Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
Many of Pres. Trump’s supporters continue to insist that his wild policy moves reflect his brilliant strategy at playing 4D chess. Yet in light of Mr. Trump’s new threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on Americans’ imports from Canada – a threat issued in anger at Canada’s efforts to increase its trade with China – it’s clear that, even in the standard two-dimensional version of chess, Mr. Trump plays, not with skill, but with obliviousness and myopia (“Trump Threatens New Tariffs on Canada Over China,” January 24).
Skilled chess players, when pondering their moves, anticipate other players’ future moves in response. In contrast, sloppy players consider only the immediate and most-obvious consequence of their next move. Just as the sloppy chess player is surprised when, after triumphantly capturing an opponent’s pawn with a bishop, that opponent captures that bishop with one of her pawns, the president was apparently surprised that his earlier tariff hikes on (and generally shabby treatment of) Canada prompted that country to trim its economic losses by expanding trade with China.
Any competent economics undergraduate could have predicted Canada’s response to Mr. Trump’s tariffs. And that same undergraduate would now tell the president that this new tariff threat will only drive Canada and other allies further away from the U.S. and, in turn, weaken America’s economy.
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
