Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV)
Washington, DC
Mr. Moore:
In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, you assert that, because of free trade, the people of your district spent the past 40 years “watching factories close, jobs disappear and communities hollow out.” And you find in Pres. Trump’s protectionism a means of “bringing honest, blue-collar jobs back to the heartland.”
The economist Jeremy Horpedahl looked at the ten metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S. that suffered the largest negative hits during the “China Shock” of a quarter-century ago. No region in your district is among these ten. But each of these ten MSAs is today significantly better off economically than it was before the “China Shock.” It’s a good bet that the same is true for your Congressional district.
While I have no data on your district alone, data for West Virginia at large show that inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings for West Virginians are today (2024) about 14% higher than in 2001. You might protest that this gain is too small, but a gain it nevertheless is and, thus, is inconsistent with your tale of terrible woe.*
A final point: the jobs and wages protected by tariffs aren’t “honest”; they’re dishonest. Those jobs and wages exist only because government denies to other Americans the opportunity to spend their incomes as they judge best. Every job protected by tariffs is matched by a job destroyed by tariffs. Every American business that exists or expands as a consequence of tariffs does so only because other American businesses disappear or shrink as a consequence of those same tariffs. And every cent of higher wages and profits made possible by tariffs is more than offset by reduced wages and profits elsewhere in our economy.
The gains of those who benefit from protectionism are no more “honest” than are the gains of those who benefit from robbery.
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
* I made this calculation using these three sources: here, here, and here.
