Stock

Colleen Hroncich

As she went through the twists and turns of life, Lauren Novak had no idea she was being prepared to start and lead Springbrook Christian Academy, a hybrid program in rural Pennsylvania. After a career in public education, Lauren chose to stay home with her children. She thought about homeschooling but wasn’t sure it was the right path for her family. But when her children—then in kindergarten and second grade—were sent home during COVID-19, she realized they all liked being home and learning together. So she jumped right in and began homeschooling that fall.

While homeschooling, Lauren ran a once-a-week co-op at her church with 150 children. Seeing the success of that program, her pastor and church elders asked her to help them start a school. “They wanted an option for parents who didn’t want their kids in public schools,” Lauren says. “They thought, it’s really hard to tell parents it might be a good idea to not have them in public school when you don’t have an option for them.”

The church leaders didn’t have a specific plan for the school outside of the name, so Lauren and the pastor met regularly to discuss their thoughts. “We started out pursuing a more school-type path, but my passion for homeschooling was always there in the background, pulling me one way. And I felt like our pastor’s passion for a school was kind of pulling me the other way, and we were kind of going back and forth. We started looking into what other people were doing and found the hybrid homeschool being like the best of both worlds—meeting the needs of so much of what we both wanted,” Lauren recalls.

They put out a survey to the local community and found the things that Lauren wanted to do were not necessarily what the community wanted. “I was looking for more of a two-day program where parents had this partnership with us, but they had a little more responsibility at home,” she explains. “The majority of our community members wanted the teaching to be done at Springbrook. They wanted all of the content to be covered and then when their kids were home, they wanted to handle the review with them, any assignments, and enrichment kind of things.”

They settled on a three-day-per-week schedule, with in-person classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, leaving four-day weekends for family time. Springbrook is currently in its pilot year, which is a chance to get up and running while making sure parents understand how the hybrid program works. 

“This is still homeschooling. You are homeschool parents. But we are in a partnership with you,” she emphasizes. There is a lot of communication between teachers and parents, and Lauren says it’s been amazing to see the progress the kids are already making. They had reading specialists come at the beginning of the year to do some testing, and the mid-year results have surpassed expectations.

There are 53 students in grades K‑12 at Springbrook. They have multi-age classrooms broken into K‑1, 2–3, 4–6, 7–8, and 9–12. The teachers have a mix of experience as homeschoolers and classroom teachers, which is a good fit for the hybrid program.

The school day starts with homeroom, then Bible, and then math. The goal of having math at a set time each day is to allow students to move to different rooms depending on where they are in math. Lauren says math has been the biggest challenge with the multi-age classroom, and they’re looking into various options for next year to help get students the right level of support. There are also set electives each day, with gym on Tuesdays, art on Wednesdays, and music on Thursdays. Teachers have a lot of flexibility in their days for the other classes.

While the academic component is very important, Lauren says the main feedback she receives is that the kids are happy. Most of the families are ones who wouldn’t have considered homeschooling on their own, but they wanted a different educational option. She says the kids who were previously in public school have shared the differences since coming to Springbrook, such as less stress, no bullying, and having more time with their families. “They just feel at peace and happy, and I feel like that’s really a win,” says Lauren.

Her children are also benefitting from Springbrook. “They are loving it. I think that mix of homeschooling and school has been really wonderful for our family,” Lauren explains. “It’s not a hustle and bustle every day to get out of the house. There’s time to relax. But we’re still getting to do school together. I don’t feel disconnected from their education. They have to show they’re doing their work, so I’m seeing what they’re learning.”

The support of the church leadership continues to be a blessing. “We went with a Kingdom model of education where the parents and the school and the church are all in partnership together. And in order to do that, we required an elder to be on our board so that we can make sure that there is that partnership,” Lauren says. “But we also want to partner with all of our local churches. We will allow them to be involved in any way they can as well.”

Like many school founders, Lauren acknowledges that it’s been a lot of work, but she says the rewards outweigh the hard parts. “There’s just been so much overwhelming support. I think when you start something like this, you will find that you have the support. You don’t even realize you have it, but when these families see that this is what they’re looking for, they will be huge supporters,” she says. Even people without children who aren’t personally invested have been supportive. “They really want to see these options. And when you have a passion for it and you share that passion with them, they just get on board, and they love it, and they want to support it in so many ways. So yeah, it is a lot of work, but you’ll see the rewards.”

Thomas A. Berry

The Supreme Court has heard two cases in the last week that implicate weighty First Amendment questions. On Friday, the justices heard arguments in TikTok v. Garland, a challenge to a law that could force TikTok to shut down in just three days. And yesterday, the Court considered Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a lawsuit challenging a Texas law that mandates strict “age-gates” (such as ID scans) for websites with adult content.

A running theme in both arguments was the application of First Amendment “standards of scrutiny.” These three standards, also known as the “tiers” of scrutiny, are “rational basis,” “intermediate scrutiny,” and “strict scrutiny.” As the terms suggest, rational basis is the laxest form of judicial review (by far), and strict scrutiny is the most searching form. Which form of scrutiny to apply in a particular case is determined by various legal doctrines that attempt to categorize different types of speech restrictions. For example, a law that treats some speech less favorably based on the content of that speech must be subjected to strict scrutiny.

The justices’ questions, especially in the Texas age-gating case, suggest that they are grappling with the relative risks and merits of two approaches to judging First Amendment challenges. Should the outcome of most cases be determined by the choice of which scrutiny to apply, or should the outcome be determined by the application of scrutiny to the facts of that particular case?

It’s safe to say that the outcomes of First Amendment cases are frequently (but not always) determined by the choice of which tier to apply. Strict scrutiny is so difficult for the government to overcome that law professor Gerald Gunther famously called it “strict in theory, fatal in fact.” And on the opposite end of the spectrum, rational basis is so deferential that it’s nearly impossible for the government to lose.

But the DC Circuit bucked this trend in its opinion in the TikTok case, assuming (without deciding) that strict scrutiny applied but holding that the law at issue satisfied strict scrutiny. However, the DC Circuit’s version of strict scrutiny didn’t seem to be as strict as usual, given the extent to which the court gave the government the benefit of the doubt in its analysis of the facts. Cato’s brief on appeal to the Supreme Court riffed on Gunther’s phrase, calling the DC Circuit’s version of strict scrutiny “strict in theory but friendly in fact.”

During the TikTok argument last Friday, several justices explored legal theories by which the law at issue might be subject to something less than strict scrutiny. For justices inclined to uphold the law, such an approach might seem appealing as a means to do so without “watering down” the very high bar of strict scrutiny, as the DC Circuit arguably appeared to do. 

And during the Free Speech Coalition argument yesterday, this dilemma was clearly still on the justices’ minds. Indeed, it’s possible that some of the questions were prompted not just by their consideration of the Texas law at issue in Free Speech Coalition but also by lingering questions in the TikTok case.

