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… is from page 233 of F. A. Hayek’s March 1945 essay, in Fortune, “Review of Sir William Beveridge’s Full Employment in a Free Society,” as this essay is reprinted as Chapter 12 of Hayek, Contra Keynes and Cambridge (Bruce Caldwell, ed., 1995), which is volume 9 of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek:

It is the great merit of democracy that the demand for the cure of a widely felt evil can find expression in an organized movement. That popular pressure might become canalized in support of particular theories that sound plausible to the ordinary man is one of its dangers.

DBx: So true.

There is today a superabundance of policy ideas that sound plausible to ordinary men and women but that, upon inspection with sound economics, are revealed as crackpot. These ideas include minimum-wage legislation as a means of improving the lives of poor workers, protective tariffs as a means of enriching the people of the nation, and ever-increasing funding for government schools as a means of providing better education.

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History has yet to produce a foe of protectionism who is at once as skilled, as sharp, as logical, as consistent, as gripping, as unrelenting, as informed, as indomitable, as astute, and as entertaining as was Frédéric Bastiat. And while it’s folly to try to single out any one essay of Bastiat’s that is most effective at exposing the idiocy of protectionism, at least it’s possible – and worthwhile – to highlight a few of his essays that deserve special attention. Today I highlight Bastiat’s December 1847 essay “L’indiscret,” translated into English by David Hart as “The Man who asked Embarrassing Questions,” which is ES3-12, pp. 309-318, of Liberty Fund’s 2017 expanded English-language edition, brilliantly edited by David Hart, of Frédéric Bastiat’s indispensable work Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.”

Pasted below is the first part of the essay, but do read the entire thing. It offers against protectionism an argument that is unanswerable.

Protection for national industry! Protection for national employment! You have to have a very warped mind and a heart that is truly perverse to decry a notion that is so fine and good.

Yes, certainly, if we were fully convinced that protection, as decreed by the Chamber with its double vote, had increased the well-being of all Frenchmen, including ourselves, if we thought that the ballot-box of the Chamber with its double vote that is more miraculous than the urn in Cana, had operated the miracle of the multiplication of foodstuffs, clothing, the means of work, transport and education, in a word, everything that composes the wealth of the country, we would be both foolish and perverse to demand free trade.

And why, in this case, would we not want protection? Well, Sirs, demonstrate to us that the favors it accords to some are not given at the expense of others; prove to us that it does good to everyone, to landowners, farmers, traders, manufacturers, artisans, workers, doctors, lawyers, civil servants, priests, writers or artists. Prove this to us and we promise you that we will align ourselves under its banner for, whatever you say, we are not yet mad.

And, as far as I am concerned, to show you that it is not through caprice or thoughtlessness that I have engaged myself in the struggle, I will tell you my story.

Having read widely, meditated deeply, gathered a host of observations, followed the fluctuations in the market in my village from week to week and carried out a lively correspondence with a number of traders, I finally arrived at the knowledge of this phenomenon:

WHEN SOMETHING IS SCARCE, ITS PRICE RISES.

From which I considered I might, without excessive boldness, draw the following conclusion:

PRICES RISE WHEN AND BECAUSE THINGS ARE SCARCE.

With this discovery in my pocket, which ought to bring me as much fame as Mr. Proudhon expects from his famous formula: Property is theft, I mounted my humble steed like a new Don Quixote and went off to campaign.

First of all, I introduced myself to a wealthy landowner and asked him:

“Sir, be so good as to tell me why you are so attached to the measure taken in 1822 by the Chamber with its double vote with regard to cereals?”

“Heavens, it is obvious! It is because it enables me to sell my wheat better.”

“Therefore you think that, between 1822 and 1847, the price of wheat has on average been higher in France thanks to this law than it would have been without it?”

“Yes, certainly I think so; if not, I would not support it.”

“And if the price of wheat has been higher, it must have been because there has not been as much wheat in France under this law as without it, for if it had not affected quantity it would not have affected the price.”

“That goes without saying.”

I then drew from my pocket a notebook on which I wrote these words:

“On the admission of the landowner, for the last twenty-nine years in which the law has existed there has, in the end, been LESS WHEAT in France than there would have been without the law.”

