… is from this recent post, at his Substack site, by Arnold Kling:
Maury [Obstfeld] was in my cohort at MIT. He singles out Michael Pettis for misunderstanding international economics. I would say that if Paul Krugman, Maury Obstfeld, and Tyler Cowen all think that you’re wrong on a point of economics, you ought to be very humble about pushing it, or be willing to back away altogether. But folks like Pettis or Oren Cass just defy conventional economics with sheer bluster and demagoguery.
DBx: Yes.
If Michael Pettis and Oren Cass – and also Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro, Wells King, and Donald Trump (to name just a handful of today’s most vocal protectionists) – really believe what they say about trade, they reveal themselves to be ignorant of the most basic economic principles of trade. The fact that their ignorance runs so deeply that it prevents them from grasping just how uninformed they are doesn’t diminish that ignorance even though it infuses their pronouncements with tones of unwarranted confidence. And this ignorance is sufficient reason to reject as fantastical any of the many suggestions that the protectionism today peddled by Team Trump is really a brilliant strategy – one that mere economists cannot appreciate – that will befuddle America’s enemies and strengthen us Americans in the long-run.
Protectionism as a means of enriching the nation is nonsense, pure and simple. It’s as logical as is the assertion that ten minus two equals seventeen. Arguments in support of protectionism enchant only two sorts of people. One is individuals who have something to gain from it at the larger public expense; the second is individuals who have yet to think seriously about the matter.