Justice Elena Kagan elegantly summarized the two options, noting that “there are possible spill-over dangers either way.” First, there is “the spill-over danger of you relax strict scrutiny in one place, and all of a sudden, strict scrutiny gets relaxed in other places.” Alternatively, “you treat a clearly content-based law as not requiring strict scrutiny, and all of a sudden, you start seeing more content-based restrictions that don’t have to satisfy strict scrutiny.” So, if courts are to leave the door open to upholding some laws that place barriers on access to adult content, “Does it happen by notching down the strict scrutiny standard, or does it happen by saying, for some reason … this set of restrictions comes outside it?”

Justice Kagan wasn’t the only justice with strict scrutiny on the mind. When a US government attorney argued that strict scrutiny should apply but that some state laws that age-gate adult content online could potentially satisfy strict scrutiny, Justice Clarence Thomas asked, “So do you think that it’s appropriate in this context of protecting children to compromise the strict scrutiny standard?” And Justice Amy Coney Barrett remarked that she “share[d] some of Justice Thomas’s discomfort with watering down strict scrutiny.” Echoing the conventional wisdom that strict scrutiny is nearly always insurmountable for the government, Barrett observed that even though the Texas law’s challengers had “left open the door to the possibility of [an age-gating law] satisfying strict scrutiny … you know, come on, fatal, in fact.”

The lawyer representing Texas and defending the age-gating law similarly invoked the “fatal in fact” truism as a reason for the Court not to impose strict scrutiny, remarking, “There’s a whole bunch of law on strict scrutiny, and a whole bunch of different judges across this country are going to apply it. There’s a bunch of cases that say fatal in fact. And we’re going to have a lot of [preliminary injunctions] and a lot of emergency litigation. That’s a problem.”

Which is more dangerous for the future of free speech: adjusting legal doctrines so that fewer laws are subject to strict scrutiny or adjusting strict scrutiny itself so that more laws can survive it? In my view, the more significant risks would come from holding laws like those at issue in TikTok and Free Speech Coalition to not even trigger strict scrutiny. The legal doctrines that determine which scrutiny to apply are intentionally general and wide-ranging so that courts can predictably adapt them to novel cases. Creatively interpreting these doctrines to exempt one law from strict scrutiny could cause unintended side effects that eventually result in a wide range of other laws escaping strict scrutiny review. (As I note today on the Cato Daily Podcast, a decision holding that TikTok has no right to collaborate with a foreign company could be used to justify a ban on American film companies collaborating with foreign effects studios.)

I think Justice Kagan had it right when she responded that Texas’s fears would be allayed if the Supreme Court “wrote the kind of opinion … [that] would say: This is the kind of strict scrutiny we’re talking about. This is what will pass it. You know, take us seriously.” Strict scrutiny recognizes that the Constitution is not a suicide pact: Even if a right has been violated, the government is still given the opportunity to argue that it had no other choice. On rare occasions, that will be true, and the government action will survive. And even if a court erroneously upholds a law under strict scrutiny, that is less likely to have wide-ranging precedential harm, because the application of strict scrutiny in any particular case is bound up in the particular facts of that case and less transferable to other cases.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, neither of the laws that the Supreme Court considered in the past week are constitutional. But if the Court wants to write opinions that set a road map for how other laws furthering similar goals might survive constitutional review, it should do so while reaffirming that strict scrutiny applies to such laws. Strict scrutiny acknowledges that a significant infringement of speech rights has occurred, and courts should not tie themselves in intellectual knots to argue away that infringement. It would be ironic if the misplaced fear that strict scrutiny is always “fatal in fact” led the Court to shy away from applying it when it is warranted.

Neal McCluskey

Last year at about this time, I reported something alarming: 2023 had set a record for values and identity-based conflicts—culture war—in public schools, according to Cato’s Public Schooling Battle Map. Today, I report good news: 2024 saw a 42 percent reduction in conflicts.

Are we entering an era of relative peace after several years of intense conflict?

Figure 1 shows the trend since 2013: fairly steady annual increases until 2019 and 2020, which saw dips, and then big increases in 2021, 2022, and 2023. The 2024 totals are well below those of 2021, 2022, and 2023. (Note that 2019 likely reflects “normal” reductions in conflicts, but 2020 is likely abbreviated because the COVID-19 pandemic struck in full force in March, at which point the overwhelming education discussion was not about how to teach history or what books were in libraries but simply how to reopen schools.)

Examining 2024 conflicts by month suggests that something might have occurred during the year that drastically curtailed conflict. As seen in Figure 2, January saw 67 battles. Had that happened every month, we would have seen roughly 800 battles—by far a record. February was lower at 47 but also constituted a record pace. The big drop seemed to come with the summer months, as one might expect with schools off, but it largely continued to remain lower thereafter.

It is not clear what happened, but in October, as the conflict slowdown started to become noticeable, I suggested several possible causes, including that the end of the pandemic cooled overall anger intensified by school district COVID-19 policies; the end of online learning kept parents from seeing objectionable things their kids were learning; there was not much contested ground left; and plain fatigue.

I also conjectured that the presidential election might have crowded out district and state education battles, with activists directing their energies to the election. This seems especially possible if many activists on the right who were fighting against racial and gender content in schools moved their attention to electing Donald Trump, who promised to end many of the things in education they did not like. Also, the education culture war turned more to the federal level when the Biden administration issued new Title IX regulations, to which many conservatives objected, though that is partially reflected in the Battle Map numbers when people in states or districts fought over whether to comply with the new rules.

The monthly data support the election explanation, though they do not rule others out. It appears that the culture war carried on at roughly the 2024 pace through the end of the 2023–24 school year—May was on a pace for almost 400 yearly battles—but there was relative peace thereafter.

To give a better sense for what people were fighting about in 2024, the top three categories were the same as in 2023: reading material, curricula, and gender equity.

We recorded 77 reading material battles, pinpointed in the Public Schooling Battle Map screen capture below. These are typically challenges to books in school libraries, reading lists, and assignments.

Next, we saw 76 curriculum conflicts. These were mainly about how to teach about such controversial matters as ethnicity and sex.

Finally, there were 75 gender identity disputes. These were typically about policies concerning who can access bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams, as well as policies concerning what pronouns transgender students go by in school.

Several caveats are in order when using Battle Map data. First, year-to-year trends should be interpreted cautiously as our methods of finding media reports of battles have changed over the years, and we did not start the map with the purpose of enabling rigorous annual comparisons. For comparing 2024 to 2023, however, the methods did not change, and over the years, our methods have likely improved, catching more conflicts. That significantly bolsters the likelihood that we captured an actual conflict drop between 2023 and 2024. It is also possible that the media have not reported on conflicts at the same rate from year to year, in which case, our data might reflect changes in the attention of reporters, not true fluctuations in battles. Finally, numbers for past years will likely increase as we discover more battles that began in those years.

