Yes, Tariffs Are Still Stupid. Here's Why.

[EasyAce]

By Ben Shapiro
https://www.dailywire.com/news/28302/yes-tariffs-are-still-stupid-heres-why-ben-shapiro

Yes, free trade is good.

On Thursday, The Journal of American Greatness, an outlet devoted to President Trump’s purported philosophy, printed an article by Spencer Morrison, a law student and editor-in-chief of the National Economics Editorial. The article is an attempt to rebut the chief conceits of free trade, and in particular, knock down my objections to President Trump’s fondness for tariffs. It’s titled “Why Ben Shapiro is Wrong on Free Trade.”

The reality is that my arguments on free trade have been supported by every major free market economist in history, but I do appreciate the central billing . . .

. . . Morrison first misrepresents my argument in the video: he says that I’m pro-trade deficit, when in reality, I merely explain in the video that trade deficits are an irrelevant economic statistic (neither good per se nor bad per se) and that some countries that run trade deficits do just fine, while some that run trade surpluses don’t . . .

. . . Morrison also claims that I’ve called Trump a flip-flopper on free trade. I have assuredly never done that – it’s perhaps the one policy Trump has been most consistent on throughout his career. Consistently wrong, that is . . .

. . . [T]he argument Morrison makes is for total state control of the economy. If we can simply pick the best industries and subsidize them, we should obviously do that. Why not just embrace mercantilism?

This doesn’t work for a few reasons . . . Impoverishing your profit sectors through tariffs in order to dump money into non-competitive industries impoverishes your country as a whole. Economic flexibility requires that the government not impede the free flow of capital within industries . . . If your government picks and chooses which industries to prop up, you’re now suggesting that centralized knowledge of the economy is better than decentralized knowledge, which is the very basis of a socialized economy as a whole. Why not dump the pretense and just suggest that the American taxpayer subsidize specialized industries to the tunes of billions? Tariffs is merely a dishonest way to achieve the same goal . . .