A letter to National Review.
Editor, The Corner
National ReviewEditor:
Michael Brendan Dougherty expresses his agreement with Oren Cass’s support (in Cass’s words) “of President Trump’s desire to reshape the global trading system” – a reshaping that’s allegedly necessary to ‘liberate’ the U.S. economy from forces that are undermining its long-run vitality (“Expecting Liberation Day,” March 31).
A question: If the U.S. economy’s long-run prospects are really so dim that politicians must obstruct Americans’ freedom to trade in order to “reshape the global trading system,” why do global investment funds continue to pour into the U.S., resulting in the U.S. ranking number one in the world as a recipient of foreign direct investment?
Other questions could also be asked, including why is the average real net worth of American households today at an all-time high? Why did the real net worth of the median American household hit its peak in 2019, and is today very near that peak? Why is real per-capita GDP today at an all-time high? Why is U.S. industrial production at an all-time high? Why is U.S. industrial capacity at an all-time high? Why is value added per worker today in the U.S. at an all-time high (and 270 percent higher than in 1959, the final year of the decade that many NatCons seem to wish to recreate)?
These other questions are probing and useful. But, again, all we need to ask to challenge the assertion that the U.S. economy today requires that the Trump administration “reshape the global trading system” is why are foreign investors so eager to invest in America? What do Donald Trump, Peter Navarro, Oren Cass, and M.B. Dougherty know about the global economy that global investors – people spending their own money – do not know?
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
