I really don't understand all this support for the trump tariffs. This is just a tax on us. Conservatives are supposed to be against taxes. And so far the results aren't good. The steel industry is a good example of this, lots of layoffs after the trump tariffs.
Steel layoffs in US mount due to falling production and trade war
So we are already seeing the failings of this policy. Tariffs are always a bad idea. Every economist knows these, they are just a political game:
Reagan knew they were bad policy:
Here is one of the greatest small government economists:
One argument I keep hearing is people claiming tariffs work great for Europe and China. That is not at all true, Europe has never had a stronger economy than us, how is that working? China hasn't been successful because of tariffs, they have over a billion people and went from a communist economy to discovering capitalism. Of course they have been growing quickly. Certainly conservatives still know capitalism is better than communism? China will implode soon on it's own due to demographics and pollution. Soon they will have way too many elderly that aren't working, and they will have to cleam up the pollution mess.
It is still clear that free trade is the way. So why the confusion?
I see what you did here....Appeal to authority, with a twist....Appeal to the authority figures of those you hope to persuade...An effective technique, if it can be pulled off without raising the suspicion that you're not just trying to be manipulative or show people up....I'm here to tell you that you've failed in that effort.
"Tariffs don't work!" is a very familiar cry, amongst free market economic types...One that I would agree is true in a vast majority, if not all, of historical contexts.
But there's also another bromide that is tossed around by many of these same economists; the idea that you can freely trade with oppressed peoples, and somehow or another the influx of wealth will cause them to become dissatisfied with, and possibly overthrow, their oppressors....This economic presumption has been proven -at least in the case with China- to have been tragically wrong.....In fact, free trade with China has given its communist regime the financial wherewithal to be an even more odious oppressor, which has rounded up over a million of an ethnic and religions minority -the Uighurs- and thrown them into brutal concentration camps...And, for the sake of brevity, I'm not even going to go into China's blatant currency manipulations and use of American tech companies to become an even more heavy-handed tyrant towards its relatively "free" population.
So are tariffs the right or wrong thing to do in this context?....Well, I can say those three little words that big shot economist have such a hard time saying : "I don't know"...But, to quote another big time free marketer/libertarian icon, Ayn Rand: Check your premise.