'Free-Market' Conservatives Welcome Their New Protectionist Overlord

[EasyAce]

Even Larry Kudlow is calling Trump's tariffs a "growth action."
By Matt Welch
http://reason.com/blog/2018/04/04/free-market-conservatives-welcome-their

Today, the Republican president of the United States made the kind of economically illiterate argument that Republicans have been mocking for longer than I've been alive: "When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!"

Trump was referring here to his mutually threatened trade war with China, which minutes before this tweet he had insisted "

We are not in," because "that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S." You can't fight a war you've already lost, and so that's why we must fight, amirite?! (Also, the U.S. trade deficit with China

isn't close to $500 billion; the president is once again pulling scary-sounding trade stats out of his arse.)

Conservatives used to know damn well that trade deficits don't matter, budget deficits do; not vice-versa. Here's Uncle Milton Friedman making the succinct case about that, and against steel tariffs,
40 years ago. But now that a populist protectionist has taken over the GOP and the White House, that new song is getting sung

right out loud . . .

. . . We have already seen opportunistic heel-turns on trade from the likes of Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, and Stephen Moore, as well as a big opinion-shift among the Republican electorate (Democrats, bless their hearts, are already there). But could we be witnessing the same pattern from new Economic Council Director and lifelong free trader Larry Kudlow?

Let's hope not. But today, Kudlow was certainly whistling a different tune on China from the White House than he did from his CNBC desk during the Obama administration . . .

[DB]

There's no short cut for competing in business.

Barriers never work long term. Protected industry just ends up in a time warp of the past.

[jmyrlefuller]

There's no short cut for competing in business.

Barriers never work long term. Protected industry just ends up in a time warp of the past.

As opposed to a future in which sweatshop-tolerant nations can drive our standard of living down to theirs.

[DB]

As opposed to a future in which sweatshop-tolerant nations can drive our standard of living down to theirs.

You mean like Japan, India, Mexico... Etc...

Sweatshop tolerant nations don't last long in that stage. It is part of the growing process to get out of poverty. Those sweatshops lead to more wealth which in turn leads to higher living standards where individuals have more choices and can start making demands of the employer and win them. Japan was in the same boat in the mid 50's and 60's. Countries don't just jump from dirt poor to a Western style capitalist economy.

Now that the Chinese have produced some wealth they are demanding better working and environmental conditions. In doing so the cost to produce things in China is going up. As they catch up to the rest of the Western world they're costs will start to equalize with us. Japan went through the same process. Enjoy the lower cost of some things while you can. They won't last because the world is running out of underdeveloped country labor sources. In time Chinese economic freedom is going to collide with Chinese one size fits all rigid government. In addition a good chunk of that new found wealth has been squandered on state run top down projects that were useless.

I also find it interesting when free people think they can't compete with political slaves. There's a reason why a free American people have driven the wealth of the world.

[INVAR]

Of course Trumplicans embrace their new protectionist overlord.

They have already set the precedent for doing so: