As Aristotle taught, politics is the architectonic science.
President Trump’s barrage of tariffs has produced in response a barrage of criticisms. Some take the form of an appeal to expert authority: economists, we are told, agree that tariffs are bad policy, and thus the administration’s recent “Liberation Day” tariffs are prima facie irrational.
Such claims are, of course, exaggerations. At least some economists—even if unorthodox ones—have supported the use of tariffs in certain situations. Indeed, it is hard to see how economists can claim to reject tariffs in principle since they as a class do not reject all government interventions in the market. We rarely hear that economists agree in condemning the income tax or social assistance to the poor even though these policies are market interventions.
Nevertheless, suppose all economists actually agree that tariffs should be rejected in principle. What then? It does not follow that tariffs are necessarily bad public policy. Economists specialize in the conditions that make for an efficient and prosperous economy—but that is not the sole aim of government policy. A strong economy is not the same thing as a strong and secure political community. The latter is the aim of the statesman, who must take a more comprehensive view of things than the scholar who specializes in economics.
Economists, especially proponents of free-market economics, often counsel against government regulation of the economy, because they contend that all voluntary economic exchanges make both parties better off. If I freely choose to buy a new car for $40,000, it must mean I wanted the car more than I wanted to keep my money, just as the car dealer wanted my money more than he wanted the car. We are both better off. On this basis, economists usually look with deep skepticism on any government plan that seeks to secure allegedly “better” outcomes by intervening in the market. Why should the government step in with tariffs or other policies that disrupt the spontaneous, voluntary decisions of producers and consumers?
This argument makes a great deal of sense most of the time. Nevertheless, it does not take much acquaintance with the often wicked ways of the world—experience that is vital to sound statesmanship—to realize that human beings sometimes behave non-economically and turn a mutually beneficial voluntary interaction into a selfish, coercive, and dangerous purpose. If I choose to sell my gun to someone, I will not be better off if he then turns the gun on me and demands his money back, and my wallet and car keys as well.
As individuals such possibilities are remote, because the government will punish those who behave in such a predatory manner. The statesman, however, most emphatically does have to worry about such violent and exploitative possibilities among nations, because the particular nation he is charged with safeguarding has no world government to rely on for protection. Nations, after all, inhabit a largely lawless international realm in which there is no supreme authority possessing the responsibility or the power to protect all nations equally.
Accordingly, the responsible national political leader must consider—and, if necessary, forestall—the possibility that a rival nation is using a trade relationship that is mutually beneficial from an economic point of view to make itself wealthy enough to build the military strength necessary to threaten its trade partner’s political interests.
To clarify the issues by an extreme instance: it would not be good sense to engage in unregulated trade with a foreign nation that is trying to build the capacity to conquer or subordinate one’s own nation. Such grim possibilities are often overlooked by free-market fundamentalists, whose lack of foresight is famously lampooned in the remark often attributed to Lenin: “When we hang the last of the bourgeoisie, it will be with a rope bought from a capitalist.”
Our deeply ingrained individualism tends to obscure these harsh realities. We think of international trade as free exchanges between individuals in one country and individuals in another. This is not, however, how the American Founders understood the issue, judging from the language they chose to use in the Constitution. In Article I, Section 8 they empowered Congress “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.” Viewing the question as statesmen, they understood that foreign trade is not merely trade with foreign individuals pursuing individual interests, but with foreign nations—that is, with foreign sovereigns that can command the wealth of individuals under their authority, and possibly use it to threaten American interests.
American statesmen then need to make sure not only that rival foreign nations are not being empowered through trade to threaten our interests, but also that our trade policies ensure that our own country remains powerful enough to protect its own interests.
Such considerations informed Alexander Hamilton’s famous Report on Manufactures, in which he argued it would be prudent for the government to encourage the domestic manufacturing that is necessary to make the country capable of producing from within itself “all the essentials of national supply.” A country that depends on other nations for its necessities, Hamilton believed, might not be able to carry on a protracted and costly war, and therefore might not be able to achieve the “security” and “independence” that are the great objects of national policy for all governments. Such considerations can certainly, in the right circumstances, justify tariffs intended to encourage the domestic production of essential products. Such a policy might be politically wise even if not economically optimal.
None of this is intended to disparage the economists among us. Their insights are real, and their advice is valuable. It is only to remind us that there are limits to their discipline. Economics is concerned with a particular kind of good—but successful politics involves balancing various kinds of goods, all of them important to the well-being of the whole community.
We would do well to remember the lessons of the recent past about the dangers of ceding public policy to the expertise of specialists. It would be no wiser to let economists dictate trade policy than it was to let public health professional dictate the nation’s COVID response. Either approach involves letting one limited good tyrannize over all the other goods that make for a strong community.
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