Protectionist: We need protection because free trade causes unemployment, reduces wages, hollows out our industries and middle class, and enriches only corporate oligarchs.
Free Trader: No it doesn’t. The results of free trade are quite the opposite. [The free trader then offers economic logic and empirical evidence – of which there is an overwhelming amount – to refute the protectionist’s assertions.]
Protectionist: You’re making a narrow economic argument. What about national security? Don’t you understand that free trade undermines our ability to defend ourselves from foreign antagonists?
Free Trader: It’s you who started this conversation by making an economic argument. But because you can’t refute the logic and evidence on the economic front, you now switch your argument to a different one: national security. As for this topic, most economists recognize a national-security exception to the case for free trade, but warn that it can be easily abused. Chanting “national security” isn’t a miraculous incantation that justifies any and all protectionist measures that accompany this incantation. [The conversation carries on with the protectionist inevitably trying justify, on national-security grounds, tariffs on the likes of sugar and textiles, at which time the free trader easily exposes the silliness of the protectionist’s argument.]
Protectionist: You miss the point! Free trade undermines non-economic goods such as community and family.
Free Trader: You’re changing the subject. But no matter. Free trade does not undermine community and family. [The free trader then offers economic logic and empirical evidence to bust this particular protectionist myth.]
Protectionist: You still miss the point, you knee-jerk Milton Friemanite you! The purpose of our high trade barriers is to bargain down the high trade barriers in other countries.
Free Trader: You keep changing your argument. In theory it is indeed possible for us to use tariffs as bargaining chips to persuade other governments to lower their trade barriers, thus enriching over time the citizens of all countries. But there are many sound practical reasons for not trusting government officials with the power to use our own citizens as economic hostages to pressure other governments to release their citizens from trade restrictions. [The free trader then offers economic logic and empirical evidence to support this free-trade point.]
Protectionist: You neoliberal free traders just don’t get it, do you? Don’t you know that the U.S. has been running trade deficits every year for nearly a half-century? That has to stop, and that’s the purpose of the tariffs.
Free trader: Again, you change subject. And you’re now back to an economic argument. [The free trader then offers economic logic and empirical evidence to bust protectionist myths about the causes and dangers of trade deficits.]
Protectionist: Don’t you free traders know that a chief purpose of the tariffs is to raise revenue?
Free Trader: You must by now be dizzy, what with your incessant changing of your arguments. [The free trader then explains the difference between protective tariffs and revenue tariffs and points out that these two tariffs have diametrically opposed goals: A good revenue tariff offers very little in the way of protection, while a highly effective protective tariff raises very little revenue. The free trader then says that he’s happy to have a discussion about the merits of revenue tariffs relative to other taxes, but insists that revenue-raising not be confused with protection.]
Protectionist: Why should I listen to you? You claim that protectionism will lead to runaway inflation and a return of the Great Depression. Your predictions are ridiculous and disproven.
Free trader: I’ve made no such predictions. While it’s true that some pundits and poor economists might well have overstated or misidentified the harms that will be caused by protectionism, serious free traders haven’t done so. We point out that the effect of protectionism on the price level will be, at most, very modest or (as I believe) undetectable. Our argument, as economists, is that protection distorts economic decision-making, causing economic growth in our country to be lower than it would otherwise be and, hence, causing living standards in our country to be lower than they would otherwise be.
Protectionist: You economists are tone-deaf! People ultimately care less about economic growth and access to material goods than they care about non-economic, higher aspirations like democracy and community. Protectionism is a means of making these non-economic, non-material aspirations a reality.
Free Trader: Fine. Make your protectionist case honestly, then. Tell the public forthrightly that the protectionism you offer them will make them poorer, but as compensation they’ll have other, non-economic benefits to enjoy. But don’t forget also to tell them that among the non-economic benefits that will be diminished is their economic freedom – specifically, their freedom to spend their hard-earned incomes as they choose. A good chunk of that freedom will be sacrificed to the whims and machinations of politicians and bureaucrats.
Protectionist: You market fundamentalists and your so-called “economic freedom.” You’re ideologically driven while what people care about are results.
Free Trader: Please elaborate.
Protectionist: As I’ve said from the beginning, we need protection because free trade causes unemployment, reduces wages, hollows out our industries and middle class, and enriches only corporate oligarchs.
And so the conversation turns. It begins anew where it began and repeats itself ad infinitum.
……
Protectionists are not only bad economists and historians; they’re also just not very good at thinking straight. They are comfortable with inconsistency; they are masters of tossing out red herrings; and they excel at slaying strawmen.
