Televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico, shirts from China, and tools from India are so ubiquitous that it is easy to forget how recent such miracles of commerce are.
DBx: Indeed so. Yet we are today bombarded by uninformed and arrogant commentary from politicians and pundits who decry global commerce or who insist that, if we only hand more power over to them, they will improve the outcomes of global commerce. These protectionists almost never give any sign that they are aware of how indescribably complex is today’s global economy. They talk and write glibly of “securing supply chains,” “fostering the industries of the future,” “using tariffs to protect industries that are best for our country,” and of threatening tariffs to achieve this or that other apparently lovely outcome. Protectionists are misled by the simplicity of their sentences into believing that the economy is equally simple.
And nearly every protectionist today is ignorant also of the economics that he or she gets jollies from attacking. I am, frankly, sick of encountering protectionists announce matter-of-factly that “economists don’t understand this about trade” or “economists overlook this argument for protectionism.”
Nonsense. There is no attempted justification for protectionism that every competent economist who specializes in trade hasn’t encountered hundreds of times. And economists have repeatedly addressed these attempted justifications. The case for a policy of unilateral free trade remains strong.
Nevertheless, protectionists continue to announce to the world, as if they’ve uncovered truths heretofore uncovered and that will dumbfound economists, that “people are producers and not just consumers” – that “workers attach non-monetary values to their current jobs” – that citizens “care about more than getting cheap goods” – that citizens “dislike their traditional ways of life being disrupted by trade” – that “trade affects our culture and not only our pocketbooks” – that “markets aren’t perfect” – that “the threat of tariffs can cause other governments to lower their tariffs” – that “tariff threats can be used to cudgel foreign governments, more generally, to do our government’s bidding” – that “foreign governments subsidize their countries’ exports” – that “free trade works only if our trading partners practice free trade” – that “free trade in certain goods can undermine our national security” – that “free trade in certain goods can undermine our economic security” – that “it is difficult for upstart industries in our country to compete successfully against established industries abroad” – that “lots of capital and not just goods cross international borders” – that “people don’t take account, when buying imports, of the negative effects their decisions will have on fellow citizens” – that “investors are often shortsighted” – that “foreign governments frequently violate the rules of international commerce” – that “trade affects the environment” – that “other governments don’t regulate their economies as much as our government regulates our economy” – that “America used protective tariffs for much of the 19th century and also enjoyed enormous economic growth” – that “Adam Smith (and every other competent scholar who endorsed a policy of free trade) acknowledged exceptions to the case for a policy of free trade” – that “tariffs are a source of government revenue” – that “foreign firms sometimes ‘dump’ their outputs into our market at ‘unfairly’ low prices” – that “in many countries, wage rates and working conditions are such as would be intolerable in our country” – that “opinion polling often shows strong public support for protectionism” – that “this or that hike in tariff rates didn’t bring about economic calamity” – that “free trade often leads to ‘trade imbalances'” – that “there is an ‘optimal tariff‘” – that “history has very few examples of nations choosing to stick for long to a policy of unadulterated free trade.”
Note to protectionists: We’ve heard it all. You haven’t come up with a new argument against free trade, or in favor of protectionism, in decades. I write this not with any hope that you’ll refrain from your habit of posing as more serious, more wise, more astute, more realistic, and better informed than we free traders; I write this to alert the one or two dozen people who read my blog that you don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no more to say that’s original.
