It is often said that courage is contagious. So too, alas, is governmental economic stupidity, from which the United States and Canada now suffer in abundance, especially in the form of tariffs, which good economists have denounced as idiotic for approximately 250 years.

As Adam Smith wrote in his 1776 volume, The Wealth of Nations, “In every country, it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it.”