Free Trade, Protectionism & Tariffs

After years of watching the two Trump administrations stretch virtually every trade statute they could find past the breaking point, Congress’ plan is to write the current administration a brand new one—voluntarily and on a bipartisan basis.

An appropriate vehicle for the establishment of the freedom of production and trade, whether all at once or gradually, would be the establishment of one last regulatory-type agency: the Deregulation Agency.

The costs of tariffs are always shared — and domestic citizens inevitably bear a significant portion of the burden.

US-built ships cost approximately five times as much as those constructed in South Korea.

Trump has assumed the powers of a near absolute monarch to decide when, why, and against whom he will arbitrarily raise and lower and raise again tariffs on the importation of goods into the United States.

Trade policy, with all its consequences, belongs within the limits Congress established, not at the discretion of one officeholder.

Globalization is the process of bringing the entire world into the system of division of labor and thus into the system of social cooperation, of which division of labor is the essence. Its completion will mark the highest level of division of labor and social cooperation that it is possible for human beings to achieve, given the size of the world’s population.

Politicians who support tariffs and other forms of government intervention in the economy frequently emphasize reshoring, trade deficits, cheap imports, and national security, but they rarely talk about consumers.

The best policy is the full and uncompromising policy of free trade, regardless of what and how other governments interfere with and try to manipulate the exports of their own country.

Globalization is the relatively free movement of people, things, money, and ideas across natural or political borders.

According to Rand, then, tariffs are destructive because they are a form of physical coercion by the government. They violate the citizens’ freedom to choose with whom to trade and on what terms and thus limit their ability to pursue their lives.

Economically, unilateral free trade remains beneficial even in the face of foreign tariffs.

In reality, America’s industrial capacity – the ability of the American economy to produce value in the form of industrial outputs – is today at an all-time high.

The best way to address unfair trade practices is not through blanket tariffs but by expanding trade with allies and non-hostile nations.

Endorsing individuals’ freedom to trade with foreigners is simply of a piece with the more general endorsement of individuals’ freedom to trade with whomever they please, whether fellow citizens or not. The protectionist position, in contrast, invariably relies upon arbitrary distinctions that ensnare protectionists in intellectual and ethical inconsistencies.

Free nations as such don’t gain or lose from trade; only individual traders do.

Must the US counteract Beijing’s subsidies with high tariffs?

More than half of imported goods are intermediate items or inputs used in manufacturing. Because the cost of these inputs will rise with the tariffs, total employment in manufacturing and the entire economy will decline or, at best, grow slower.

The GOP platform calls for new Buy American restrictions, but this is just warmed-over Bidenomics. 

Americans should ask protectionists such as Donald Trump and Josh Hawley just how America is put ‘first’ by US government trade barriers that constrict ordinary Americans’ freedom to spend their incomes as they choose.

The first age of globalization could have started much earlier had it not been for trade policies. How much earlier? At least a century, which means somewhere in the mid-18th century.

The conventional tale of trade deficits fails so utterly to square with reality because tellers of this conventional tale never seriously bother to attempt to understand why foreigners are willing, decade after decade, to send to America more goods and services than they receive in return from America.

Describing as “favorable” a situation in which the people of the home country ship many real goods and services to foreigners and receive in exchange lesser amounts of real goods and services, with the difference made up in money, is indeed – as Adam Smith called it – absurd.

Trade allows each of us to turn our unique talents into the fruits of the talents of everyone with whom we trade.

While Hamilton, who died in a duel in 1804, did indulge protectionist arguments during his stint as Secretary of the Treasury, the rebranding of Jefferson and Madison as American System enthusiasts runs directly contrary to historical evidence.

Unions must go about their objectives of trying to organize workers without committing acts of destruction.

There is no plausible case to be made that for us Americans to improve our comparative advantages, we need the government to protect any of us from foreign competition, other than the protection of individual rights.

Government cannot make trade more fair by making it less free.

The Biden Administration has decided to extend Trump’s mercantilist trade policies. Hostility to free trade Is now officially bipartisan.