Here’s a letter to CNN.com.
Editor:
Reporting on Trump’s tariffs, Olesya Dmitracova misleadingly, if unintentionally, understates the economic case for free trade by writing that “mainstream economists … have long disliked tariffs and can point to research showing they harm the countries that impose them, including the workers and consumers in those economies” (“Trump has delayed his monster tariffs. Here’s why you should care,” July 9).
Proponents of even the most outlandish notions can “point to research” that supports their positions. But on the question of free trade, the research in its favor is overwhelming. The freer are the people of a country to trade, the higher is their per-capita GDP, the faster is their rate of economic growth, the longer they expect to live, and the less likely their governments are to go to war with trading partners. Those researches that find otherwise are relatively minuscule, as can be verified by consulting almost any respected work on the economics of trade – works such as Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (2004), Daniel Griswold, Mad About Trade (2009), Douglas A. Irwin, Free Trade Under Fire (2020), Pierre Lemieux, What’s Wrong With Protectionism? (2018), Johan Norberg, In Defense of Global Capitalism (2003), Arvind Panagariya, Free Trade & Prosperity (2019), and Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (2004).
Especially after what is now 250 years of serious economic theorizing and research into every nook and cranny of arguments for protectionism, these mainstream findings shouldn’t be surprising: National-security considerations aside, protectionism is the bizarre belief that a government can increase its citizens’ access to goods and services by decreasing its citizens’ access to goods and services. Or stated slightly differently, protectionism is the blind faith that by enabling some particular producers to commandeer parts of the incomes of their fellow citizens, governments raise the incomes not only of the privileged producers, but also of their victimized fellow citizens.
Protectionism, in short, is a belief in miracles. As such, it is a vestige of humankind’s pre-enlightenment, superstitious past – and its peddlers should be met with no less skepticism than is accorded palm-readers and hawkers of penis-enlargement pills.
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
