Posted on 03/09/2018 5:41:32 AM PST by Oklahoma
Whenever you hear any of these arguments against free trade, you will have answers. The arguments against free-trade all have this in common: they rely on coercion by the government. All of them rely on a concept of the legitimacy of government agents with badges and guns who have the moral authority and legal right to stick a gun in the belly of one or more people who want to make a voluntary transaction. The government tells these people that they do not have the moral right or the legal authority to make such a transaction.
Think of two men: Jones and Smith. Jones wants to make a voluntary transaction with Smith. Brown is in competition against Smith. He does not want Jones to have a legal right to buy from Smith, because Smith offers lower prices, better quality, or some other advantage which Brown either does not want to offer or is not in a position to offer.
Brown goes to the government and demands that Smith not be allowed to make this offer to Jones. He does so in the name of national prosperity. He persuades the government that any price-competitive offer from Smith to Jones will reduce the wealth of the nation. Therefore, he insists, the government has to send out someone with a badge and a gun to stop this kind of trade.
There is one other factor: an invisible line, called a border, which separates Jones and Smith. It is a legal border. It regulates who gets into the country, or who has a right to vote in the country, or who has the right to stay in the country.
In this case, Jones lives in the United States. So does Brown. Smith lives in Canada.
Certain borders in the United States and in most countries have no economic relevance to trade. Borders between counties have little or no economic relevance. Borders between states have little or no economic relevance. In fact, the Constitution of the United States was written by a group of participants who specifically had been assembled in Philadelphia in order to deal with the question of tariff barriers between states. The 1786 Annapolis Convention had been called to deal with this. It had failed. The Philadelphia Convention was the follow-up meeting. This is why the Constitution prohibits any tariffs established by state governments. The United States is a gigantic free-trade zone. It is unconstitutional for any state to impose tariffs against the imports from other states.
The only state border that is guarded is California's, and the justification for this is the protection of California agriculture from fruit flies and other bugs that might be attached to agricultural products that people carry in their cars into the state. This justification is entirely bogus. The border patrol system is the remnant of an illegal restriction on people from other states coming into the state during the Great Depression in the mid-1930s. The Supreme Court declared these restrictions unconstitutional. But, once the border patrol set up the restrictive barriers, it did not want to take them down. Those people wanted to keep their jobs. So, the legislature invented a new excuse for restricting entry into the state: fruit flies. The border patrol people all kept their jobs. The bureaucracy still exists 80 years later -- a welfare program.
Tariff barriers and other import quotas that are established for any purposes other than revenue generation assume that the invisible line known as the national border is completely different, economically speaking, from all of the other invisible lines, also called borders, that exist inside the nation. No one accepts any of the arguments for restricting trade across the internal borders. Yet they accept these arguments with respect to national borders.
These articles detail the economic reasons why arguments in favor of restrictions on voluntary trade across the invisible lines known as borders are invalid from an economic point of view. These pro-tariff arguments are deceptive. They lead to policies which reduce most people's freedom, and most people's wealth.
Most of these arguments have been around for well over two centuries. Most of the arguments in favor of restrictions on trade have been around in the West for over 300 years. They promote a system called mercantilism.
Adam Smith became famous in 1776 for his arguments against mercantilism. His book, The Wealth of Nations, is a treatise against tariffs and import quotas. Nevertheless, millions of people who claim to be defenders of the free market, and who think they are followers of Adam Smith, hold exactly the positions that Adam Smith wrote his book to refute. It is one more case of self-interest and bad economic logic combining to confuse millions of voters.
Still, on the whole, the arguments in favor of free trade since 1960 have been persuasive in the United States. Most of the tariff barriers have come down. Most of the import quotas have come down. Democrats and Republicans have generally agreed that free trade is better for America than managed trade, at least with respect to imports.
Congressmen believe in mercantilism with respect to government subsidies for exports. This is completely illogical economically, given the case for free trade.
There is still managed trade by international bureaucracies, most notably the World Trade Organization. Another one is NAFTA. These organizations are not in favor of free trade. They are in favor of bureaucratically managed trade. I am not a defender of these organizations.
If you think you have an argument in favor of tariffs, send it to me. I will use it to write another article. There are always more bad arguments against free trade that I have failed to cover. But most of them are variations of a handful. They all boil down to this: "Government agents with badges and guns make us richer by restricting our choices."
That’s profound coming from a Big Union man.
Union? I’ve never been in union and I don’t even know anyone in a union except for some Fed Gov types I am friends with.
Tariffs represent small government intrusion. The income tax OTH,now that is government intrusion on steroids.
