The single most important issue in polls during the last presidential campaign was inflation. Thus it is ironic that one policy Donald Trump has preached with particular fervor is tariffs, the goal of which is to raise prices.

But the greater irony of Trump’s tariff plans is that America’s tariff system is the quintessential example of what he sometimes attacks as the deep state. Tariffs are managed by opaque bureaucracies and manipulated by high-priced lobbyists in order to extract funds from American consumers. And if one’s goal is to pare back the powers of the modern administrative state, abolishing the tariff system would be a good place to start.

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When I was shaken awake by my panicked wife, around 5 a.m. on Friday morning, to the news that our former home had been the target of an antisemitic attack, I was upset—but not shocked. That’s because there is nothing unusual about what happened.

As co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, I spend my days advocating for my country’s Jewish community—which numbers around 120,000 people. And since October 7, 2023, I have woken many times to news like this. Staff, journalists, and politicians have all called in the small hours to inform me that a synagogue is burning, or that cars, daubed with antisemitic slogans, are on fire, or that yet another Jewish business has been vandalized.

But the most recent target of antisemitism in Australia is a building that was, until two years ago, my home—a whitewashed semi in Dover Heights, a comfortable Sydney suburb. This wonderfully ordinary place, which sheltered me, my wife, and our three small daughters from a global pandemic, was set on fire and vandalized. One of the arsonists also scrawled “Fuck Jews” on the side of a nearby car.

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Last week, the Food and Drug Administration banned Red Dye No. 3—a coloring found lurking in everything from pastries to pills. Regulators banned it on the grounds that several studies have shown a worrying tendency for the dye to cause thyroid cancer in animals. Since 1990, it has been prohibited for use in cosmetics, but it has somehow persisted in food and medicine.

Relieved by the ban? Don’t be. Red Dye No. 3 is set to be replaced by. . . Red Dye No. 40, which in Europe comes with the unencouraging warning label: “May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”

It’s hard to shake the feeling that synthetic dyes are just the tip of a very large and very troubling iceberg.

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