Before 2024, a constitutional amendment mandating free trade seemed a bit borderline, since there are some legitimate reasons, from a pressure mechanism and negotiations to positive and negative externalities from certain industries to revenue, why modest tariffs, wielded by a competent government, might be good.
All that is dead, dead, dead. Tariffmageddon alters the risk profile of the government having tariff powers drastically, giving it insuperable advantage to a permanent, constitutionally mandated commitment to unilateral free trade. It's a heavy lift but that's the thing to work for.
There's a middle course, which is for Congress to take back tariff powers. The executive probably still needs some tariff authority to manage fast-moving situations, but this should be very tightly-scoped, limited in both time and extent, and require a declaration of emergency that must be ratified by Congress within a short period of time.
Right now, if Congress had to actually vote to support Tariffmageddon, the GOP couldn't muster the votes no matter how hard Trump whipped them. Of course, that doesn't mean it could never happen, but the current situation points out that just keeping Congress actively in the loop would probably be enough.
Independent of the question of free trade, essentially this identical argument applies to every policy position that you personally favor. Yes, the elected government is allowed to change policies, but it maybe isn't a good idea to try to enshrine a particular set of policy preferences from a particular time into the constitution specifically to make them hard to change.
Really, the problem with this specific issue is item number 1 in the second list, as its an abdication of the constitutionally-mandated responsibility of Congress.
Excellent piece. If I might offer a link to my own Substack (Bastiat's Window), I just concluded a trilogy of pieces on Trump's tariffs--the third of which is here: https://graboyes.substack.com/p/trade-winds-2025seriously-and-literally. In it, I offer a detailed description of how business would function (or not) in Richmond, VA, if the mayor had the same power over sales taxes that Donald Trump has over tariff-setting.
I also note that "Globalism" is to those on the right what 'trickle-down economics' is to those on the left. Both are vacuous pejoratives that translate loosely into English as, "Somewhere on Earth, buyers and sellers are engaging in voluntary trade and minding their own business AND WE HAVE TO STOP THEM.”
I think it would be great fun for Bryan Caplan to actually meet with Trump face to face, look into his eyes, and have a chat. I wonder if Bryan Caplan has ever come within 100 yards of Trump. I wonder if Bryan Caplan knows anything at all about Trump, other than what he's read or heard from someone else who has never met Trump and also doesn't know anything about Trump, other than what they have read or heard from someone else who doesn't like Trump. I wonder.
Tally up all the actual things Trump has done while in power. I double dog dare you. Don't leave anything out. Use an Ai to help you, just to make sure you don't leave anything out. Then compare the two sides of the ledger. Report back; tell us what you found.
All economists I know understand that trade deficits do not make a country poor. As a matter of fact, it is not countries that are poor or rich, it is people, which any intelligent person understands.
Concise. The lesson here is “tough luck,” regardless of what future-oriented policy one chooses. Something will go wrong. Like everything in life, it’s how you react that matters.
What I know is that whatever you think you know about Trump is coming straight from legacy media, which by now, most people understand is a pack of lying, agenda-driven lackeys.
If you do not know Trump, have never met him, have never worked with him, or even with someone who has done these things, I ask again: you know this how?
I have no interest in continuing this conversation. I have no more time to waste.
If think the greatest push-back in any social system is the one that ultimately has the final say in *any* action. Reality.
The case for free trade isn't some detached from reality, heavenly realm solution where suddenly the need for thought dissappears. It is that wealth and economic growth is something positive for human life, and laws that protect the individual's rights is what both best allows for that and is consistent with a rational morality.
Sure, evil, irrational, destructive actors are still going to be out there. That's why you need the government in the first place. But all you can do is make the most rational decisions, which allow the possibility of success- and because this is reality, recognizing that nothing actually promises success, failure is always a possibility no matter how well planned something is.
It appears to me that economists elevate economic efficiency above all other values, and this is detrimental to social cohesion based on jobs with income which can support families. It also appears to me that tariffs are useful as a weapon, but not as a means of seizing economic advantage. With the largest economy in the world, we should be able to handle this - that is, give up some efficiency with the objective of maximizing social cohesion and still being able to use the tariff weapon. I wish I could entirely believe that this is Trump’s objective.
