En intressant och resonerande artikel om varför tullar kan vara bra i vissa sammanhang. I den idealiska men utopiska värld där alla nationer är ekonomiskt lika kan det fungera med totalt öppen marknadsekonomi utan restriktioner, men i verkligheten, där olika länder har olika utvecklingsnivåer, kan tullar göra nytta för att bygga upp länderna och dessutom göra dem mer självförsörjande inom kritiska områden. Kriser inträffar och människor är sällan snälla och goda utanför den egna kretsen.

Att tullar av etablerade media beskrivs som djävulens påfund beror nog uteslutande på att det är Trump som just nu driver frågan.

The claim that tariffs are inherently misguided and inevitably harmful does not stand up to scrutiny, especially when it comes to U.S. trade with China.

by Michael Lind March 07, 2025

Donald Trump is back—and so is the tariff. “It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it?” the president quipped before the joint session of Congress on Tuesday—so beautiful that he referenced tariffs 17 more times in his address. In the short time since his second inauguration on January 20, Trump has imposed—and sometimes walked back or temporarily suspended—tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico, and declared a policy of tit-for-tat “reciprocity” or retaliation for any foreign tariffs on American exports that are higher than U.S. tariffs on imports. And he has justified tariffs with multiple rationales, ranging from protecting or reshoring defense-critical American industries to pressuring America’s neighbors to take action to reduce the cross-border flow of illegal immigrants and drugs like fentanyl. In fact, he told members of Congress, tariffs were “about protecting the soul of our country.”

The chaotic and inconsistent nature of Trump’s second-term policy to date can be criticized. But when it comes to tariffs as a tool of economic statecraft in general, the gap between establishment rhetoric and actual government practice is big enough to drive a Chinese EV through it.

The audiences of the dying legacy media are told that the tariff is a destructive policy revived by politicians like Trump who fail to understand elementary economics, which teaches that free trade benefits all sides all the time everywhere, with no exceptions. But from North America to Europe to Asia, developed countries are ignoring mainstream economists and their amen corner in the subsidized libertarian think tank world and slapping tariffs onto imports in favored industries like electric vehicles and renewable energy. Governments are resorting to tariffs and industrial policy, not because their prime ministers and presidents flunked Econ 101, but because they do not want their economies deindustrialized by a flood of low-priced, state-subsidized Chinese imports.

Läs vidare på Tablet Magasine. (Tablet is a Jewish magazine about the world.)