Earlier this month, the Cato Institute—perhaps the most effective think tank advocating for open borders—published a study claiming that since 1994, immigration has generated a whopping $14.5 trillion surplus in tax revenues over expenditures.

However, it was quickly pointed out that Cato’s study relies on strange notions of what ought to count in making immigration policy. For example, while acknowledging that immigration raises housing prices by increasing demand, the study views the increased property taxes paid by all residential property owners—citizens and noncitizens alike—as a benefit of that increased demand.

But perhaps more fundamental is the study’s notion of what should count as an expenditure on immigrants. It treats the educational and medical expenses of immigrants’ American-born children—all of whom Cato claims are “birthright citizens”—as expenditures on citizens rather than on immigrants. This is the same kind of sleight of hand we saw during COVID, when the rise in illness experienced after the first of two shots was counted as cases among the unvaccinated rather than the half-vaccinated.

Marco Del Negro, Elena Elbarmi, and Michael Pham

The LITO is an automatic tax refund – currently capped at $700 per year – which low-income earners receive when they lodge their tax returns.

Increasing the cap to $3000 would ensure the nation’s lowest-income earners stay ahead of inflation. Those earning between $32,000 and $46,000 would receive a tax cut of more than $2,000 per year.

The reforms would help those who’ve been hit hardest by inflation: workers and families whose nominal wages may have risen, but whose real wages have fallen, as a result of surging prices, particularly on essentials like food, energy and rent.

The analysis shows the cost of increasing the LITO would be $11.98 billion per year. This revenue could be replaced with a gas export tax – as suggested by the ACTU – which could raise $17 billion.

Recent polling also shows widespread support across party lines for a 25% tax on gas exports, with particularly strong support among One Nation and Greens voters.

One Nation yesterday announced a policy to charge the gas industry royalties, while Independent Senator David Pocock threw his support behind a 25% gas export tax.

“This is the engine room of the cost-of-living crisis – the current tax settings mean that Australian families on low incomes are not keeping up with price rises,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

On this episode of Follow the Money, journalist and author Niki Savva and Australia Institute co-Chief Executive Officer Dr Richard Denniss join Amy Remeikis to discuss how the Liberal Party ended up with their worst federal election result in modern history in 2025, why there’s no such thing as a safe seat in Australian politics anymore, and Niki’s latest book, Earthquake: the election that shook Australia.

This episode was recorded live at the Australia Institute’s Politics in the Pub in Canberra on Wednesday 18 February 2026.

What we owe the water: It’s time for a fossil fuel treaty by Kumi Naidoo is available now for just $19.95. Use the code ‘PODVP’ at checkout to get free shipping.

You can also subscribe to the Vantage Point series to get four essays a year on some of the most pressing issues facing Australia and the world.

Guest: Niki Savva, journalist, author and former political advisor

Guest: Richard Denniss, co-Chief Executive Officer, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss

On the question of President Trump’s emergency tariffs, the Supreme Court has spoken. In the Court’s view, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs during a declared emergency, namely, the massive trade deficits that threaten our economic security.

But the Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump was highly fractured. Only three justices—Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson—held that the law, under normal principles of statutory construction, does not give the president authority to impose tariffs. Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, quite persuasively demonstrates why that is not the case. As Justice Thomas noted in his separate dissent, the power to “regulate…importation” has throughout American history “been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports.”

The other three justices who formed the majority holding—Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Gorsuch and Barrett—resorted to the major questions doctrine. This principle of statutory interpretation holds that Congress must speak with super clarity on issues of “economic and political significance” for the Court to approve a delegation to the executive. The turn to the major questions doctrine implies that the statute, under normal principles of statutory construction, authorizes the president’s action, a point that Justice Gorsuch explicitly conceded in his concurring opinion.

Tomas Jankauskas

Full Text:

The Laurel and Hardy negotiating team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, coupled with Trump’s appalling ignorance of world affairs and megalomania, seem set to push the U.S. into yet another debacle in the Middle East, one the Congress has not approved, and the public does not want.