Should we have free trade with Russia and Iran and North Korea? I think it really is very important to keep sanctions on them. If I had to choose between free trade with everyone all the time, or getting to sanction enemy regimes but risk some tariffs on allies/neutral countries, it's a tough choice for me. Especially since like you said enshrining free trade in the constitution would come with other risks you listed.
I think you underrate the likelihood of countries not bothering with bilateral free trade if America grants them unilateral free trade. Lots and lots of people feel intuitively that it's good for them if other countries remove tariffs, and also good if they get to keep their own tariffs. Despite their own tariffs and the other countries tariffs both being quite bad. Without the ability to make a deal like "We'll remove our tariffs if you remove yours", I predict lots of countries will shoot themselves in the foot by never removing their own tariffs.
Valid points, but I don’t think that’s the message here. I believe the point is that something unpleasant will always happen regardless of what general policy one chooses, or how that policy is ensconced. So, best to pick the policy that maximizes greatest potential positive outcome, and prepare for the possible negative consequences. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It’s how a country equips itself to deal with the possible risks of the chosen approach that matters. At least, it seems so to me.
Since we don’t have a constitutional mandate, and we do have an illiterate protectionist POTUS, we’re stuck (for now) with the manic game show version of tariff negotiations.
Yes. Once the politicians get involved, all bets are off except that they will make it worse, and then they'll pile on the fixes and make it worser.
I liken political meddling to adding new bandaids on top of old filthy ones, piling them up until the mess either kills the patient or falls off of its own accord. It's better to have none at all than the diseased mess they create.
I see no problem with allowing free trade even with actual war time enemies, only benefits.
First off, trade is far scarier to despots than to free people, because despots fear the contagion of free people. They are going to mismanage the trade so badly that there is no need for our politicians to meddle and give them someone to blame. Witness the Cuban embargo, which has probably kept the regimes in power longer than they would have without that handy excuse for their miserable planned economy.
North Korea has nothing to buy our exports with except stolen crypto currency. The need for cold hard cash or real products for barter might even encourage them to loosen their death grip on society, and modernize and produce things with actual barter value.
Iran probably has more to offer, but just like Cuba, they fear trade and contagion more than anyone cares to admit.
Russia also fears the contagion of free trade, but I get the impression Russian paranoia is so built in by now that free trade wouldn't make it any worse, and it probably would increase their meddling in Ukraine. BUT -- how would they pay for everything? Their greed for modern equipment and even weaponry would lead to increased oil exports and a drop in world oil prices.
As for actual war enemies, like WW II, I laugh. Sure, send your cargo ships to New York and Los Angeles, give us your scarce cash and gold and exports to buy our exports, and we'll sink your ships once they clear port and get far enough away that the flotsam doesn't bother us.
>I see no problem with allowing free trade even with actual war time enemies, only benefits.
So you're the US in 1940. Japan is committing atrocities in China. Their tanks, ships, and planes which allow them to maintain military superiority and continue to commit atrocities are all powered by oil. You'd keep selling them oil? Japan would happily pay with resources like fish and rice and mechanical pencils and anything else to get more oil, which they needed so much but had such limited supplies of.
You're the US today. Russia needs processed industrial metals to build their tanks. You'd sell them the metal? They'd happily pay by selling their oil like they are already, but would have an easier time of it without sanctions.
Perhaps you believe in central planning in the morals department as much as the economic.
If Japan is committing such atrocities, don't you trust the public to boycott them? Or do you think it is your moral imperative to think for the public because they are too dumb to think correctly?
Putin deserves all the abuse you can heap on him. Do you think we should be selling weaponry to Ukraine and not even trade with Russia?
I remind you Biden and the EU have been very careful to sell just enough to keep Russia at bay, but not enough to take back any conquered territory. There have been close to a million casualties combined. If the US had supplied no weapons, this would have been over with a lot fewer dead. If they had supplied a lot more weapons, Russia could have been pushed back.