I then went to a cattle farmer.

“Sir, would you be so good as to tell me why do you support the restriction placed on the entry of foreign steers by the Chamber with its double vote?”

“It is because, through these means, I sell my steers for a higher price.”

“But if the price of steers is higher because of this restriction, this is a certain sign that fewer steers have been sold, killed and eaten in the country in the last twenty-seven years than would have been the case without the restriction?”

“What a question! We voted for the restriction solely for this reason.”

I wrote the following words in my notebook:

“On the admission of the cattle-breeder, for the last twenty-seven years in which the restriction has existed, there have been FEWER STEERS in France than there would have been without the restriction.”

I then hurried off to an ironmaster.

“Sir, would you be so good as to tell me why you defend the protection that the Chamber with its double vote has accorded to iron so valiantly?”

“Because, thanks to it, I sell my iron for a higher price.”

“But then, also thanks to it, there is less iron in France than if it had not meddled in this, for if the quantity of iron on offer had been equal or greater, how would the price have been higher?”

“It is quite straightforward that the quantity is less, since the precise aim of this law was to prevent an invasion.”

And I wrote on my tablets:

“On the admission of the ironmaster, for twenty-seven years, France has had LESS IRON through protection than it would have had through freed trade.”

“It is all starting to become clear”, I said to myself, and I hurried off to a woolen cloth merchant.

“Sir, would you allow me a small item of information? Twenty-seven years ago, the Chamber with its double vote, of which you were a member, voted for the exclusion of foreign woolen cloth. What was its and your reason for doing this?”

“Do you not understand that it is so that I can make more profit from my woolen cloth and become rich more quickly?”

“That was my guess. But are you sure that you have succeeded? Is it certain that the price of woolen cloth has been higher during this period than if the law had been rejected?”

“There can be no doubt of this. Without the law, France would have been swamped with woolen cloth and the price would have become very low; this would have been a major disaster.”

“I don’t yet see that it would have been a disaster, but be that as it may, you must agree that the result of the law has been to ensure that there has been less woolen cloth in France?”

“This has not been not only the result of the law but its aim.”

“Very well”, said I and I wrote in my notebook:

“On the admission of the manufacturer, for the last twenty-seven years there has been LESS WOOLEN CLOTH in France because of prohibition.”

It would take too long and be too monotonous to go into further detail on this curious voyage of economic exploration.

Suffice it to say that I visited in succession a shepherd who sold wool, a colonial plantation owner who sold sugar, a salt manufacturer, a potter, a shareholder in coalmines, a manufacturer of machines, farm implements and tools, and everywhere I obtained the same reply.

I returned home to review my notes and put them into order. I can do no better than to publish them here.

“For the last twenty-seven years, thanks to the laws imposed on the country by the Chamber with its double vote, there has been in France:

Less wheat,

Less meat,

Less wool,

Less coal,

Fewer candles,

Less iron,

Less steel,

Fewer machines,

Fewer ploughs,

Fewer tools,

Less woolen cloth,

Less canvas,

Less yarn,

Less calico,

Less salt,

Less sugar,

And less of all the things that are used to feed, clothe and house men, to furnish, heat and light their dwellings, and to fortify their lives.

By the Good Lord in Heaven, I cried, since this is the case, FRANCE HAS BEEN LESS WEALTHY.

In my soul and conscience, before God and men, on the memory of my father, mother and sisters, on my eternal salvation, by all that is dear, precious, sacred and holy on this earth and in the next, I believed that my conclusion was accurate.

And if anyone proves the contrary to me, not only will I abandon any argument on these subjects but I will abandon any argument on anything at all, for what trust might I place in any argument if I was unable to have confidence in this?

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Trump, Fauci, Pence – they and many other government officials deserve harsh criticism for covid lockdowns. But as this video by Rob Montz makes clear, especially harsh criticism was earned by Dr. Deborah Birx. (Scott Atlas, in contrast, is heroic.)

