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I am simply astonished at the lack of understanding of basic economics and trade by at least the vocal population of Free Republic. It is a sad day when those posting on this thread find themselves in agreement with socialists like Bernie and Hillary.

I happen to think that Von Mises and Milton Friedman are the proper guides for real conservatives. Instead we get Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Trump giving us their uninformed, populist, politically corrupt guidance.

Here is von Mises on tariffs in a nutshell:

""All that a tariff can achieve is to divert production from those locations in which the output per unit of input is higher to locations in which it is lower. It does not increase production; it curtails it."

- Ludwig von Mises
(Human Action, p. 737; p. 744)".

If you don't know who von Mises is then read the following comment he made about tariffs. He is correct. Hillary, Bernie and Donald are wrong.

Thank you, InterceptPoint -- this needed to be said. I thought FR was a bastion of liberty, but it seems the majority now wants to have the government control significant aspects of the economy, much more than we already have. To whatever extent we move even more towards a command economy, we'll get a corresponding reduction in both economic growth and personal freedom.

The freer trade is, the more our standard of living improves. Even when other countries impose tariffs, we're still better off not imposing tariffs ourselves. (And we would outshine them economically, which would be quite convincing in the long term.) Yes, I would rather have true free trade than these long managed trade agreements, but making trade even less free would make things worse.

The political issue is that each tariff benefits a very small number of people immediately, but hurts everybody else (a much large number of people) indirectly. The sum total of the costs far exceeds the total of the benefits, but the costs are spread around, so they're not as obvious as the (much smaller) benefits.

With a large number of tariffs, the costs for almost everybody exceed the benefits, since even if a tariff benefits you, you'll only be benefited by at most one of the tariffs (and most people wouldn't even be benefited by any of the tariffs at all).

Establishing tariffs also runs the risk of starting a trade war. Some people seem to like this prospect because they think a trade war would just hit other countries or "evil" corporations, but in fact a trade war would hurt the US economically.

Incidentally, it's not just government restrictions on trade that are the issue -- there are other so-called conservative voices pushing for a greater government role in the economy. FR these days seems to be in favor of requiring a government permit to get a job. Illegal immigration is a major problem, but undermining the natural rights of American citizens is not the solution. What if you get on the no-work list? Do we really think this will be any better run or more transparent than the TSA's no-fly list?