[6] Cato advocates for a limited governmental role in domestic and foreign affairs and strong protection of civil liberties, including support for lowering or abolishing most taxes, opposition to the Federal Reserve system and the Affordable Care Act, the privatization of numerous government agencies and programs including Social Security and the United States Postal Service, demilitarization of the police, open borders and adhering to a non-interventionist foreign policy.

[7] The institute was founded in January 1977 in San Francisco, California;[1] named at the suggestion of cofounder Rothbard after Cato's Letters, a series of British essays penned in the early 18th century by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.

Topics include monetary policy, the U.S. Constitution, poverty and social welfare, technology and privacy, financial regulation, and civic culture.

[42] Speakers at past Cato Institute conferences have included Federal Reserve Chairmen Alan Greenspan[43] and Ben Bernanke,[44] Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida,[45] International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato,[46][47][48][49] Czech Republic President Václav Klaus,[50] and Avanti Financial Group Founder and CEO Caitlin Long.

[54][55] The Cato Institute officially resists being labeled as part of the conservative movement because "'conservative' smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo".

[60] Officially, Cato admits that the term “classical liberal” comes close to the mark of labeling its position, but fails to capture the contemporary vibrancy of the ideas of freedom.

It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism.

[71] As a response to the September 11 attacks, Cato scholars supported the removal of al Qaeda and the Taliban regime from power, but are against an indefinite and open-ended military occupation of Afghanistan.

[71] Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, criticized many of the arguments offered to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

One of the war's earliest critics, Carpenter wrote in January 2002: "Ousting Saddam would make Washington responsible for Iraq's political future and entangle the United States in an endless nation-building mission beset by intractable problems.

"[73] But in 2002 Carpenter wrote, "the United States should not shrink from confronting al-Qaeda in its Pakistani lair,"[74] a position echoed in the institute's policy recommendations for the 108th Congress.

[75] Cato's director of foreign policy studies, Christopher Preble, argues in The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free, that America's position as an unrivaled superpower tempts policymakers to constantly overreach and to redefine ever more broadly the "national interest".

[77] Cato's foreign and defense policies are guided by the view that the United States is relatively secure and so should engage the world, trade freely, and work with other countries on common concerns—but avoid trying to dominate it militarily.

[86] The institute opposes minimum wage laws, saying that they violate the freedom of contract and thus private property rights, and increase unemployment.

[87][88] The institute is opposed to expanding overtime regulations, arguing that it will benefit some employees in the short term, while costing jobs or lowering wages of others, and have no meaningful long-term impact.

[111] Again in 2005, Cato scholar Jerry Taylor teamed up with Daniel Becker of the Sierra Club to attack the Republican Energy Bill as a give-away to corporate interests.

[112] In 2003, Cato filed an amicus brief in support of the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the remaining state laws that made private, non-commercial homosexual relations between consenting adults illegal.

According to social scientists Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright the Cato Institute is one of the "particularly crucial elements of the denial machine", that rejects global warming.

[citation needed] Michaels, Balling and Christy agreed that global warming is related at least some degree to human activity but that many scientists and the media have overstated the danger.

In 2003, Cato scholars Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren said the Republican Energy Bill was "hundreds of pages of corporate welfare, symbolic gestures, empty promises, and pork-barrel projects".

[131] By that time, the Cato Institute was also no longer affiliated with its former distinguished fellow Richard Lindzen, another denier of the scientific consensus on climate change.

In particular, Cato's research explores the central role that freedom in its various dimensions—economic, civil, and personal—plays in human progress and in solving some of the world's most pressing problems, including global poverty.

[133] Cato scholars were critical of George W. Bush's Republican administration (2001–2009) on several issues, including education,[134] and excessive government spending.

[135] On other issues, they supported Bush administration initiatives, most notably health care,[136] Social Security,[137][138] global warming,[127] tax policy,[139] and immigration.

[52] Cato opposed Executive Order 13769, which was enacted in January 2017, which decreased the number of refugees admitted into the United States and suspended entry to individuals whose countries do not meet adjudication standards under U.S. immigration law.

It promotes the idea that enlarging markets to integrate more buyers, sellers, investors, and workers enables more refined specialization and economies of scale, which produce more wealth and higher living standards, and argues that Protectionism does the opposite.