Friday 6 September 2019

"Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade." #QotD


"Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading...
    "What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war."

~ Henry George, from his book Protection or Free Trade: An Examination of the Tariff Question.

2 comments:

paul scott said...

I'll read that again for the illiterate zealots.
Protective Tariffs are a way to create equality of Trade. Only a zombie would think they are to prevent trade.
For instance since the Chinese purposefully misuse their people at low wages and a held down currency,they have favourable but inequitable trade conditions.
Protective Trade conditions balance this.
The Emperor has now fixed the trade imbalance..
At the same time it will prevent China from wrecking other Western Nations where people still read books printed in Austria in 1952.

Peter Cresswell said...

Allow me to translate :
Protective Tariffs are a way to tax your own citizens on their own purchases. Only a zombie would think that would not prevent trade.
Since goods in China are made more cheaply with a lower currency, those goods are extremely cheap around the world, making it easier for poorer people to afford them, and for manufacturers using them in their own products to make those products cheaper too.
Protectionism makes it harder to afford them.
The Orange Man has made life harder for those poorer consumers, and for all those manufacturers -- and for producers that were previously selling in large volumes into China -- and with the growth around the world of similar protectionism in response, potentially wrecks world trade in the same way it as wrecked before the last world war.
People who read Austrian economics understand this.
People who can't or don't read, don't.