The demands imposed on Iran by the Trump White House are no more acceptable to the regime in Tehran than those imposed on Hamas in Gaza under Trump’s sham peace plan.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

As Donald Trump’s administration continues down the path of self destruction, it is taking the rest of the American population down with it. The abandonment of international allies, treaties and norms, the political scientist Stephen Walt argues, will slowly ostracize the United States and give rise to a multipolar world order which will leave the country behind.

Walt, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of multiple books, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle what this decline may look like and how Trump’s policy choices are not unlike past empires in history.

On this episode of After America, Allan Behm joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the potential consequences if the United States again strikes Iran, the first meeting of Trump’s grotesque ‘board of peace’, and the striking similarities between a(nother) shamefully racist week in Australian politics and Trump administration rhetoric and policies.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 20 February 2026.

The latest Vantage Point essay, What we owe the water: It’s time for a fossil fuel treaty by Kumi Naidoo, is available now for $19.95. Use the code ‘PODVP’ at checkout to get free shipping.

Guest: Allan Behm, Advisor, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

Shorter America this week: Will he or won’t he on Iran; The Trump doctrine?; On climate, he absolutely will; The only thing more powerful than hate is love by Emma Shortis, The Point (February 2026)

A common argument against the Trump Administration’s policy in South America is that it will inevitably drive the region toward China. But for the most part so far, the opposite appears to be true.

American presidents including John Quincy Adams, both Roosevelts, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan understood that the United States cannot successfully compete overseas if it neglects its own backyard. These presidents all invoked the Monroe Doctrine (and in Adams’s case, wrote it), indicating that Washington would view any new great-power incursions into the Western Hemisphere as a hostile act. 

Over a period of some 12 years, the Obama-Biden approach was the opposite: they explicitly dismissed the Monroe Doctrine and neglected U.S. security concerns in Latin America while Beijing’s influence advanced. They looked to appease left-wing dictatorships, including Cuba and Venezuela, and deferred to a liberal guilt complex regarding America’s supposedly awful Cold War policies in the region. Thankfully, that approach is now over. 

The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy and 2026 National Defense Strategy both make it very clear that hemispheric defense is among this administration’s highest priorities. That is as it should be. The first Trump Administration’s Latin America policy was a major improvement over Obama’s, and the second Trump Administration is a major improvement over Biden’s.

For more than a decade, Australia Institute research has shown that CCS is one of the biggest and most expensive failures in the history of climate policy in Australia.

The research shows that CCS projects have repeatedly missed deadlines, fallen monumentally short of carbon capture targets and gobbled up billions of taxpayer dollars.

Sadly, detailed analysis of all the available evidence suggests there is little likelihood the epic failure of CCS will change any time soon.

“The gas export industry already gets most of its gas for free. This conference is gas companies saying they want publicly-subsidised infrastructure as well,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“It’s clear that this conference is about helping the gas industry, not about helping the climate. Look at who is attending: all the gas companies and none of the climate organisations.

“Carbon capture projects aren’t meant to work. 100% of carbon capture projects on gas-fired power stations have failed. On coal-fired power stations, the rate is 98%.

“It isn’t supposed to work, it is supposed to let investors pour money into new gas projects while pointing at spending on carbon capture to avoid any criticism on climate.

“Gas companies don’t want to pay for carbon capture themselves, they want taxpayers to pay.

“In 2024, a $700 million carbon capture lobby group told its industry donors to stop giving it money; that it had more money than it could spend.

Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference may have been enough for Munich 2026 to displace Munich 1938 in the annals of geopolitics. Far more than an effective rehearsal of European and American commonalities, it touched on the very soul of politics.

Running through Rubio’s speech was a metaphor of filiation: “For us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.” But sons and fathers do sometimes part ways, and skeptics in Europe have seen Rubio’s words as window dressing on hostility. Just a month ago, President Trump’s push to compel Denmark to cede Greenland climaxed in another, harsher speech from a glamorous podium. The American postures at Davos and at Munich, however, must be seen as reflecting an underlying commitment to forging a frank friendship with Europe.

Evidently, America’s bond with Britain and France is different in kind from her arrangements with Saudi Arabia or Mongolia. Sharing common enemies is not the same as participation in common goods, which the Trump Administration is working to articulate.