Will Trump’s Tariffs Spell the End of Free Markets?

The short answer: no. But the new and upcoming tariffs certainly don’t help matters, here or abroad. I tackle that question in a piece for Inside Sources:

The president’s threats must be fought, but the good news is America’s fundamental institutions will withstand Trumpian bluster. For one thing, our economy remains a powerhouse. America’s $19 trillion economy already withstands an annual $1.9 trillion in annual regulatory costs from Washington. On top of that, Trump’s tariffs will cost “only” a few billion dollars. In short, the economy is dragging along a big, deadweight burden, but it can still get the job done…

Even in trade, where the Trump administration poses the greatest threat to free enterprise, America has been liberalizing for more than 75 years. The Smoot-Hawley tariff bill of 1930 raised America’s average tariff to more than 60 percent and worsened the Great Depression. But today tariffs are closer to 5 percent (source: Douglas Irwin, “Clashing Over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy,” p. 8), and Trump’s targeted tariffs likely won’t raise that figure more than a decimal point. Trump is reversing a long history of openness, but so far it’s small potatoes. If economists, Congress, and the World Trade Organization all do their jobs, it will stay that way.

In the meantime, defenders of the classical liberal enlightenment traditions of international openness and free trade will be very busy standing up to the administration’s latest populist outburst. Read the whole thing here.

For more CEI tariff coverage, see here by Iain Murray and here by me. For more on Trump’s threat to the values that made America great, see Steven Pinker’s book “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.”