As even recent readers of GraniteGrok know, I like short (er, mostly short) snippets of what someone has said or written that make what I think is an important idea that I label as “Notable Quote”. Many are just a couple of sentences – a few have multiple paragraphs but in either format, express ideas I think are thought provoking and I hope that you do think about them. I used to just put them up and then walk away – lately, I’ve been adding a few thoughts BECAUSE they provoked thoughts in me as well.
This one is in video format and it isn’t because it provoked a thought. Most of my Notable Quote posts come from Cafe Hayek, named after F.A. Hayek a famous economist that was also a big promoter of Individuals having the most amount of Freedom possible making the decisions in the Economy instead of, as our free 6 month free trial of Socialism has shown us, Government making them (thus, what I consider a most important question of “Who Chooses?”):
Professor Don Boudreaux is the source of a lot of those quotes but his blog, Cafe Hayek has more than just those snippets. What has been made sure is, however, that he is an Absolutist when it comes to free trade and that any kind of protectionism or government subsidies are both bad and harmful. ANY President, and Trump has certainly drawn his ire over this, that uses protectionism deserves all the opprobrium that can be mustered. Free trade makes everybody and every other country participating in it wealthier. Anything short of that is bad.
I tended to agree in general but not when what seems to be free trade isn’t. When other countries charge higher taxes / tariffs on our goods going to them than what their goods cost here, that’s not free trade even if the other country is subsidizing their goods. Like the phrase “if you are going to kill the King, KILL THE KING”, if you are to have free trade, make it free trade both ways otherwise it isn’t.
Boudreax has had his panties in a wad since Trump started to lay in the tariffs, especially on China. I understood what Trump was doing while Boudreaux (even as being smarter than I) and many Free Trade based Republicans (even if it was just lip service) was not protectionism but economic warfare against those that had been doing so for a long time. Most people didn’t get (and still don’t) that Trump’s use of tariffs was just as valid a weapon of war as a missile, jet, tank or aircraft carrier – they were being used not to protect an industry but to get China to a free trade deal (best case of no tariffs either way) or at least break their mercantilism outlook and practices (e.g., we win and we make everyone else subservient to us).
This became particularly clear to me when high ranking Chinese officials threatened to withhold medicinal pre-cursors (to which they have an almost monopolistic hold on that industry) from our Pharma companies. During a pandemic. Which proved Trump’s point that warfare is not just waged by weapons of war. Warfare is first won economically – and economics he knows well (if not academically but viscerally as a successful “street brawler” in the application of economics).
So I was rather surprised to him actually admit that when it comes to the self-defense of America, exceptions are valid. We need those capability here to make and innovate that kind of material because one can never trust another country to stay on our good side. Remember, countries have interests, not friends – and those interests can change mighty fast.
But it should be just limited to just “weapons of war” – there are other things that are needed, just like this pandemic showed and for when those countries that were the best providers of those products became less willing to sell to America (like PPE), we got caught with our pants down. I tend to be on the side that China did create that virus and then unleashed it on the rest of the world. I also believe that they’ve continued to lie to the world – how could a nation that had severe problems in Wuhan province be reporting just 26 deaths / day in a population of over a billion when far SMALLER countries are reporting more? It just isn’t passing the smell test.
Anyways, I thought it was interesting the the Free Trade Absolutist was willing to admit that Free Trade isn’t Absolute in a given case even as he caged / couched it in somewhat other terms. This, to me, is one of the great problems with Libertarians, like Prof Boudreaux, that believe Free Trade makes all countries “friendlier” and that we wouldn’t need as much of a military as we do now. He’s also of the mind that if material and services trade should be freely exchanged across borders, people, too, should be able to do so as well (eg., like the EU). Sorry, I don’t buy into that either, but I digress.
To my Libertarian Free Trade friends, I simply point out that our Navy keeps the shipping lanes open for ALL nations for trading purposes…
…would China, given their belligerence towards us and their open plans to replace us as the lone Superpower in the world? Would they just blithely continue our policy?
First I get stares, and then slowly I hear “perhaps not”.
And that’s all I can ask for
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