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George Will exposes the arrogance and folly of Biden’s EV diktats. Two slices:

Government’s language often radiates contempt for the governed, as when the Environmental Protection Agency recently said limits on automobile emissions in model years 2027-2032 will “give drivers more clean vehicle choices.” The regulations are, of course, explicitly intended to restrict consumers’ choices by forcing manufacturers to produce fewer cars that have tailpipe emissions. Drivers will be able to choose any vehicle they want — from the “clean” category government prefers. As Henry Ford reportedly said, the Model T would be available in “any color” the customer wants, “as long as it’s black.”

The Biden administration’s costly and coercive crusade to replace internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) with electric vehicles (EVs) is disproportionate to its minuscule climate impact. The American Enterprise Institute’s Benjamin Zycher says the EPA’s own assumptions project that the new regulations will mitigate global warming by 0.023 degrees Celsius by 2100. Because the standard deviation of the Earth’s surface temperature record is 0.11 degrees Celsius, “that effect would not be detectable.”

…..

Winter is unkind to EVs: Cold slows the batteries’ chemical reactions. Some drivers who joined lines at charging stations with (supposedly) ample miles of remaining battery capacity had to be pushed, after long waits (high-speed chargers are slow — 30 to 60 minutes — compared with five-minute gas fill-ups), to the chargers. Hot weather, too, makes the chemical reactions less efficient.

Spring, however, is Goldilocks season for EVs — neither too hot nor too cold. And soon, perhaps, government regulations will require temperatures to be mild, always and everywhere.

GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino observes that “the connection between CHIPS and Solyndra is stronger than you might think.”

Also from GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino is this exposé of Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-OH) almost comical ignorance – or hypocrisy.

Donald Devine explains how “big-government welfare crowds out beneficial social behavior.”

Reason‘s Eric Boehm reports on the gross disconnect between the reality of the U.S. tax burden and the public’s perception of that burden. A slice:

Other surveys show that many Americans have a low level of tax literacy. A recent survey conducted by the Tax Foundation found that “most Americans are not just unhappy with the current tax code but also do not understand it.” One commonly misunderstood aspect is how much the wealthiest Americans pay in taxes every year. In the Tax Foundation survey, 78 percent of respondents did not know the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans—but, tellingly, 65 percent of respondents said their own taxes were too high.

The most straightforward conclusion here is hardly a surprising one. Americans want someone else—preferably someone richer—to pay for the cost of government.

Here’s the good news: That’s already happening!

Bob Graboyes muses on “God, probability, time, and turpentine.”

The Acton Institute’s John Pinheiro praises profits earned in the free market.

David Henderson points out that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act reduces women’s freedom.

Juliette Sellgren talks with Matt Mitchell about socialism in Estonia.

Clark Packard and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon show that Washington’s lofty rhetoric is belied by its misguided economic policies. A slice:

And insofar as Biden’s opposition to the steel deal is for national security purposes, it clashes with the state of US‐​Japan defense cooperation, which has been close for decades and, as stated during the visit, is planned to increase in the coming years. Indeed, Japan hosts US military personnel and Department of Defense (DOD) civilians and their families and acquires more than 90 percent of its defense imports from the US; Japanese investors have not been of concern to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) (which is currently reviewing the Nippon‐​US Steel deal) since the 1980s; and Nippon Steel is no longer closely connected to the Japanese government. Twenty‐​three percent of the company is owned by non‐​Japanese entities.

In sum, most independent observers understand that Biden’s opposition is motivated by electoral politics—as is Donald Trump’s own opposition to the deal—and not economics or national security.

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… is from Thomas Jefferson’s Preamble to his 1778 “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge”:

Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

DBx: Jefferson was born on this date – April 13th – in 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia.

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GMU Econ alum Erik Matson shares some lessons from history on price controls. A slice:

Two of the [American] founders, James Wilson and John Witherspoon, had argued from the beginning of the discussions surrounding the Providence Plan in 1777 that price controls were a fool’s errand. Witherspoon argued that “laws are not almighty,” and “it is beyond the power of despotic princes to regulate the price of goods.” Wilson claimed, “there are certain things…which Absolute power cannot do.”

