Donald Trump’s policies have sparked thinking about trade and tariffs. What trade policies will make Americans better off?

Writing for AIER today, Don Boudreaux gives us an imaginary but utterly realistic dialogue between a protectionist and himself, a free trader. Here’s how it begins:

Protectionist: Over the past half-century, American industry has been hollowed out by international trade. We don’t make things anymore. That’s why we need protective tariffs.

Boudreaux: You’re factually incorrect. US industrial output hit its all-time peak in February of this year, higher by 155 percent than it was in 1975, when America last ran an annual trade surplus and 19 percent higher than in 2001, when China joined the WTO. Also, US industrial capacity is at an all-time high, and 147 larger than in 1975 and 12 percent larger than in 2001. Tariffs only —

Protectionist: Sorry for interrupting, but I don’t believe those government statistics. Bureaucrats are politically biased, with no incentive to get things right.

Boudreaux does not use straw-man tactics but rather responds to the arguments that flesh-and-blood protectionists use daily.

I urge you to read the whole thing, and will just add one more point. If American buyers choose to buy only American-made goods (or what they believe to be American-made; as Boudreaux points out, labels don’t tell the full production story about goods), they are free to do so. Free traders are committed to liberty, including people’s liberty to discriminate in their purchasing. But the protectionist cabal has no such respect for liberty. Their program calls for governmental coercion to achieve ends they think desirable. Free traders find that objectionable, and note that once we allow government officials, Donald Trump or anyone else, the power to coercively interfere with peaceful trade and production, there is no stopping point and no reason to believe the policy that emerges will be anyone’s ideal.