Here’s a letter to the New York Post:
Editor:
Henry Olsen heaps praise on J.D. Vance without mentioning a single substantive policy position (“JD Vance is a serious political figure who genuinely cares about average people — the perfect pick for Trump and America,” July 16). About policy, we’re told only that Vance cares about ordinary Americans and that he’s “unburdened by the GOP’s past free-market fundamentalism.”
One unfortunate result of this lack of burden is that Vance shares Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs. Yet tariffs are pro-worker only superficially. In fact, tariffs destroy as many American jobs as they create. They do so directly by reducing foreigners’ demand for American exports. They destroy jobs indirectly because, with most U.S. imports being intermediate goods used to produce outputs in America, the costs of production incurred by many American businesses rise.* At the end of all this are higher prices of consumer goods – meaning reduced purchasing power for the vast majority of American families.
Protectionism appears to be pro-worker only to those who, like Vance and Trump (and Olsen), refuse to trace out tariffs’ full consequences.
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* “The majority of U.S. imports are not final consumer goods but intermediate goods used by domestic firms in their production” – so writes Dartmouth economist Douglas A. Irwin, Free Trade Under Fire, 5th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), p. 100.