The primary purpose of the map is to illustrate that the culture war is inherent to public schooling, which requires all people, with diverse values, to pay for a single system of government schools and to battle politically to determine whose values are taught. Ebbs and flows do not change that basic reality.

Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett

Imagine a future where the average American earns $15,000 more each year because Congress reduced federal spending and national debt. Too often, spending cuts are painted as a necessary evil—painful austerity measures that slow the economy. This narrative couldn’t be further from the truth. Economic research shows that stabilizing government debt by cutting spending can unleash economic growth.

Today, the federal government’s public debt is a staggering $28.8 trillion—equivalent to the nation’s annual economic output—and is projected to skyrocket to 166 percent of GDP by 2054 under optimistic assumptions. This ballooning debt is driven primarily by the growth of interest costs and just a few entitlement programs, including Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. High debt levels are already slowing economic growth, driving up inflation, and pushing interest rates higher. This makes it harder for families and businesses to borrow and invest.

Take the crowding-out effect. When the federal government borrows heavily, it competes with the private sector for limited financial resources, driving up interest rates. Between January 2022 and January 2025, for example, the prime bank loan rate doubled from 3.25 percent to 7.5 percent. As loans become more expensive, startups delay expansions, businesses scale back hiring, and innovation suffers. As one business owner noted in 2024, “We are a new business and our loans closed when the rates were at an all-time high … so that has increased our monthly expenses dramatically.”

The result is a less productive economy, lower wages, and reduced competitiveness. Cutting spending reduces this crowding-out effect by freeing up resources for private-sector investment, creating jobs, and boosting incomes.

Economic research reinforces the idea that spending cuts can enhance growth. A 2020 study by researchers at the Hoover Institution found that stabilizing and reducing the debt by restraining the growth in federal spending could boost short-run annual GDP growth by 10 percent and long-run growth by 7 percent. More specifically, Cogan, Hail, and Taylor find that an economic plan that curbs entitlement spending without raising taxes can deliver a powerful one-two punch for growth. A credible commitment to reducing future debt and taxes results in higher long-term disposable income for individuals, motivating more consumer spending today. This surge in consumption more than offsets the initial reduction in entitlement benefits, demonstrating that fiscal discipline can create a win-win for the economy.

Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that stabilizing the debt could raise projected income per person by $513 in 2030 compared to baseline projections. The gain in annual income grows significantly over time, and by 2054, the average American’s income could be $5,500 higher (see the graph below). If debt grows faster than expected under CBO’s baseline—meaning the fiscal outlook worsens—the economic benefits of stabilizing the debt become more pronounced. Under one high debt scenario, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the income gain from debt stabilization would increase to $14,500 per person by 2054.

Spending reductions also shield Americans from higher taxes. In the current fiscal environment, spending significantly outpaces revenues—a gap that will eventually necessitate tax increases. By cutting spending today, lawmakers can prevent harmful future tax hikes and lock in low tax rates, effectively a tax cut compared to the current trajectory. As Cato’s Adam Michel puts it:

Fiscal discipline through spending cuts could act like supply-side tax reform and turbocharge other pro-growth tax cuts and deregulation.

Crucial to this idea is credibly signaling that Congress will commit to spending cuts. The most recent bond market selloff highlights growing investor concerns over America’s fiscal and monetary trajectory. Rising bond yields, in large part, reflect doubts about the government’s ability to manage its long-term debt in the face of widening deficits and repeated budgetary mismanagement. By demonstrating fiscal discipline, Congress can restore market confidence and reduce the premiums bondholders demand for elevated risk, thereby bringing down interest rates and spurring investment.

Voter frustration with inflation underscores the importance of Republicans taking spending cuts seriously. Americans know that excessive government spending over the pandemic was a key driver of inflation, and they voted Democrats out of office. This same voter backlash to spending-driven inflation could occur again come mid-term elections in 2026 should reckless deficit spending continue unabated.

With Republicans crafting a reconciliation bill (or multiple) addressing tax cuts, border security, and the debt ceiling, they have a unique opportunity to rein in inflation, shrink the federal bureaucracy, and reduce government spending, especially on health care and other entitlements. Pairing tax reform with significant spending cuts is not only fiscally responsible but critical to a pro-growth agenda.

Some critics of spending reform may argue that cuts disproportionately harm the less fortunate. Ending billions in corporate welfare (such as farm and energy subsidies) and reducing student loan subsidies, for example, would cut government aid to the rich, hardly a war on the poor. Better targeting programs aimed at the poor also has upsides. Rolling back Medicaid benefits for able-bodied adults, for example, could boost labor force participation, increasing individual earnings while reducing government spending.

These critics also ignore the costs of inaction. Fiscally induced inflation is a hidden, regressive tax that disproportionately hurts low-income households who spend a larger proportion of their income on price-sensitive necessities like food, housing, and energy. The resulting economic effects of excessive government borrowing will end up harming the poor more than the rich.

Others have suggested that even minor cuts to defense pose a risk to national security. There is no shortage of wasteful and unnecessary military spending that can be eliminated without worsening America’s security.

Spending cuts aren’t a burden—they’re a path to prosperity. By prioritizing fiscal discipline, Congress can boost growth, restore market confidence, and secure a brighter economic future for all Americans.

David J. Bier

This is Part 4 of the origins of the border crisis. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

What Caused the Crisis

Four factors primarily caused the border crisis:

the unprecedented difference in labor demand between the US and the developing world;
the unparalleled access to information about how to travel illegally to the US;
enforcement policies—namely Title 42—that created perverse incentives to repeatedly cross illegally; and
perverse legal migration policies that caused people to cross illegally rather than legally.

Explanation 1: Labor demand

The number of job openings reached nearly two per unemployed person in the United States. In absolute terms, there were twelve million open jobs in 2022. Both numbers were the highest recorded by the government since the job openings survey began in 2001. There were more open jobs each month from February 2021 to August 2024 than in any month before February 2021. As I’ve pointed out, the relationship is much more pronounced for migration from Central America than from Mexico in large part because so many Mexicans can cross legally.

The rise and fall of the high labor demand economy tracks the rise and eventual fall in Border Patrol arrests. US jobs fund migration, even by asylum seekers, because immigrants can borrow against their future earnings to pay for smuggling fees and other costs. But more than the unprecedented increase in jobs inside the United States, the relative difference between immigrants’ home countries and the United States mattered more. While other countries lagged, the US labor market took off in 2021. As one Mexican border crosser told the Wall Street Journal in 2021, “The economy is going to [react] very quickly in the United States. They are already reopening.”

Explanation 2: Access to migration information

The second critical component of the Biden border crisis was how quickly information on how to migrate illegally was communicated. Jobs provided the funding for people to immigrate, but the Internet and social media provided a detailed how-to guide. From 2018 to 2021, the share of northern Central Americans with Internet access more than doubled. For Nicaraguans, the increase was even more considerable. Colombia and Ecuador both saw very significant increases in Internet access. No reliable data are available for Venezuela and several other countries.

