Economists love to describe tradeoffs (“on the one hand….on the other hand”), so much so that a frustrated Harry Truman once asked for a one-armed economist. So I appreciated how your recent article (“Hillsdale Professors Discuss Tariffs,” Feb. 13) represented the many nuanced considerations about the Trump Administration’s rapidly evolving tariff policy. But as someone quoted in the article, I want to restate my own bottom-line view more clearly. The policy is a mistake. 

In principle, yes: Tariffs can give negotiating leverage to achieve overall freer trade.  Whether that will work — and in particular, work better than the postwar multilateral approach — is a question of political prudence. Intelligent people can absolutely disagree about this.  But I think we should be clear-eyed. This policy risks setting off cycles of mutually destructive retaliation and costly renegotiation.  And as long as tariffs are in place they harm not only American consumers but also businesses with international supply chains, including defense firms, whom it seems extremely perverse to harm right now. Even on-again-off-again tariffs impose crippling uncertainty on businesses, delaying hiring and investment decisions. And the impact on our political culture will be dire: Businesses and legislators are already supplicating the White House for special exemptions from the latest blizzard of tariffs.  Presidents will surely wield this kind of discretion to our cost if we normalize it now. 

Finally, I would like to say something on behalf of the foreigner, from whom we are not to withhold justice. The world being imperfect, sometimes our least bad courses of action hurt foreigners for things their leaders do beyond their control.  But the bar for doing that surely should be high. We ourselves would want to be treated with a measure of grace in similar circumstances — for instance, for not fully controlling the smuggling of guns across the northern border to Canadian criminals.  Were the first tariffs, for instance, really the only diplomatic tool to address the modest amounts of fentanyl coming from Canada, or the much greater amounts coming through Mexico, a much less capable state?  Had those governments really so wronged us that we were justified in disrupting the livelihoods of millions of peaceable people?  I don’t claim the answer is indubitably clear. But we should always be asking that question, for their sake as well as our own. 

 

Christopher Martin is an associate professor of economics at Hillsdale College.