… 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.
Share
