At some point, protectionists should have to comment on real life.

In his latest post against free trade, Michael accuses me of saying things I did not say.

But first, he writes, “Free trade merely affirms the justice of property rights and lifting people out of poverty, Dominic claims in a perfect abstraction.” I suppose property rights are sort of abstract, but they are nonetheless important. Millions of people escaping extreme poverty, though, are very, very real and should not be discounted when considering policy decisions.

He then writes, “I’m sure property rights were ‘respected’ at McKinsey’s corporate retreat in Kashgar, where those in attendance hobnobbed with the commissars of Chinese state-owned enterprises within practical earshot of the gigantic detention centers for Uyghurs.” This is a perfect non sequitur. Nowhere did I defend McKinsey, its corporate retreat (from 2018, no less), or Chinese state-owned enterprises. In fact, I like to think my stance against state-owned enterprises is fairly well known.

“Confirming the charges of my first piece, Dominic casts protectionism as a foe of human rights,” Michael continues. “Human rights” is also a term that never appears in my post. Michael is dead set on making me out to be some kind of utopian humanist, when the entire point of my magazine cover story that began this exchange is that there’s nothing utopian about free trade. All it says is that the same principle that undergirds trade between individuals, between cities, between counties, between states, and between regions — namely, that it should be allowed without government interference — should also undergird trade between countries.

Now to the issue of indifference. Michael wrote, twice, “A global free market is necessarily indifferent to the distribution of goods, skills, technological capacities, and power among nations.” I responded that it is not indifferent, but rather is guided by profit-loss and price signals, which incorporate information that no government could ever gather.

Michael replies, “I’m not sure where I was unclear, but far from revealing my first premise to be ‘nonsense,’ Dominic refutes it by just restating it in another way.” I don’t know why the quotation marks around “nonsense” are there, as the word never appears in my post.

He then writes that I say that markets “are partial to producing them where there is the greatest return to capital.” Again, I did not say that. Profits include more than the return to capital. Due to diminishing marginal returns, the greatest return to capital would be found in countries that don’t have very much capital. Yet, most U.S. trade is done with countries that have a lot of capital already (and 85 percent of U.S. trade is not with China).

Michael clarifies that he believes “on principle [markets] don’t consider politics or nationality in location.” Completely untrue, as I wrote.

Countries that have stable institutions, strong protection of property rights, better trained workforces, and a variety of other things that are favorable to profit-making are more likely to be trading partners than countries that lack those things. When a U.S. business decides to source components from another country, it is never indifferent between countries. It is partial to the country where it can best make profits by sourcing from there.

Americans should want American businesses to be profitable and to grow. And sure enough, Americans are really good at international commerce: More than 60 of the world’s 100 most valuable companies are American. And America is the richest country in the world. This ought to be a source of national pride.

The government doesn’t really have any business second-guessing sourcing decisions, and when it does so, it will make the country poorer on net. Some industries will benefit from protectionism, yes, but do you really think a U.S. business didn’t already consider U.S. suppliers when it was making its sourcing decision? Maybe U.S. suppliers don’t exist, maybe they’re too expensive, maybe they’re not reliable — I don’t know why, and neither does the government.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is currently enacting protectionist policies for every country around the globe, and Michael has now written thousands of words in this exchange without addressing them. Does he support the massive tariffs on trade-surplus partner Brazil because Trump is mad about Jair Bolsonaro? Does he support the higher tariffs on India over Russian oil purchases, pushing India toward China, while the China “truce” continues even though China buys more Russian oil than India does? Does he support enormous tariffs on metals and other inputs to domestic manufacturing? Does he support tariffs on coffee, bananas, and other natural products that simply do not grow here in large amounts? Does he support the 39 percent “reciprocal” rate on Switzerland, which had basically no tariffs on U.S. goods at all, and the other “reciprocal” rates that are generally far higher than foreign rates levied against U.S. goods? Does he support the billion-dollar tariff bills foisted on American automakers? Does he think the $150 billion tax increase that the White House is bragging about is beneficial to the economy? Does he support the national-emergency declaration the president is claiming as a blank check to do all of this unilaterally?

At some point, protectionists should have to comment on real life.