Here’s a follow-up letter to a “long-time admirer of Michael Lind.”
Mr. B__:
You disagree with my criticism of Michael Lind’s defense of tariffs on EV imports. Specifically, you write that “protection of the American EV industry is necessary because its development is a public good.”
What makes development of this industry a public good, or more of a public good than was the development over the years of the American petroleum industry, meatpacking industry, chemical industry, automobile industry, construction industry, steel industry, household-appliances industry, movie industry, software industry, and financial-services industry? Each of these industries plausibly has positive ‘external’ effects, yet none of them can be said to have arisen because of tariffs and industrial policy.
So I ask again: How do Lind, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, the people at American Compass, or you come by the knowledge that development of an American EV industry not only is a public good, but one worth pursuing? (Not all public goods are worth their costs.) Please identify the source of this knowledge. Until you do, your and Lind’s case for protectionism can’t legitimately go forward. The economic and ethical justification of the power of government to seize consumers’ and taxpayers’ resources in an effort to develop a particular industry requires far more than merely invoking as an incantation the words “public good.”
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