Witherspoon and Wilson’s shared skepticism flowed perhaps from their Scottish origins. Both men studied in Edinburgh and were acquainted with the works of David Hume. Hume argued at some length in the second and third volumes of his History of England that price controls under Edward II and Henry VII predictably failed to alleviate the scarcity of commodities and made matters worse. They also studied the price theories of Samuel Pufendorf and Francis Hutcheson, both of whom emphasized prices as outcomes of a market process. Witherspoon drew deeply from the works of Hutcheson when he developed his own course in moral philosophy at Princeton.

These lines of thinking from the Scottish Enlightenment (and also from the modern natural law tradition) conceive of prices as symptomatic of underlying economic realities—the relative scarcity, the risks and toils required to bring a good to market, and so forth. Efforts to change the underlying economic realities that cause prices by regulating the prices themselves have as little a chance of succeeding as efforts to change a room’s temperature by simply altering the numbers displayed on one’s thermometer.

It was Witherspoon who made this case at the greatest length, in his 1786 Essay on Money as a Medium of Commerce and in a little-known open letter he drafted—but never published—to George Washington in 1778. In the Essay, he reiterated points he made in the meetings of the Continental Congress in 1777, namely that high prices facing the states had come from an excess quantity of money, which caused price inflation, and a scarcity of goods caused by wartime conditions. In the letter to Washington, he pushed the analysis further, evincing a sophisticated understanding of the market process.

Here’s insight from Mike Munger. A slice:

In a system of commerce, information is provided by prices, which are emergent phenomena indicating the relative scarcity of resources. That is, commerce generates information about the value of resources, information possessed by literally no individual or group in the absence of prices. Prices are an objective manifestation of subjective preferences, giving people an idea of how much other people — people you haven’t met, and don’t know — want to use the resource. Low prices say “no one else wants this, go ahead and use it!” High prices say, “Stop and think about this, because other folks also value this resource. Do you really need it?”

Politics, by contrast, generates information based on the expression of votes, or notions of what people want to be true. The question of the value of resources is then decided by what most people — if the rule is majoritarian — happen to want to be true about the resource.

Imagine that I have in mind two materials from which I might construct a roof: wood and gold. Wood doesn’t last all that long, and the seams between pieces of wood leak. Gold, on the other hand, can be pounded out quite thin and does not rust or rot. Gold is clearly the better roofing material.

In a commercial system, when I go to the hardware store to buy roofing materials, I see that I can put on a wood roof for about $1,000, but the cost of gold to make the roof is $1,000,000. What gives? The answer is that the commercial system is telling me that there are other, better uses for gold, and that I should take account of the needs of others. Now, do I know the other uses of gold, or the identities of the other people who have uses for gold? I do not, but then I don’t need that kind of specific knowledge. The price is enough.  I buy the wood, and make the roof. The people who need gold are able to obtain it, and overall the society is better off.

Compare that to a political system. Remember, each of us believes — and, honestly, we’re right!  — that gold is a better roofing material, simply on the merits. We vote, and gold wins by a vote of 95 percent over 5 percent who prefer wood. But then we all try to make our roofs out of gold, only to discover that there is not nearly enough available. We blame the greed of the people who are “hoarding” gold, and send out the police to find who is hiding all of this roofing material. They are enemies of the people, and must be found and punished!

And here’s more insight from Arnold Kling. A slice:

I believe that when we look at our thick culture, we are like primitive people looking at nature. We interpret phenomena by invoking “climate change” or “artificial intelligence” or “social media” or “the science,” much in the way our ancestors invoked spirits to explain drought or sickness.

Jeff Yass has a question for Janet Yellen:

Regarding Thomas Duesterberg’s op-ed “China’s Flag Is Red, Not Green” (April 8): The Biden administration is moving toward reimposing Trump-era tariffs because Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is concerned about Chinese clean-energy subsidies. A question for Ms. Yellen: If $5 billion worth of solar panels washed up on our shores, would she destroy them to save U.S. jobs?

If a subsidy is bad, free stuff must be worse, according to her logic. But I thought climate change posed an existential risk to humanity?

Jeff Yass
Managing director and co-founder, Susquehanna International Group
Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

I very much enjoyed being interviewed by my long-time friend Reuvain Borchardt about the condition of American manufacturing. A slice:

You mentioned that there are protectionists on the right like Trump and on the left like Sanders. Prior to Trump, Democrats were more associated with unions and protectionism while Republicans were associated with free trade, but since 2016 it seems Republicans have become more protectionist. Do you think protectionism will remain in the Republican Party going forward regardless of who wins the presidential election this year?

