Free Trade, Protectionism & Tariffs

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.

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 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.