Bonus Quotation of the Day…

Tweet

… is from page 220 of the conclusion of Michael Strain’s 2025 paper “The (non) effect of tariffs on manufacturing employment”:

Regarding the trade war and manufacturing, the two most important conclusions are as follows. First, the current administration’s trade war is founded on a deeply flawed analysis of the US’s economic challenges. American manufacturing is not in crisis, and open trade has not been the most important driver of declining manufacturing employment. From an economic perspective, manufacturing jobs do not deserve special attention.

Second – and, from a political perspective, perhaps more important – the trade war will not substantially increase manufacturing employment. Indeed, it is likely to decrease manufacturing employment. It will fail to achieve its wrongheaded goal.

Protectionists are motivated by a misplaced nostalgia for an imagined past.