Social media, in particular, connected immigrants with smugglers and other information. In 2021, Mexican officials found that smugglers were “communicating via social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube,” and that they use these sites to “update migrants on impending checkpoints, when freight trains they can jump on pass, where to stay and how to navigate immigration laws.” 

By 2022, 70 percent of immigrants in Mexico were getting information about where to go from social media. TikTok and other apps also allowed immigrants to explain how to migrate without smugglers, freeing more immigrants to take advantage of US labor market opportunities. 

Explanation 3: Perverse enforcement policies:

Following the advice of his critics, Biden used Title 42 to restrict asylum during his first year and a half. He then discovered that it was not working. It created more crossings as people repeatedly tried to enter illegally. Biden then tried to end Title 42 in 2022, but Republican states sued and prevented Biden from doing so for another year when it finally ended in May 2023. As the graph shows, not only did Title 42 fail to deter crossers, but it also resulted in more arrests of repeat crossers as people tried over and over to evade Border Patrol. About half of all the people arrested under Title 42 were previously arrested under Title 42. This compared to a 7 percent recidivism rate in 2019. Single adults from Mexico and north Central America were the vast majority of those expelled under Title 42, and their arrests increased rapidly during the Title 42 regime.

For some crossers, being returned quickly to Mexico was an incentive to come rather than a drawback. Before the Title 42 regime, there was a high probability of criminal prosecution and lengthy detention—between one-third and a half of Mexican and northern Central American single adults were prosecuted. After Title 42, that threat disappeared. Instead, they were returned to the other side of the border where they could immediately try again, leading to repeated arrests of the same individuals. 

The fact that evasions spiked so high further proves that releases were not the primary cause of the crisis. People were determined to come regardless. Once Biden ended Title 42, evasions fell by over 70 percent. In other words, doing the opposite of what Biden’s critics wanted helped secure the border (as I predicted).

Besides Title 42, Biden made another enforcement mistake. The biggest problem for deportations came from Venezuelans and other immigrants who could not be expelled to Mexico and who were logistically difficult or impossible to deport to their home countries. In response, Biden convinced Mexico to ban visa-free legal entries into Mexico for Venezuelans in January 2022, which had previously allowed Venezuelans who could afford to buy plane tickets to Mexico to travel to the US-Mexico border. Biden also convinced Belize and Costa Rica to ban Venezuelans as well, cutting off alternative flights for them.

This “closed border” policy initially reduced arrivals, but the Venezuelan ban backfired. As I predicted would happen, tens of thousands of Venezuelans who previously would have bought plane tickets instead paid smugglers to bring them through the Darien Gap, the jungle land bridge connecting Colombia and Panama. Ultimately, more Venezuelans started arriving every month—including destitute people who otherwise would not have been able to travel by plane.

As a result of the “wealthy” Venezuelan investments in the Darien Gap, travel time through the jungle fell from more than a week to about three days. More importantly, the infusion of resources dramatically lowered the cost of crossing from South to North America for everyone, including destitute people from other countries, which caused total migration from outside North America to reach an even higher level than before. The Venezuelans paved the way for many other nationalities to enter the Darien Gap.

Explanation 4: Perverse legal migration policies

Many immigrants in Mexico believed that President Biden would reopen asylum processing at legal crossing points with Mexico in 2021. Biden had said that “Remain in Mexico” would be phased out. Hence, immigrants in Mexico believed they would be allowed to enter legally as many were allowed to enter before the pandemic and “Remain in Mexico.” This meant they did not cross illegally as soon as Biden was inaugurated.

Instead, the inflection point occurred one month into his presidency when Customs and Border Protection announced that the only people who would be allowed to enter legally were those who had already crossed into the United States and were officially enrolled in the formal “Remain in Mexico” program known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)—not the people who had been waiting to enter legally or people returned under Title 42. On February 19, the Biden administration allowed the first group to enter, and that day, crowds of people showed up hoping to be let in legally.

“The news said they were going to reopen,” one Salvadoran mother who had waited for nearly two years with her family told the Wall Street Journal on February 19. But US officials made clear for the first time that no one new was getting in legally. “Physical presence at the U.S. border has not and will not be a means for gaining access to [lawful entry],” a DHS statement read. “The border remains closed.” This set off panic among those waiting in Mexico. “We can’t be here anymore,” one Honduran mother who was blocked from entering told the Los Angeles Times on February 19.

These scenes happened all across the border from California to Texas. The New York Times followed one family between ports of entry in Texas as they requested to enter legally. Then they asked Mexican authorities about being placed on a list to enter but were again turned away. One Honduran woman told the Washington Post that she thought every day about jumping into the Rio Grande River to cross and be with her children again, saying she did not care if she died. A Honduran father said, “I don’t want my children to be here in the cold, for people to treat them like trash, but we didn’t have a choice.” With no way to enter legally, most families ultimately gave up and crossed illegally.

Haitians and Cubans: The story is more dramatic for various groups that historically always entered legally—most notably, Haitians and Cubans. Cubans started this trend because they were released under the “wet foot, dry foot” policy. Haitians followed the same smuggling path from the Caribbean and were released under an Obama-era policy that prohibited deportations to Haiti after the 2010 Earthquake. President Obama eliminated “wet foot, dry foot” in January 2017, but most Cubans still sought to enter legally and, although forced to wait and subject to detention, nearly all continued to enter legally until Remain in Mexico effectively ended that option. During the pandemic, Title 42 ended any option but illegal entry.

The result of this closed borders policy was that when the migration surge started in 2021, Cubans and Haitians entered illegally rather than legally as they had in the past. The most infamous immigration moment during Biden’s presidency occurred in September 2021 when thousands of Haitians crossed illegally around a closed port of entry in Del Rio, Texas. After initially trying and failing to expel them all on flights to Haiti, CBP reversed course and started letting Haitians enter legally through ports of entry in the summer of 2021. This effectively ended Haitian illegal immigration.

Here’s another critical factor that was outside of Biden’s control: Nicaragua opened up visa-free travel with Cuba in November 2021. Very quickly, Cuban migration to the United States surged, as Cubans were freed to travel to the North American mainland for the first time in decades and seized the opportunity. Biden sanctioned Nicaraguan officials to no avail. But in January 2023, Biden announced that asylum seekers could use a cell phone app called CBP One to apply to enter legally. 

Simultaneously, it created a humanitarian parole sponsorship program for legal entries directly from Cuba and three other countries, which granted Cubans two-year temporary statuses. These moves effectively eliminated illegal immigration by Cubans again—despite much larger flows than before.

