Here’s a letter to a new correspondent:
Mr. B__:
Thanks for your e-mail.
You write: “It’s just common sense the American market belongs to American producers. If we can’t make something, fine to import it. But if we can make it it’s stupid buying it from foreigners.”
With respect, I disagree.
The American market is simply the name given to the demands expressed by consumers in America; it isn’t property that can be owned. What is property, however, is income that has been earned. And this income is the property only of those persons who earned it.
Your income isn’t the property of General Motors, John Deere, or Microsoft; these companies are entitled only to whatever portion of your income you choose to turn over to them in exchange for what you get from them. But protective tariffs erected by the U.S. government, by denying you the opportunity to get the most from your income, not only lower that income, these tariffs also confiscate part of what rightly belongs to you in order to transfer it to people who did not earn it.
In short, it’s just common sense that Americans’ incomes belong to American income earners – and that tariffs steal part of those incomes.
As for your point about our ability to make things, it is, I’m afraid, economically nonsensical. I’ll explain in a follow-up letter.
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
