Quotation of the Day…

by Don Boudreaux on April 16, 2018

in Seen and Unseen, Trade

… is from pages 152-153 of my great teacher Leland Yeager’s, and David Tuerck’s, superb and still-relevant 1966 book, Trade Policy and the Price System:

The more persistently and dependably foreigners engage in dumping, the more the United States benefits.

DBx: Protectionists, of course, deny the truth of this claim.  Motivated by the thoroughly mistaken notion that an economy that supplies maximum opportunity for a handful of politically visible existing producers to reap wages and profits as high as possible, protectionists despise greater abundance that prevents this reaping – and they therefore interpret any foreign-government actions that create additional abundance in their – the protectionists’ – country as damage inflicted on their country rather than as benefits bestowed.

Protectionists see only a tiny fraction of the economic picture.  Ignorant of the most basic of economic principles – and, indeed, also of the universal application of the laws of arithmetic – protectionists are blind to three groups of people in their own country: (1) all consumers who benefit from greater abundance, no matter its source; (2) the many existing domestic producers – including workers – who, as producers, are benefitted by greater abundance, no matter its source; and (3) future producers whose establishment and successful operations tomorrow – and their hiring and employing future workers at wages higher than would be paid otherwise – are made possible by greater abundance, no matter its source, today and tomorrow.

And making matters worse, protectionists mistake their own blindness as a source of a scientific discovery.  “If I can’t see it, then it must not be real!” proclaims the typical protectionist.  Protectionists, in summary, are not only blinded by their economic ignorance, they are made arrogant by it.

Comments

Add a Comment    Share Share    Print    Email

Previous post:

Next post: