On Thursday the Trump campaign released a document that discussed, recommended even, killing off certain regulations that hamper the US economy. One of these referred to the FDA Food Police – the idea that we’re not all going to be poisoned by unscrupulous capitalists if we have just a little bit less of bureaucratic oversight of their actions. This of course set off a firestorm of criticism, the document was withdrawn. One such piece of criticism is at Think Progress – given the site’s connections with the Clinton Camp they obviously were going to make something of this. But, given that this is Think Progress we’re talking about, they managed to get their example exactly and precisely wrong. They said that it was food regulation which allowed the non-contaminating Heinz Ketchup to rule the market. And that’s just not what happened at all – it’s exactly the other way around. Regulation, in general, followed the clean up of the food marketplace, not caused it. And those big brands that are still with us from those unregulated days are the ones which killed rather fewer of their customers back then.

That is, the general free market story, that manufacturers tend not to want to kill their customers, is the correct one.

Read the full article at Forbes.com: But Donald Trump Was Right - Heinz Ketchup Is Why We Can Kill FDA Food Regulations