on April 5, 2025
Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
James Freeman (“Will Trump Take Yes for an Answer?”) shares the Journal’s report that
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said that he hopes President Trump’s tariffs work as leverage to get other countries to quickly lower trade barriers, which could spark an economic boom.
It would indeed be good for other countries to lower their trade barriers in exchange for the U.S. lowering its barriers. (By the way, it would also be good for us Americans to lower our trade barriers regardless of what other countries do.) But even if – or especially if – the improbable occurs and many countries do lower (rather than raise) their trade barriers, the results will satisfy neither Pres. Trump nor the “national conservatives” who strive to supply his protectionism with intellectual cover.
Pres. Trump would be dissatisfied with globally freer trade because it would fail both to reduce America’s trade deficit with the world and to achieve Mr. Trump’s bizarre desire for the U.S. to have “balanced” trade with each and every country.
National conservatives would be dissatisfied with globally freer trade because it would not bring about the imagined economic utopia – which in reality would be a dystopia – of a larger manufacturing sector with more manufacturing jobs. With freer trade, Americans would continue to increasingly specialize in high-end, high-paying tasks, further expanding jobs in the service sector and reducing jobs in manufacturing. Although almost all Americans would be enriched by this development, it would offend the aesthetic sensibilities of the economically and historically clueless NatCons. As such, this anti-intellectual vanguard for Trumpian protectionism would agitate to reverse it.
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