Mexican families also traditionally always entered legally until the Trump administration banned them. Under Biden, the share of Mexican families entering legally has partially recovered but has fluctuated wildly based on how easy it was for them to access ports of entry. Overall, Biden has increased the share entering legally since he came into office but has not fully restored the pre-Trump procedures, leading many families to enter illegally.

Biden has also expanded legal options for other nationalities. In April 2022, Biden created a parole sponsorship process for Ukrainians. In October 2022, Biden created one for Venezuelans, and in January 2023 this program was expanded to Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. In combination with the CBP One interview appointment app, the overall share of immigrants who entered illegally began to fall in 2023 and plummeted down in 2024. 

Biden’s partial reopening of legal migration has been successful. Still, the fact that he limited sponsorships to just four countries and established caps of 30,000 per month on parole sponsorship and 1,450 per day on CBP One appointments at the southwest ports of entry meant that illegal immigration has continued but at a lower level than otherwise.

Conclusion

The combination of fewer job openings and more legal opportunities to come has ended the border crisis. Immigration policy outside of the United States also mattered, but less so. For instance, Ecuador’s rescinding of its visa-free entry policy for the Chinese certainly contributed to the decline in Chinese migration. Mexico has managed to create serious bottlenecks for people crossing through its territory trying to reach the United States. But it is not possible to attribute most of the decline to Mexican enforcement as almost all of the increase in Mexican enforcement occurred before the decline in arrivals to the US border.

Some claim that the legal entry programs have only relabeled illegal crossings rather than substantively changed them. That is not true. Nearly all of the border crisis’s problems occurred because people crossed illegally. Legal entry allows people to plan their travel, employment, and housing. It opens the opportunity to work legally sooner and permits them to apply for permanent legal statuses—through asylum, family, or employer sponsorship. It allows for more careful and thorough vetting and frees Border Patrol agents to focus on stopping criminals. Legal entry prevents injuries during crossings that kill and maim people while causing problems for border hospitals. It prevents people from being involved in car chases and other encounters with law enforcement. Ultimately, it saves taxpayers’ money.

However, temporary parole statuses are discretionary and can be revoked by the next president. They do not provide a permanent fix to the problem. The best solution to address illegal immigration is through legal immigration pathways that provide individuals with the opportunity to stay indefinitely. Biden has made a few important reforms but has not ended illegal immigration. 

The problem persists because he failed to act more boldly to create other legal pathways and because Congress has refused to reform the legal immigration system, keeping an archaic system crafted 100 years ago. America can do better. We can achieve both legality and order at the border. The Biden administration showed proof of concept. Now’s the time to finish the job. 

David J. Bier

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

Would Trump Have Stopped the Crisis?

President Joe Biden’s inability to remove everyone Border Patrol arrested was the result of logistical obstacles to removals, not a policy against removals. The logistical obstacles related primarily to non-Mexican families and children that Mexico would not accept unless they had shelter space for them and immigrants from outside Mexico and northern Central America. 

Trump might say that he would have handled the logistical problems with families, children, and immigrants from distant countries better than Biden. Still, no administration has removed a majority of families and children for an entire fiscal year for as far back as we have records. As of December 2021, the government had still failed to remove most of the families and children who arrived in 2013 and every year after. It is not that they were not removed in that year. They were never removed. In 2021, Biden was still removing a much higher percentage of families and children than Trump in 2019, yet the border crisis continued anyway.

Again, the difficulties with removals of non-Mexicans and non-Central Americans were not unique to Biden. Every administration struggled to promptly remove a majority of non-Mexican, non-northern Central American border crossers, even when the flows were much lower than under Biden.

Biden wasn’t just dealing with the highest Border Patrol arrests ever. He was dealing with the most geographically diverse flows ever. Obviously, Border Patrol could not prepare for this situation as it had never occurred before. There were more of these immigrants arrested each year in 2021, 2022, and 2023 than were ever arrested in Border Patrol’s history. Nonetheless, Biden was still removing a higher number than in 2019. He was even removing a higher percentage of these crossers in 2021 when the crisis began than in 2019.

Biden’s actions reduced the time it took to process an asylum seeker for removal through the fear screening process by more than 85 percent, leading to the most removal orders ever in immigration courts. Biden substantially increased the United States’ removal capacity. His administration ended up removing nearly 3.3 million people arrested by Border Patrol compared with 1.2 million for Trump.

More remarkably, Biden removed a nearly identical percentage as Trump in 2021—at the start of the crisis—despite nearly as many people arriving in that year as all of Trump’s four years combined. Even looking at all four years of Biden, the share of individuals removed was not radically different from Trump’s. The removal rate does not explain the difference in the numbers arriving.

Biden’s Election Did Not Cause the Crisis

Illegal immigration ultimately more than tripled under Biden from the 2020 level. But contrary to the myth, illegal immigration was already increasing under Trump, not dissipating as many people erroneously believe. Biden’s election and election statements are often blamed for the border crisis. Some commentators pin even the border situation at the end of 2020 on Biden’s election, theorizing that immigrants were anticipating more favorable conditions under Biden. However, the FOIA data help refute this narrative. Biden’s election did not cause any deviation in the trend.

Biden did not cause the border crisis. The border crisis started before Biden came into office or was even elected and it ended before he left office. The graph below shows the number of Border Patrol arrests for each December back to 1999. Trump left office with the most arrests in twenty-one years. Arrests under Trump’s watch had already increased 64 percent over the level in December 2016. The crisis was coming whether Trump was reelected or not.

Many people believe that the border crisis only started subsiding when Biden signed his asylum ban executive order in June 2024 and that this proves Biden’s inaction on immigration before this point caused the crisis. But Biden’s border order only accelerated a preexisting decline, and signing it earlier would have made no difference:

From December 2023 to May 2024—before Biden’s order—Border Patrol arrests had already fallen 53 percent (see Figure). Over the following five months, from May to September 2024, arrests fell another 54 percent. The border crisis was already dissipating when Biden signed his executive order.
Biden already tried to enforce an absolute asylum ban under Title 42 from 2021 to May 2023. It didn’t work because arrivals overwhelmed his capacity to enforce the ban. Biden wouldn’t have obtained different results had he signed this executive order in 2021; it would have just duplicated what already existed.
Finally, the executive order did not radically change enforcement conditions at the southwest border. The purpose of the order was to enable Border Patrol to increase its removal capacity and deport more people. This did not happen. Total arrivals fell, but not thanks to any increase in the government’s ability to remove people. The graph below shows that border removal capacity has been effectively fixed at around 30,000 since the end of Title 42. This means the marginal border crosser is still being released, but migration is falling for other reasons.

Even looking at the percentage of border crossers removed, Border Patrol removed a higher percentage of crossers in 2021, 2022, and parts of 2023 than it has since Biden’s executive order. Biden’s order achieved a less successful result, with many fewer crossers in 2024, and did not end the crisis.

