro cores’ commercial supremacy is simply fading.” The flight “from dysfunctional America shows no signs of slowing.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board