Here’s a letter to someone who describes herself as “a recovering free trader.”
Ms. L__:
Thanks for sending along Rep. Nick Begich’s (R-AK) tweet of yesterday, which reads
Free trade requires fair trade, and fair trade requires a level playing field. America First Works.
I don’t share your favorable opinion of it.
The hackneyed terms “fair trade” and “level playing field” as used by protectionists are too open-ended in meaning and oily in application to promote effective communication. These terms identify nothing concrete or specific beyond the protectionist’s itch to restrict fellow-citizens’ freedom to trade and his need to conjure credible-sounding cover for this restriction. Because no two countries have identical regulatory, tax, and trade policies, anyone hoping to justify higher tariffs at home need only point to some differences in a foreign government’s economic policies from our government’s policies and then scream “Unfair and not level!” Credulous people are thereby duped into letting protectionists rob them of treasure and, worse, of freedom.
When used meaningfully, the terms “fair trade” and “level playing field” should elicit support for a policy of free trade at home regardless of the policies of other governments. What’s truly unfair is for your government to punitively tax your decision to spend your income on imports – a tax imposed for the purpose of artificially protecting domestic producers from competition. Such a tax is unfair both to you – who are prevented from getting the most from the income that you earned – and to those of your fellow citizens whose jobs are destroyed or businesses worsened by the government-engineered diversion of spending to protected producers and, hence, away from other domestic producers.
Protectionism at home unfairly tilts the home-economy’s economic ‘playing field’ (if we must use treacherous sports analogies) in favor of politically powerful producers and against consumers and politically weak producers.
Rep. Begich will respond that protectionism abroad is unfair to Americans and, thus, justifies protectionism in America. Yet his reasoning is mistaken. In a follow-up e-mail I’ll explain his mistake, one that’s especially ironic when committed by someone who brags about his support for “America First.”
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