Taking a step back, Biden never had asylum rules as unrestricted as during Trump’s presidency before 2020. If asylum had been the most important factor, illegal immigration should have been lower throughout Biden’s term than during Trump’s.

Read Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 4: What caused the border crisis?

David J. Bier

Read Part 1 of this series: Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary.

Biden Did Not Cut Enforcement

The FOIA data give a precise picture of migration and Biden’s actions when he first arrived in office. The central argument of those who blame Biden for the surge in migration is that Biden cut enforcement, which then caused a later rise in arrests. Biden did cancel some of Trump’s policies, but he accomplished more removals using different authorities. As Biden said in December 2020—before he entered office—he did not want to rescind Trump’s Title 42 expulsion policy because “the last thing we need is … two million at the border.”

Biden did not end Title 42, which allowed for the expulsions of immigrants even if they were requesting asylum. Daily expulsions at the border grew from inauguration day onward, eventually doubling even before the end of April 2021. Biden did terminate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which had returned some migrants to Mexico to await their asylum hearings in the US. 

However, that is a change in enforcement procedure, not enforcement outcome. By April 2021, Biden was already returning over 140 times as many immigrants per day to Mexico under Title 42 as were being returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico in early January 2021. Precisely zero Central Americans were returned under Remain in Mexico in January 2021, and their numbers grew the fastest in 2021.

Taking a broader perspective, the level of border enforcement achieved under Biden was unmatched by any month under Trump—including 2019, when Remain in Mexico was in effect. At no point was Remain in Mexico a majority of forced departures from the border. It was a relatively small program compared to Title 42. The whole purpose of the immigration enforcement apparatus is removals, and whatever else he did, Biden significantly increased the number of recent border crossers forced out. 

Regardless, Biden later reinstated Remain in Mexico—at a level four times higher than the January 2021 level and negotiated the acceptance of more nationalities than Trump did—and illegal immigration did not fall during this period. Biden’s administration ultimately canceled Remain in Mexico again because, as the Washington Post reported, “Remain in Mexico was cumbersome and inefficient, requiring additional layers of paperwork and complex logistics.” Moreover, canceling Remain in Mexico cannot explain the rise in migration among groups that were never even subject to it: most prominently, Mexicans, unaccompanied children, Haitians, and all other non-Spanish-speaking nationalities.

Biden also ended another dormant Trump policy: the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. This policy, which allowed for the removal of asylum seekers from one country to a “safe third country,” had not been used since March 2020. The Salvadoran and Honduran agreements never took effect, and during two months the Guatemalan policy was in effect, only 945 people were sent there: not even a morning’s worth of arrivals in 2021. Regardless, there was no reason to use the policy since Title 42 had suspended asylum, and it was not less expensive or logistically difficult to expel someone to Guatemala than to El Salvador or Honduras. It was even easier to send them to Mexico, which is what was done.

Biden’s other enforcement changes, such as reducing interior enforcement, were for the express purpose of increasing border enforcement. For instance, the so-called “deportation moratorium” memorandum was explicitly justified by the need to “surge resources to the border,” and it only limited deportations from the interior (and a court never allowed it to go into effect anyway). Limiting formal “deportations” wouldn’t have mattered for the border anyway since the Border Patrol could expel people under Title 42. 

Border Releases Were a Consequence, Not the Cause, of the Crisis

Biden not only used Title 42, but he further justified and codified its use in regulations, and he defended those regulations in court, appealing repeated court decisions that its use was illegal. However, expulsions did not deter migration. Border Patrol arrests grew faster than the number of expulsions, so the percentage of crossers that Border Patrol expelled fell. This meant some crossers were released into the United States.

Biden’s critics claim that more people came and releases grew after because Biden cut enforcement. If true, the percentage removed should have initially declined because removals fell. But this never happened. Instead, we see that Biden increased removals but this did not deter crossings, which grew even faster than enforcement. In other words, higher migration caused releases, not fewer removals.

We can clearly see that higher illegal migration was not caused by releases or too few expulsions when tracking the migration of those Biden was able to expel: single adults (adults not traveling with children) from Mexico and northern Central America. They were virtually never released, yet their numbers continued to rise. As the figure shows, arrests in this demographic had already tripled from December 2019 to December 2020—before Biden came into office—ultimately increasing fivefold over that 2019 level. It is impossible to claim that failure to expel people caused increased migration when the Border Patrol saw fivefold increases in arrests among demographic groups who were universally expelled.

Biden clearly was not opposed to removing people. He was removing hundreds of thousands, so why did higher migration mean more releases? What were the logistical obstacles to Biden increasing removals as much as arrivals? There were essentially three factors:

Mexico’s willingness and capacity to accept returns.
The administration’s capacity to detain and remove people.
The willingness of other countries to accept removals.

In early 2021, when some migrants were being released, Mexico’s willingness and capacity to accept expulsions was the main factor. As President Biden stated in March 2021, “They should all be going back, all be going back.” Why weren’t they? Biden explained: “Mexico is refusing to take [some families] back.”

If the Biden administration had changed policy, it would have affected the entire border. Instead, families were released in a single sector: the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Here’s why: in November 2020, Mexico passed a new law effective January 11, 2021, that required Mexican state governments to provide housing and care for child migrants they encounter. Mexican immigration service officials decided how to implement the law on January 22, 2021, and within two days, all the shelters in the Mexican state across from the Rio Grande Valley sector (Tamaulipas) were filled up.

Biden did not sit on his hands about this situation. By February 9, he had opened a new tent detention facility to hold families longer. In April, he opened three more. He increased Border Patrol detention by 12-fold from January to July 2021. ICE began to fly families on “lateral removal flights” to California and Arizona to expel them to Mexican states with the capacity to receive them. These actions started to increase the expulsion rate for families by mid-February. By early March, Biden negotiated a deal with Mexico to accept more families in exchange for vaccine access. However, new arrivals quickly eclipsed Mexico’s higher threshold and the Border Patrol’s increased detention capacity.

Beyond more detention, Biden:

sent 1,500 National Guard troops to the border;
hired processing coordinators to free up Border Patrol agents to carry out expulsions;
sent asylum officers to conduct fear screenings with individuals in border detention; and
created a special family docket for expedited immigration court hearings.

Biden had a much more significant complication for his goal of closed borders than Central American families—namely, immigrants from outside of Mexico and northern Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). The deal that Trump struck with Mexico on Title 42 did not allow for the expulsion of immigrants other than these four nationalities to Mexico. The only way that they could be expelled is by air to their home countries. 

More problematically still, several countries, including Venezuela and Cuba, were refusing to accept deportation flights from the United States, making it impossible to remove them. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz explained this situation to Congress, but they blamed the Biden administration’s “policy of release” anyway.