No question about it.

But keep in mind that Republicans historically have been the party of protection while Democrats were the party of free trade, going back to the early days of the Republican Party in the mid-19th century. And the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was signed in 1930 by Herbert Hoover, a Republican president.

That only started to change in the postwar period. By the way, Ronald Reagan talked a better game on trade than he played, due to political compromises. But certainly, from the 1970s through George W. Bush, the Republicans had a legitimate claim to be regarded as the party most favorable to free trade, and it was the Democrats, largely because of their union connections, who were the party of protection.

Now, unfortunately, one of those parties — the GOP — is returning to its protectionist roots, but the other is not returning to its free-trade roots. Historically, one party was the party for protectionism and the other was the party for free trade. Now, for the first time since at least the Civil War, both major parties are explicitly and enthusiastically for protectionism.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, decries the dissolution of what the late GMU Econ Nobel laureate James Buchanan called ‘the old time fiscal religion.’

Kimberlee Josephson explains that antitrust is anti-consumer. A slice:

Business forecasting is a difficult task, and reality rarely goes according to plan, but the government seems confident that it can predict winners and losers in today’s marketplace. What the government seems to be forgetting, however, is that American firms compete on a global scale and their status is never guaranteed. In fact, Apple no longer has the top spot as the favored phone brand in China, and the adoption rate of Huawei’s smartphone globally will likely result in a ripple effect for downloads derived from Huawei’s AppGallery rather than the App Store. So much for Apple’s walled garden.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal reports that green ‘energy’ is costly. A slice:

The nearby chart shows the average change in electricity prices over the last decade. Electric rates remained relatively flat in the seven years before President Biden took office, rising 5%. Thank cheap natural gas. Yet since January 2021 electricity prices have soared 29.4%—about 50% more than overall inflation.

By our calculation, electricity prices have increased 13 times faster under Mr. Biden than across the previous seven years. His policies aren’t entirely to blame. But most of it is a result of the left’s climate agenda, and the price increases will get worse.

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… is from page 263 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates:

Whenever there is a proposal for a tax cut, media pundits demand to know how you are going to pay for it. But when there are proposals for more spending on social programs, those same pundits are strangely silent.

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My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, is not impressed with Janet Yellen’s comprehension of some basic facts about trade.

Dan Ikenson shares, in Forbes, some important facts about trade. Two slices:

No single country in the world attracts more foreign direct investment than the United States. And no country’s businesses have invested more in the United States than Japan’s. That should be cause for celebration and flute-clinking in Washington this week, where President Biden is hosting Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. But Biden’s opposition to Nippon Steel’s proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel has rendered discussion of cross-border investment a bit uncomfortable.

…..

In fact, a 2022 analysis found that, without the participation of foreign companies in the United States, U.S. manufacturing GDP would have been 8.4% to 20.9% ($177 billion-$463 billion) smaller than it was in 2019.

Let’s hope that George Will is correct that the “intensity of the debate about abortion policy is waning”. A slice:

Robert Nisbet, a philosophically sophisticated sociologist who provided intellectual ballast to conservatism in the second half of the 20th century, considered it incoherent for conservatives to make opposition to abortion a fundamental tenet of their doctrine. He said “the major theme of Western conservatism” is “the preservation, to the extent feasible, of the autonomy of social groups against the state.” And particularly the preservation of “the family’s authority over its own.”

Abortion has been considered an intractably divisive issue because it supposedly was not amenable to the basic business of politics: the splitting of differences. Nisbet noted, however, that “there is no record of any religion, including Christianity, ever pronouncing an accidental miscarriage as a death to be commemorated in prayer and ritual.” This, Nisbet implied, indicates an ancient, durable and widespread cultural tendency to say this: Societies that assert an interest in protecting life before birth are not required, by custom or a settled, articulated logic, to ban all deliberate terminations of pregnancies.