Every time Biden and the EU announced new sanctions on Russia, my reaction was "What? These weren't already in place?" In other words, we have not yet cut off trade with Russia. Perhaps you remember that little mystery a few months ago about undersea cables in the Baltic, and one of the suspicious ships was a Russian tanker evading sanctions. Apparently we haven't been following your policy prescriptions as much as you might wish.
Is any of that your idea of humane foreign policy? Are you proud of what politicians have accomplished? Do you really think that leaving all those decisions to individuals would have been worse or more muddled?
>If Japan is committing such atrocities, don't you trust the public to boycott them? Or do you think it is your moral imperative to think for the public because they are too dumb to think correctly?
I think it is useful to band together for moral decisions at times. It's tempting to give in and buy the cheap goods from the atrocious regime; by voting together to ban such purchases, making the moral decision is easier.
On top of that, it only takes an handful of bad actors deceiving consumers to give a great deal of funding to Japan. One large wholesaler with no morals could buy a large shipment of Japanese goods, remove any indication that they're from Japan, and sell them to American consumers who'd be unaware they're funding Japanese atrocities.
>Putin deserves all the abuse you can heap on him. Do you think we should be selling weaponry to Ukraine and not even trade with Russia?
Yes. I don't think Biden went far enough at all. But I do think leaving the decisions to individuals would've been even worse.
>Oh, and also, your quote includes "actual war time enemies", yet both your examples are countries we are not at war with.
I'd think the decision about whether to trade with Japan in 1942 would be even more obvious than Japan in 1940.
Before 2024, a constitutional amendment mandating free trade seemed a bit borderline, since there are some legitimate reasons, from a pressure mechanism and negotiations to positive and negative externalities from certain industries to revenue, why modest tariffs, wielded by a competent government, might be good.
All that is dead, dead, dead. Tariffmageddon alters the risk profile of the government having tariff powers drastically, giving it insuperable advantage to a permanent, constitutionally mandated commitment to unilateral free trade. It's a heavy lift but that's the thing to work for.
There's a middle course, which is for Congress to take back tariff powers. The executive probably still needs some tariff authority to manage fast-moving situations, but this should be very tightly-scoped, limited in both time and extent, and require a declaration of emergency that must be ratified by Congress within a short period of time.
Right now, if Congress had to actually vote to support Tariffmageddon, the GOP couldn't muster the votes no matter how hard Trump whipped them. Of course, that doesn't mean it could never happen, but the current situation points out that just keeping Congress actively in the loop would probably be enough.
Independent of the question of free trade, essentially this identical argument applies to every policy position that you personally favor. Yes, the elected government is allowed to change policies, but it maybe isn't a good idea to try to enshrine a particular set of policy preferences from a particular time into the constitution specifically to make them hard to change.
Really, the problem with this specific issue is item number 1 in the second list, as its an abdication of the constitutionally-mandated responsibility of Congress.
Excellent piece. If I might offer a link to my own Substack (Bastiat's Window), I just concluded a trilogy of pieces on Trump's tariffs--the third of which is here: https://graboyes.substack.com/p/trade-winds-2025seriously-and-literally. In it, I offer a detailed description of how business would function (or not) in Richmond, VA, if the mayor had the same power over sales taxes that Donald Trump has over tariff-setting.
I also note that "Globalism" is to those on the right what 'trickle-down economics' is to those on the left. Both are vacuous pejoratives that translate loosely into English as, "Somewhere on Earth, buyers and sellers are engaging in voluntary trade and minding their own business AND WE HAVE TO STOP THEM.”
If we valued free trade as much as we value individual freedom, we would inevitably find a way to betray it, too.
I think it would be great fun for Bryan Caplan to actually meet with Trump face to face, look into his eyes, and have a chat. I wonder if Bryan Caplan has ever come within 100 yards of Trump. I wonder if Bryan Caplan knows anything at all about Trump, other than what he's read or heard from someone else who has never met Trump and also doesn't know anything about Trump, other than what they have read or heard from someone else who doesn't like Trump. I wonder.