Biden tried to detain as many crossers as he could in long-term Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities away from the border pending removal. At no point was Biden detaining fewer people than when Trump left office. Biden reversed the COVID-19 person limits on ICE detention that Trump imposed, allowing ICE to further increase detention in 2022, and he ultimately increased ICE detention to a level nearly three times what he inherited from Trump. However, the detention capacity of just 25,000 to 40,000 was never close to sufficient to detain the four million border crossers who entered illegally and were not removed under the Biden administration. 

Biden did cancel long-term family ICE detention, but 1) he increased detention of families at the border, and 2) had he reinstated family detention, he would have had to release twice as many single adults as the number of families he detained because family detention is twice as expensive. This would have effectively reduced detention. In any case, since there were only about 3,000 beds available, most families were released even under Trump in 2019.

Why is it necessary to detain people before removal? Why couldn’t Border Patrol just put these people on planes and fly them immediately to their home countries? For one thing, Border Patrol has no removal planes, so they must transfer people to ICE for air removals, and it is not as if there are planes just sitting around waiting for people to enter them. Moreover, ICE has planes to conduct about 130 flights per month, with an average of about 120 deportees on board each flight, implying a limit of 190,000 air removals per year. Border Patrol arrested 1.5 million non-Mexicans in 2022 and 2023—with another 1 million in 2024. Even taking out the northern Central Americans who could be at least sometimes expelled to Mexico, the totals were one million in 2022 and 2023—with 700,000 in 2024.

Biden increased US removal flights by 55 percent during his term. He extended unprecedented contracts with airplane charter companies when the prior contract lapsed. However, it was impossible for ICE to remove as many people as were arriving with its current resources by air.

Biden also did everything he could to stop immigrants from ever crossing the border. Among his more than 120 actions:

He convinced Mexico to ban visa-free legal entries into Mexico for Ecuadorians, Brazilians, and Venezuelans.
He convinced Belize and Costa Rica to ban Venezuelans as well, cutting off alternative flights.
He convinced Colombia to accept deportation flights of Venezuelans (Jan. 2022).
He negotiated the reopening of Cuba (Nov. 2022) and China (July 2024) to US deportation flights.
He even briefly obtained consent from the Maduro regime for deportations directly to Venezuela (Oct. 2023), though Maduro then canceled the deal after the US protested his fraudulent reelection.
He convinced Ecuador to cancel visa-free entries for Chinese.
He convinced Panama and Colombia to crack down on crossings between their countries (Apr. 2023).
He convinced Haiti to ban (previously legal) charter flights off its island to Central America (Oct. 2023).
He banned charter flight operators carrying out legal flights out of Cuba and Haiti from entering the United States (Nov. 2023).
He funded the largest-ever immigration enforcement operation in Mexico—almost four times higher than the highest month under Trump.

Read Part 3: Would Trump have stopped the Biden border crisis?

David J. Bier

This is Part 1 of a four-part series on the origins of the border crisis: Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

During President Joe Biden’s term, Border Patrol arrested an unprecedented number of immigrants who crossed illegally into the United States. Many believe Biden caused this increase in migration by reducing border enforcement. However, data obtained by the Cato Institute through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) challenges this narrative. In fact, the border crisis began before Biden took office and ended before he left.

From his administration’s first day in January 2021, Biden actually increased border enforcement—arrests, detentions, and removals of border crossers all increased. The prevailing narrative that blames Biden overlooks the real causes of the crisis: America’s robust labor market and bad immigration policies that incentivized illegal entries. However, Trump, not Biden, mostly started those policies. Biden eventually phased out some of them; he increased legal migration, and as the labor market cooled, the problem dissipated.

Summary

The main takeaways are:

Illegal immigration had already increased to a 21-year high before Biden entered office.
Biden immediately started increasing expulsions from his first day in office.
Biden tripled interior detention and increased border detention 12-fold.
Biden increased air removal flights by 55 percent over 2020 levels.
Biden negotiated broader expulsion deals with foreign countries than Trump.
Biden got many foreign countries to carry out crackdowns on illegal and legal migration.
Biden removed or expelled 3.3 million border crossers—three times as many as Trump.
Biden even managed to remove a similar percentage of crossers as Trump’s four years.

Despite Biden’s historic crackdown:

Expulsions did not deter migrants, even among demographics universally expelled.
The percentage increase in evasions of Border Patrol increased as much as Border Patrol arrests, implying that releases did not cause the crisis and that many people did not want Border Patrol to catch them but were undeterred by the threat.
Releases occurred not because Biden cut removals but because migration grew faster than the administration could increase them.
As a result, releases only occurred among specific demographic groups and in certain areas where removals were logistically complicated.
Biden could not easily remove groups to Mexico, like families, children, and immigrants from distant countries who were arrested in record numbers.

The actual causes of the increases in illegal immigration were:

Unprecedented labor demand, which incentivized and funded migration from around the world: From February 2021 to August 2024, there were more open jobs each month than in any month before Biden’s term began. During this time, economies worldwide were recovering far less quickly than the United States. As labor demand subsided in 2024, immigration fell.
Unprecedented access to information about migration through the Internet and social media: Internet access rose rapidly from 2018 to 2021, nearly doubling in Central America and reaching unprecedented highs in South America. Social media platforms gave people step-by-step instructions on migrating and connected them directly with smugglers. This opened migration from around the world, which contributed to the number of releases.
Novel and perverse enforcement policies: The Title 42 expulsion policy incentivized repeat crossings by returning people to Mexico, where they could immediately attempt to re-enter the United States. Title 42 also cut off access to asylum, incentivizing more Border Patrol evasions.
Novel and perverse legal migration policies: Title 42 not only banned asylum for people who crossed illegally but also prohibited legal entries by asylum seekers, including demographic groups that had traditionally always entered legally, like Haitians, Cubans, and Mexican families. Biden eventually increased legal entries by these groups and others, limiting the crisis’s extent and ultimately contributing to its end.

The border crisis did not end because Biden signed an executive order in June 2024. If he had signed his border executive order in 2021, it would have merely duplicated what Title 42 was already doing: ban asylum. Moreover, the border executive order did not significantly change the downward trend in arrivals in 2024, which had already fallen in half during the five months before he signed it. Finally, the order did not increase removals. Rather, the crisis primarily ended because labor demand subsided significantly and because Biden expanded legal migration.

Read Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 2: Did Biden Cut Enforcement?

Kayla Susalla

As fear over the Chinese government continues to permeate Washington, overseas research partnerships have spurred angst amongst many politicians. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce recently investigated research centers run jointly by American and Chinese universities, analyzing open-source research conducted by Tsinghua-Berkley Shenzhen Institute, Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute, and Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute. The Institutes are funded in part by federal grants and the Chinese government. The report detailed many concerns about the partnerships, including the lack of foreign funding reporting under the Higher Education Act, the potential for the Chinese government to influence research outcomes, US researchers collaborating with Chinese universities affiliated with blacklisted companies, and the People’s Liberation Army using the research to achieve military objectives. 

