Category archive: Trade

Progressives’ Faulty Conception of ‘Progress’

By Chuck Rogér Why do today’s liberals refer to themselves as “progressive?” For a possible answer, let’s lift a quote from one of my favorite libertarians and fellow Cajun, George Mason economist Don Boudreaux. In describing liberals’ (and some conservatives’) opposition to free trade, Boudreaux offers observations on which we may build in order to [...]

What Trade Protectionists Really Fear?

By Chuck Rogér The “fair trade” crowd fears inescapable economic realities. Concerning those realities, economist Michael Spence recently observed: Globalization is the process by which markets integrate worldwide. Over the past 60 years, it has accelerated steadily as new technologies and management expertise have reduced transportation and transaction costs and as tariffs and other man-made [...]

Politicians and Foreign Trade: An Unholy Combination

By Chuck Rogér Do politicians influence how Americans feel about foreign trade? In other words, can a politician, hell-bent on reelection, lie convincingly enough to whip voters into a frenzy against China, who surely is “stealing” American jobs? Would voters fall for politicians who promise to ”save American jobs?” Let’s look at a table containing data [...]

Originally in American Thinker, April 25, 2011 By Chuck Rogér After a recent phone conversation with Donald Trump, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer concluded that The Donald is “absolutely” serious about seeking the GOP Presidential nomination.  That’s unfortunate.  The illiberal media will have a field day with Mr. Trump’s flawed ideas on free trade. In January, [...]

Why worry over the ‘trade deficit’?

You hear it all the time. We’re getting killed by China! We need to stop shipping jobs overseas. Neither complaint holds water when viewed against global trade’s economic effects on America. Working off an inventory of topics which I’ve been collecting, I reach back to a September 2010 post by Cato Institute’s Daniel Griswold for an [...]

Anatomy of a trade war: Stop shooting me or I shall shoot myself

Capitol Hill politicians of both animal types, jackasses and elephants, have a tendency to escalate America’s economic problems with their tinkering–as if we need that right now. Tinkering with free trade can start full-blown trade wars, and sometimes real wars, to “protect American jobs.” Tariffs, reprisal tariffs, and reprisal-to-reprisal tariffs, the whole destructive bit. With [...]

The ‘lost jobs’ fallacy and global trade

“Trade” is a behavior through which two or more parties gain mutual benefit. In other words, if the participants weren’t benefiting somehow, the “trade” in question would not be occurring. With that preface, here is the sacrilegious statement for the week. “Buy American!” is bunk. Sacrilegious corollary: Global trade is good. “Buy American” is merely [...]

The ‘lost jobs’ fallacy

Yesterday’s post, “Are union bosses and liberal politicians who whine about ‘lost jobs’ being dishonest or just clueless?” generated an interesting response from a reader who wrote, Everything that we buy pretty much comes from China with rare exceptions. I suppose Ford is still in business, but computers, televisions, phones, radios, toys, utensils, and pretty [...]

Actually, the typical free-market interferer is a combination of a truth-twisting ideologue, ignoramus, and fool. A fundamental element of the union mentality onto which liberals have hitched their political wagons has always been the call to “protect” American jobs. In the union boss’s mind, a company that is losing money must be forced to keep [...]

The free market inspires behavior that government cannot legislate

Psychonomics 101: No government can force humans to behave “fairly” toward one another. But allowed to develop mutually-interdependent relationships, humans figure things out on their own. In the journal Science, researchers report that economic markets draw out the fairest behaviors in people dependent on one another within those markets. Specifically, a market requires than in [...]