Kevin D. Williamson’s Sept. 15 op-ed, “How Trump’s tariffs boomerang to hurt U.S. winemakers,” explained well how President Donald Trump’s tariffs on wine have the unintended consequence of harming American vintners.
I recently attended a Catholic wedding. The Gospel reading was of the Wedding at Cana. As I read Williamson’s piece, it struck me that the guests at that long-ago wedding were lucky Trump wasn’t around. Had he been there, Trump would have upbraided Jesus for costlessly turning water into wine and dumping it at unfairly low prices on the local economy. In an attempt to ensure that this wine imported from heaven would take no business away from the vintners of Galilee, Trump would have claimed the executive power to impose punitive tariffs on it.
Donald J. Boudreaux, Fairfax
The writer holds the Martha and Nelson Getchell chair for the study of free-market capitalism at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.
P.S. No doubt Trump would have asserted that he was exercising powers delegated to him to ensure national security; after all, drunken wedding guests make poor soldiers.