You mean, other than all of the actual things Trump has done while in power?
Tally up all the actual things Trump has done while in power. I double dog dare you. Don't leave anything out. Use an Ai to help you, just to make sure you don't leave anything out. Then compare the two sides of the ledger. Report back; tell us what you found.
I wonder if Trump has ever met an actual economist.
I guess that depends on what counts as an "actual" economist.
In this context, one who understands what trade deficits are and their effects. E.g., "Trade deficits do not make a country poorer" https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trade-deficits-do-not-make-a-country
All economists I know understand that trade deficits do not make a country poor. As a matter of fact, it is not countries that are poor or rich, it is people, which any intelligent person understands.
Wonder if Bryan has ever gotten as close to Trump as Jeffery Epstein did?
Concise. The lesson here is “tough luck,” regardless of what future-oriented policy one chooses. Something will go wrong. Like everything in life, it’s how you react that matters.
I wish we could muster an effective reaction to today's situation. But I don't see the possibility.
What I know is that whatever you think you know about Trump is coming straight from legacy media, which by now, most people understand is a pack of lying, agenda-driven lackeys.
If you do not know Trump, have never met him, have never worked with him, or even with someone who has done these things, I ask again: you know this how?
I have no interest in continuing this conversation. I have no more time to waste.
If think the greatest push-back in any social system is the one that ultimately has the final say in *any* action. Reality.
The case for free trade isn't some detached from reality, heavenly realm solution where suddenly the need for thought dissappears. It is that wealth and economic growth is something positive for human life, and laws that protect the individual's rights is what both best allows for that and is consistent with a rational morality.
Sure, evil, irrational, destructive actors are still going to be out there. That's why you need the government in the first place. But all you can do is make the most rational decisions, which allow the possibility of success- and because this is reality, recognizing that nothing actually promises success, failure is always a possibility no matter how well planned something is.
It appears to me that economists elevate economic efficiency above all other values, and this is detrimental to social cohesion based on jobs with income which can support families. It also appears to me that tariffs are useful as a weapon, but not as a means of seizing economic advantage. With the largest economy in the world, we should be able to handle this - that is, give up some efficiency with the objective of maximizing social cohesion and still being able to use the tariff weapon. I wish I could entirely believe that this is Trump’s objective.
Should we have free trade with Russia and Iran and North Korea? I think it really is very important to keep sanctions on them. If I had to choose between free trade with everyone all the time, or getting to sanction enemy regimes but risk some tariffs on allies/neutral countries, it's a tough choice for me. Especially since like you said enshrining free trade in the constitution would come with other risks you listed.
I think you underrate the likelihood of countries not bothering with bilateral free trade if America grants them unilateral free trade. Lots and lots of people feel intuitively that it's good for them if other countries remove tariffs, and also good if they get to keep their own tariffs. Despite their own tariffs and the other countries tariffs both being quite bad. Without the ability to make a deal like "We'll remove our tariffs if you remove yours", I predict lots of countries will shoot themselves in the foot by never removing their own tariffs.
Valid points, but I don’t think that’s the message here. I believe the point is that something unpleasant will always happen regardless of what general policy one chooses, or how that policy is ensconced. So, best to pick the policy that maximizes greatest potential positive outcome, and prepare for the possible negative consequences. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It’s how a country equips itself to deal with the possible risks of the chosen approach that matters. At least, it seems so to me.
Since we don’t have a constitutional mandate, and we do have an illiterate protectionist POTUS, we’re stuck (for now) with the manic game show version of tariff negotiations.
Yes. Once the politicians get involved, all bets are off except that they will make it worse, and then they'll pile on the fixes and make it worser.
I liken political meddling to adding new bandaids on top of old filthy ones, piling them up until the mess either kills the patient or falls off of its own accord. It's better to have none at all than the diseased mess they create.
I see no problem with allowing free trade even with actual war time enemies, only benefits.