Rep. Markwayne Mullin: Trump isn’t starting a trade war, he’s helping to restore ‘Made in America’!
President Trump isn’t starting a trade war, and if you think he is—you’re blind to the fact that we are already in the middle of one.
Last year, the United States grew its trade deficit to $566 billion. The president is bringing everyone to the negotiating table. After the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act last December, we now have one of the most competitive tax codes in the world. It’s important that we use it to our advantage when it comes to trading goods with other countries. While other countries will continue to look out for their own best interests, I’m grateful President Trump is looking out for ours.
When our car manufacturers market cars in China, there is a 25 percent tariff added to the cost. This is not free or fair trade. However, China believes they shouldn’t be paying tariffs on products that come to the United States. Other countries feel similarly. The trade deals these countries operate under are drastically in their favor. These countries want free trade when it comes to trading with the United States, but they do not extend the same to us when we try to sell products to their countries. They claim they do this in order to protect their working class. Shouldn’t we be doing the same?
Excerpted, go to link below for full story!
And now you have even higher taxes. Well done, big government conservative. Bigger government will save us from big government.
I want more tariffs and less income taxes. That is Conservative by anyone’s standards.
Your talking points come straight from the AFL-CIO and have been all along. Admit it. Is it the Teamsters? United Mine Workers? United Steel Workers?
You’ve admitted in the past you are not a Conservative. Have you ever voted for a Conservative candidate for President? Reagan, Goldwater, Forbes, Du Pont or Cruz? How many democrats have you voted for in the past?
If someone advocated forcing everyone to buy only Union made goods would you be in favor? What about forcing everyone to join a Union?
Since Mullin is in the plumbing and HVAC business he will soon find out the cost of his materials will rise because of these tariffs.
Trade balances are a worthless measure because they essentially nearly always are self-balancing. The only way they aren’t is if we go to war and not honor the US Bonds and Notes the Chinese are holding.
So, allowing other Nations to hold a gun to our belly is a good thing and us deciding to not let them do it is a bad thing - OK, I feel educated now.....false meme comparing other Nations to our own States.
To ignore the Mr. North’s arguments for a minute, do you remember how ludicrously wrong he was over Y2K? He made an industry out of scare-mongering, completely embarrassing in hindsight.
That is the point. The alternative we face is not between tariffs and free trade, it is between tariffs and a rigged system.
The economic differences across our State borders are limited (although growing). But the differences between the economic conditions in different nations are vast. Take the US and China for the most important example. How about health and safety regulations for workers, minimum wages, environmental restrictions, foreign ownership restrictions, enforcement of contract and intellectual property rights, the need for governmental approvals, corruption... the list goes on and on.
Free trade extremists like this tend to ignore the negative effects of other forms of taxation. Tariffs are a form of taxation that have certain negative effects such as raising prices on consumers (but hopefully also some benefits which are the reason we are imposing them) but there are also negative effects of sales taxes and income taxes for example. Yet the free trade extremists don’t jump out of their skins to attack these other forms of taxation.
This point borders on idiotic. Restricting trade across state borders is specifically prohibited under the U.S. Constitution.
I don’t think it’s possible to have real free trade between individual citizens of different countries and still have countries with borders as we know them.
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater, speech accepting nomination for president, Republican national convention, San Francisco, California (July 16, 1964).
What right do you have to tell me when or how to spend my money, or anyone else? Liberty is the ability of individuals to determine their own path to either prosperity or poverty.
And once again we revisit why tariffs across state lines were made unconstitutional. Tariff duties in the individual states were being used as protective tariffs.
“This guy is wrong on so many counts.”
He’s guilty of being a shallow thinker...
What would real free trade look like among countries? It would mean that each one of us would be able to voluntarily buy and sell goods and services from and to individuals of every other country and they would be able to do the same. That would require there are no border restrictions in the movement of goods and services and thus people. That means you have no borders. That means you have no countries.
So what he’s advocating is the dissolution of countries, and in actuality government itself, because even within one country the government imposes a meriad of rules and regulations on transactions between individuals and entities.
So, bottom line, he’s advocating worldwide anarchy.
Do you also want a pony?
Since tariffs are taxes, the conservative position would be to want less of both. But don't worry, government is there to protect you.
A Republic, if you can keep it.....
Citing that Goldwater quote to support a national "free trade" policy might explain why the guy was a disastrous presidential candidate.
What right do you have to tell me when or how to spend my money, or anyone else? Liberty is the ability of individuals to determine their own path to either prosperity or poverty.
That's exactly the kind of attitude that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and every "sanctuary city" mayor in this country uses to justify themselves as they promote a massive Latin American invasion of the U.S.
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