Here’s a letter to my long-time protectionist antagonist.
Mr. McKinney:
Thanks for sharing Oren Cass’s latest. I’m unpersuaded.
Asking “how could anyone levelheaded favor the consumer welfare standard,” you point approvingly to this passage from Cass’s essay:
The market fundamentalism of the consumer-welfare-maximizing free-traders insists that it does not matter what other countries do, all that matters is getting cheaper stuff.
Cass again slays a straw man.
When Cass says that the consumer-welfare standard aims only at “getting cheaper stuff,” he casts the case for free trade as morally deficient (or at least naïve) because, in his telling, that case ignores individuals’ higher, non-material values – values such as job security. Cass, however, misunderstands the root rationale of the consumer-welfare standard. He incorrectly believes that by “consumption,” we free-market advocates mean only material goods and services that readily come to mind as being exchanged in commercial markets. Yet in reality we mean something more general: ends, whatever these ends might be, as long as they are peaceful.
The consumer-welfare standard says nothing about the contents of individuals’ ends. Instead, it insists that whatever are the contents of these ends, each individual should have maximum freedom to pursue his or her ends, constrained only by the equal and like freedom of others, without the legislature, bureaucracy, or courts elevating the ends of some persons over those of other persons.
When, for example, protectionists demand tariffs to protect manufacturing jobs, they unctuously cast themselves as champions of workers who value something ‘higher’ than ‘mere’ consumption – in particular, specific kinds of employment or job security. This ‘higher’ value allegedly is ignored by us vulgar louts who defend the consumer-welfare standard. But it’s not.
The consumer-welfare standard – and the resulting case for free trade – says only that the ends of individuals who pursue opportunities opened to them by low-priced imports are of equal standing with the ends of workers who want greater job security. Tariffs that protect particular jobs elevate the ends of some persons (protected workers) over those of other persons (would-be buyers of imports) by forcing would-be buyers of imports to subsidize protected workers’ increased job security. Cass and other protectionists see and celebrate the satisfaction enjoyed by protected workers who don’t have to find different jobs. But these protectionists ignore the resulting dissatisfaction suffered by these workers’ fellow citizens.
In a free market, workers are, and ought to be, as free to pursue the end of greater job security as are their fellow citizens to pursue whatever particular ends they choose by purchasing imports. And workers can pursue this end by offering to accept lower wages in exchange for greater job security. Workers, in short, can ‘consume’ greater job security if they are willing to pay the price for it. The consumer-welfare standard simply requires that, if workers wish to pursue non-material ends such as greater job security, they must do so with their own money, just as consumers who wish to pursue material ends must do so with their own money.
So when Cass and other protectionists pose as morally superior to free traders, don’t buy it. Contrary to their self-flattering presumption, these protectionists don’t champion the pursuit of ‘higher’ ends over ‘lower’ ends. Instead, they champion some fellow-citizens’ ends over the ends of other fellow citizens. Or, put differently, they champion special interests over the public interest.
Sincerely,
Don
