Tweet [1]
… is this tweet from yesterday by Scott Lincicome [2]:
Protectionism, currency devaluation, industrial policy, and now capital controls? How very developing country of us.
DBx: With the Trump administration’s newly announced threats to restrict capital from China being invested in America [3], this administration reveals a new layer of its deep ignorance of economics.
And to all of you who are inclined to read into this move, as you’ve read into earlier moves on the trade front, some ingenious, n-dimensional-chess-game scheme to make trade in the future freer, stop. Just stop. Every word about trade from this administration demonstrates an unambiguous and complete misunderstanding of trade, and a banana-republic fear of economic integration with other countries.
Trump and his trade advisors (and his trade apologists) are trade crackpots. They are economic nationalists, pure and simple. Now you might be among those who join Trump & Co. in mistakenly believing that economic nationalism is an excellent scheme for promoting domestic prosperity and economic security. But if so, be honest about it. Stop – just stop – insisting that Trump’s goal is free or even freer trade in the future.