While it is necessary to protect against potentially sensitive information getting into the wrong hands, stifling international collaboration could result in stagnation in areas of interest to the United States.

To address anxieties over the Chinese government maliciously interfering with US government-funded research, House legislators introduced the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act. Key components of the bill include lowering the required amount for foreign gift and contract reporting from $250,000 to $50,000 and prohibiting universities from entering contracts with a “foreign country of concern” unless a waiver is obtained.

Considering the anecdotes of intellectual property theft and espionage, the reflex to create additional barriers is understandable. Still, Chinese acts of espionage are thankfully rare, and empirical evidence, not anecdotes, is what drives sound public policy. Given the likely limited scale of malicious activity carried out by international actors, placing major restrictions on university research could be unnecessary in most cases and disadvantageous for US development.

Under former President Donald Trump’s China Initiative, which aimed to oust potential Chinese national security threats, MIT professor and Chinese immigrant Gang Chen was charged with espionage for allegedly failing to disclose contracts, appointments, and awards from various entities in China to the US Department of Energy. Chen’s research focuses on heat transfer, energy conversion, nanotechnology, and clean water, and he has helped develop a new material that makes solar heat collection more affordable. 

MIT faculty wrote a letter in support of Chen, debunking the wide-reaching charges, and the Department of Justice dismissed them, admitting the burden of proof could not be met. Chen’s case highlights how innocent scholars attempting to make valuable contributions to research potentially beneficial to all people, including Americans, can get swept up in US-China tensions.

Additionally, Chinese immigrants account for 30 percent of international students enrolled in STEM degrees, and they are over twice as likely to have a professional degree as US-born Americans, making significant contributions to American institutions. One report found that 47.3 percent of Chinese students continued to donate to a US university after graduation, and a majority of Chinese students reported attending a US university for more freedom in their area of study and career. 

Policymakers should prioritize creating and maintaining accessible pathways for talented individuals to research, live, and work in the US to maintain a competitive international advantage.

The Education and Workforce Committee expresses concerns about open-source data, which allow all citizens, regardless of country of residence and government affiliation, to utilize research outcomes. Even if Chinese nationals were not part of conducting such research, they would be able to utilize its products. Research exclusively or mainly for defense should be shielded by government classification, secure storage, and other precautions, blocking the possibility of Chinese involvement from the start. Importantly, all of the technology referenced in the report has non-defense-related applications.

For research without clear defense applications or intent, it can be difficult to predict what might have national security implications. That could be a risk worth taking: Working with Chinese citizens could produce mutually beneficial outcomes and help form diplomatic and social ties that aid in moderating US and China tensions.

Still, incorporating blacklisted companies implicated in human rights abuses and intellectual property theft deserves serious consideration. Informed decision-making is crucial when contemplating academic partnerships, and blacklists from the Commerce Department should be taken into consideration when entering contracts. Again, however, the products of unclassified, publicly available research would be accessible to these companies whether they were affiliated with the Chinese universities in question or not.

The purpose of research is to create new knowledge and understanding, and it is impossible to predict the outcomes. Policymakers should recognize the benefits Americans could reap before constraining research and development partnerships with China, and any other country deemed a concern. In cases where bolstering defense capabilities is the primary purpose of research, the US should classify it in the initial stages, prohibiting sensitive information from being shared with possible adversaries. Overall, creating blanket bureaucratic barriers to liberalizing ideas could be self-defeating.

Colin Grabow

While it’s no secret that vessels built in US shipyards to comply with the protectionist Jones Act are far costlier than those constructed overseas, some recent numbers provided by an industry insider are nonetheless stunning. Last fall, the CEO of Overseas Shipholding Group, a company that operates Jones Act-compliant tankers, estimated that the price of a US-built product tanker currently approaches $250 million. A few weeks later, he amended that figure to $200-$250 million. 

Either way, it’s extraordinary.

To understand why, consider that the price of such vessels built overseas is somewhere between $45 million and $52 million. Further consider that the $200 million figure for a US-built tanker was only first floated in late 2022, and as recently as mid-2020 the cost of such a vessel was placed at approximately $150 million (estimates are due to the lack of tankers being ordered or delivered since 2017). That’s a $50 million-$100 million increase in less than five years. 

But what about the longer-term price trajectory of US-built tankers? And how does this trend compare to equivalent vessels constructed abroad? To answer these questions, Cato intern Kristen Xiao and I used data from open sources to produce a chart showing the prices of US and internationally built medium-range tankers over the last two decades.

As the chart shows, US-built tanker prices have trended steadily and significantly upward. At the same time, tankers built abroad are only slightly more expensive than twenty years ago (and about $20 million higher starting from 2014). Over the last decade, the relative price of US-built tankers has only marginally increased (from about 4.3x the foreign price to 4.5x). Still, the absolute price delta has grown from approximately $110 million to $175 million. 

Notably, product tankers offer a fairly apples-to-apples comparison given their similar sizes and capacities (indeed, many of the US-built tankers were based on the designs of foreign tankers). That foreign-built prices are mostly based on vessels built in South Korean shipyards—the same country that US shipyards turn to for many of the parts and components used in their own tankers—further bolsters the price comparability. 

But tankers aren’t the only vessel type where we see this sharp and increasing divergence in shipbuilding prices. Kristen and I also put together a chart examining the price trend for containerships. The result? Virtually the same dynamic, with a longer-term upward trend and a sharper, more recent price increase for US-built vessels versus a much more modest increase for those constructed overseas. 

Notably, the recent run-up in the price of US-built containerships comes on top of already inflated prices. In 2004, for example, one industry publication called the $140 million asking price for a 2,600 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) containership constructed at the Philly Shipyard “astonishing.” In 2022, meanwhile, the same shipyard received an order for three 3,600 TEU containerships at $333 million each. On a per TEU basis, that’s approximately a 72 percent increase in 18 years.

Overall, US-built containerships have increased in price by approximately $56,000 per TEU since 2002, while foreign-built prices have increased by less than $7,000 over a similar span. 

Such price hikes inevitably mean higher shipping rates that harm US businesses and consumers.

There’s also another notable consequence. As Sam Norton, the CEO who says product tanker prices may be in the neighborhood of $250 million, has pointed out, inflated ship prices deter the purchase of new ships. That, in turn, means fewer vessels and that existing ones are used far beyond their normal life cycle.

While the US Maritime Administration has pegged the nominal service life of a tanker at 20 years, for example, Norton has placed the life of a Jones Act tanker at 40 years. A smaller, aging fleet that requires more repairs and maintenance (needs often met by state-owned Chinese shipyards) serves neither US economic nor national security interests—the ostensible reason for the Jones Act’s existence.

When the United States began imposing protectionist restrictions on the use of foreign shipping in domestic trade, US shipbuilding was some of the world’s most competitive. That’s plainly no longer the case and hasn’t been for a long, long time. US law should be changed to reflect this reality.