GMU Econ alum Adam Michel reports that “president Biden would make the US a tax rate outlier” – and not in a good way. A slice:

The Biden tax hikes would primarily fall on capital income, leading to less domestic investment, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth. According to estimates from the Tax Foundation, the budget proposal would reduce long‐​run GDP by 2.2 percent, hurt wages, and eliminate 788,000 jobs. This is likely a significant understatement of the negative economic effects. The analysis notes that the budget’s proposals will make America an international outlier on individual and corporate taxes.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal shares news of the dismaying ignorance of many Americans about the ‘distribution’ of the tax burden. A slice:

President Biden and Democratic tax raisers always say the rich don’t pay their “fair share.” Maybe one reason this line works politically is that most voters have no idea who really pays how much in taxes.

“To the best of your knowledge,” asked a new poll, “how much do you think the top 1% of taxpayers by income account for in terms of share of total federal income taxes paid: 1%, 12%, 42%, or 64%?”

The correct answer, as of 2020, is 42%. But less than a quarter of those surveyed guessed right. Twenty-two percent (including more than a third of Democrats) thought the top 1% of taxpayers paid only 1% of income taxes, which is wildly off the mark. Twenty-five percent suggested it was 12% of revenue. Nineteen percent shrugged and said they weren’t sure. As a communications strategy, Republicans could apparently do worse than simply repeat the official IRS data over and over.

The survey, sponsored by the Tax Foundation and conducted by Public Policy Polling, included nearly 2,800 registered voters, and it has other findings in a similar vein. A plurality of respondents, 40%, liked the idea of increasing the child tax credit. But 25% also said that they thought a tax credit and a tax deduction are the same thing. Another 20% incorrectly believed that a deduction is more valuable than a credit, and 19% weren’t sure.

Art Carden explains that “the middleman is a public servant.” A slice:

Is the middleman a devious villain preying on unsuspecting sellers from whom he can buy low and unsuspecting buyers to whom he can sell high? Hardly. The middleman creates wealth even though he doesn’t make anything. He makes his money by helping people who testify that they are better off by the very act of dealing with him. The middleman helps people in two ways that are hard to see but that are not, therefore, unimportant. Someone who buys an antique lamp at a yard sale for $2 helps out someone who wants to clean out the garage or attic or who needs cash now to take care of a medical emergency or cover expenses after losing a job. Even if selling the lamp for $2 is the best among bad options, the person selling the lamp reveals that the alternatives are even worse.

Graham Walker talks with Bill Evers and Phil Magness about Trump’s tariffs, Sacramento’s assault on the California labor market, and more.

My GMU Econ colleague Tyler Cowen discusses his assessment of who are the greatest economists of all time.

“Inflation is so back.”

Dan McLaughlin is correct: “Elizabeth Warren isn’t actually very smart.” A slice:

[Megan] McArdle published a longer critique of Warren’s scholarship in theAtlantic in 2010. Regarding Warren’s book The Two-Income Trap, for example, “some of her evidence doesn’t really support her thesis, and can be made to appear to support her thesis only by making some very weird choices about what metrics to use. . . . These are obvious issues she should have dealt with, . . . but they considerably weaken her thesis, and she doesn’t have a good answer for them. That’s a pattern I see over and over in her work.” In a follow-up on that book, McArdle asked, “Does it matter if we have a regulator who can use data consistently? . . . I don’t know which is worse: the notion that Elizabeth Warren understood what she was doing, or the notion that she didn’t.”

Jay Bhattacharya tweets:

The only difference between the tyrannical censorship of social media dissent by that Brazillian judge and the Biden American censorship machine is that the American courts have, so far, ruled Biden’s tyranny tyrannical. I hope the US Supreme Court agrees.

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… is from page 2 of Douglas Irwin’s excellent 1996 monograph Three Simple Principles of Trade Policy:

Any restraint on imports also acts, in effect, as a restraint on exports. The converse of this proposition is also true: when a government undertakes policies to expand the volume of exports, it cannot help but to expand the volume of imports as well.

DBx: Protectionists are uneasy with this reality – understandably so given that they regard exports as blessings in and of themselves and imports as unfortunate costs to be endured only if and insofar as these better enable the home country to export. In contrast, people who understand economics look with favor upon both exports and imports, the former being a useful means to obtain as many as possible of the latter.