Here’s a letter to someone who responded to me on Facebook – someone whose name I choose to keep anonymous on Café Hayek:
Mr. Doe:
About my sharing on Cafe Hayek Nobel-laureate economist Vernon Smith’s defense of free trade against Trump-Vance protectionism, you write this: “Your economic theory assumes all the displaced Americans workers can get jobs as college professors.”
You’re far from the first to suggest that we academic economists are free traders only because we have comfortable faculty positions. You suppose that your ad hominem ‘argument’ enables you to skirt both the logic and the vast empirical literature that supports the case for free trade – logic and evidence that utterly contradict protectionists’ assertions that increased international trade or rising trade deficits harm workers as a whole or the economy.
Nevertheless, because you apparently believe that this manner of argumentation is valid, I’ll join in for a moment:
Because protectionism reduces foreigners’ sales to Americans, protectionism shrinks the dollar earnings of foreigners and, hence, reduces foreigners’ demand for American exports and foreigners’ ability to invest in America. The inevitable result is displaced American workers. Therefore, your, Donald Trump’s, J.D. Vance’s, and other protectionists’ economic theory assumes that all workers displaced by protectionism get jobs in politics.
Only if you accept the logic and conclusion expressed in the preceding paragraph can you seriously believe that in your communication to me you raised a valid objection to the case for free trade.
Sincerely,
Don