First off, trade is far scarier to despots than to free people, because despots fear the contagion of free people. They are going to mismanage the trade so badly that there is no need for our politicians to meddle and give them someone to blame. Witness the Cuban embargo, which has probably kept the regimes in power longer than they would have without that handy excuse for their miserable planned economy.
North Korea has nothing to buy our exports with except stolen crypto currency. The need for cold hard cash or real products for barter might even encourage them to loosen their death grip on society, and modernize and produce things with actual barter value.
Iran probably has more to offer, but just like Cuba, they fear trade and contagion more than anyone cares to admit.
Russia also fears the contagion of free trade, but I get the impression Russian paranoia is so built in by now that free trade wouldn't make it any worse, and it probably would increase their meddling in Ukraine. BUT -- how would they pay for everything? Their greed for modern equipment and even weaponry would lead to increased oil exports and a drop in world oil prices.
As for actual war enemies, like WW II, I laugh. Sure, send your cargo ships to New York and Los Angeles, give us your scarce cash and gold and exports to buy our exports, and we'll sink your ships once they clear port and get far enough away that the flotsam doesn't bother us.
>I see no problem with allowing free trade even with actual war time enemies, only benefits.
So you're the US in 1940. Japan is committing atrocities in China. Their tanks, ships, and planes which allow them to maintain military superiority and continue to commit atrocities are all powered by oil. You'd keep selling them oil? Japan would happily pay with resources like fish and rice and mechanical pencils and anything else to get more oil, which they needed so much but had such limited supplies of.
You're the US today. Russia needs processed industrial metals to build their tanks. You'd sell them the metal? They'd happily pay by selling their oil like they are already, but would have an easier time of it without sanctions.
Perhaps you believe in central planning in the morals department as much as the economic.
If Japan is committing such atrocities, don't you trust the public to boycott them? Or do you think it is your moral imperative to think for the public because they are too dumb to think correctly?
Putin deserves all the abuse you can heap on him. Do you think we should be selling weaponry to Ukraine and not even trade with Russia?
I remind you Biden and the EU have been very careful to sell just enough to keep Russia at bay, but not enough to take back any conquered territory. There have been close to a million casualties combined. If the US had supplied no weapons, this would have been over with a lot fewer dead. If they had supplied a lot more weapons, Russia could have been pushed back.
Every time Biden and the EU announced new sanctions on Russia, my reaction was "What? These weren't already in place?" In other words, we have not yet cut off trade with Russia. Perhaps you remember that little mystery a few months ago about undersea cables in the Baltic, and one of the suspicious ships was a Russian tanker evading sanctions. Apparently we haven't been following your policy prescriptions as much as you might wish.
Is any of that your idea of humane foreign policy? Are you proud of what politicians have accomplished? Do you really think that leaving all those decisions to individuals would have been worse or more muddled?
>If Japan is committing such atrocities, don't you trust the public to boycott them? Or do you think it is your moral imperative to think for the public because they are too dumb to think correctly?
I think it is useful to band together for moral decisions at times. It's tempting to give in and buy the cheap goods from the atrocious regime; by voting together to ban such purchases, making the moral decision is easier.
On top of that, it only takes an handful of bad actors deceiving consumers to give a great deal of funding to Japan. One large wholesaler with no morals could buy a large shipment of Japanese goods, remove any indication that they're from Japan, and sell them to American consumers who'd be unaware they're funding Japanese atrocities.
>Putin deserves all the abuse you can heap on him. Do you think we should be selling weaponry to Ukraine and not even trade with Russia?
Yes. I don't think Biden went far enough at all. But I do think leaving the decisions to individuals would've been even worse.
>Oh, and also, your quote includes "actual war time enemies", yet both your examples are countries we are not at war with.
I'd think the decision about whether to trade with Japan in 1942 would be even more obvious than Japan in 1940.
Oh, and also, your quote includes "actual war time enemies", yet both your examples are countries we are not at war with.
Other countries shooting themselves in the foot is THEIR business. Negotiating to stop shooting OURSELVES in OUR foot is the height of foolishness.
Yes both the people of US and those countries would be better off with free trade
*Posted from my iPhone