Undeterred by any felt obligation to get the facts and the economics correct, protectionists are champs at attacking the case for free trade.
Editor, Chronicles
Editor:
I envy protectionists such as Spencer Morrison. Unburdened as they are by an obligation to get the facts and economics straight, they have a fun and easy time spilling gallons of ink or gazillions of pixels debunking the case for free trade. A fine example of this unfettered ignorance is Morrison’s “The Broken Promises of Free Trade” (September 2025) – a tendentious gusher of 1,800 words that, remarkably, manages to get nearly every one of its substantive claims wrong.
For example, Morrison writes that “after over 40 years of Reaganite and Reagan-lite Republicanism, America is objectively less wealthy.” Later in the piece he asserts that since 1974 “real wages have actually decreased.” The reader reasonably expects that Morrison will provide some evidence for these claims. Yet he never bothers to do so, presumably supposing that by pointing out that, for decades, manufacturing employment has fallen and that America has run annual trade deficits, he thereby establishes the point. But he does no such thing.
Manufacturing employment has indeed fallen for the past several decades. But so what? As a share of total non-farm employment, manufacturing employment began falling steadily in 1954, with no acceleration in this decline when America started running annual trade deficits in 1976, when NAFTA went into effect in 1994, or when China joined the WTO in 2001. In fact, this decline has slowed somewhat over the past 16 years. (See the accompanying image.) To suggest, as Morrison does, that this decline implies the impoverishment of ordinary Americans makes no more sense than to imply that the even longer-running steady decline in agricultural employment as a share of total employment implies the impoverishment of ordinary Americans.
What are the facts as opposed to Morrison’s lazy insinuations? According to a careful study by Scott Winship, the real hourly compensation of workers in the nonfinancial corporate sector is today about 25 percent higher than it was in 2001, more than 50 percent higher than what it was in the mid-1990s, more than double what it was in the mid-1970s, and four times higher than what it was in the mid-1950s.
My own research reveals that the average U.S. household’s real net worth is today 78% higher than it was in 2001, 140% higher than it was in 1994, and 232% higher than it was in 1975 – a reality that’s impossible to square with Morrison’s supposition that U.S. trade deficits drain Americans of wealth. His supposition is not only not true; it’s the opposite of truth: U.S. trade deficits have brought capital to our shores, thus raising the productivity (and wages) of American workers while increasing the value of Americans’ retirement funds.
Morrison also errs when he asserts that protectionism promoted economic growth in 19th-century America. His is a fun fantasy peddled and swallowed only by people who never bother to examine the actual history. When that history is examined – as it has been by serious scholars such as Douglas Irwin and Phillip Magness – it shows no positive effect of protectionism on the overall health of the U.S. economy. Indeed, if protectionism had any effect on economic growth, that effect was almost certainly negative. Along these same lines, in Sen. Phil Gramm’s and my 2025 book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom, we find that the average annual rate of growth in industrial output in 19th-century America was faster when average tariff rates were falling than when average tariff rates were rising.
One more point before closing. Morrison alleges that free trade has also made Americans less free. How so? Why, by giving rise to trade deficits – which, again, he mistakenly assumes weighs Americans down with greater debt. Morrison’s claim isn’t merely factually mistaken, it’s downright Orwellian: To make us Americans more free he proposes to reduce our freedom to spend our money as we choose.
I could go on. But the above should suffice to warn your readers away from giving credence to anything that Morrison writes about trade. It’s a subject on which he is profoundly ignorant.
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
