Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
Your banner headline this afternoon reads “Stocks Suffer Biggest One-Day Wipeout in Value Since March 2020.” Of course they did.
In March 2020 governments irrationally and massively obstructed their citizens’ freedom to engage in peaceful commerce. In April 2025, governments – led by Washington – are again irrationally and massively obstructing their citizens’ freedom to engage in peaceful commerce. Although not as draconian or as unprecedented as the covid tyranny, protective tariffs do effectively lock down much of the economy. Buyers are cut off from suppliers. Consumers are kept away from merchants. Economic value that would have been created is not, while much existing value is destroyed. And as was true of the instigators of the covid madness, the instigators of today’s madness are delusional about both the nature of the economy that they are battering and of the effectiveness of their quack remedies.
It’s unsurprising that the economic lockdowns that will result from Trump’s tariffs have a similar effect on financial markets as did the covid lockdowns.
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
