Markets are in fact governed by political communities.

Steaming with rage at the existence of JD Vance, the Wall Street Journal read in a crosstown publication that the vice president referred to markets as a “tool” and decided to reeducate him:

Markets, whether for cheap consumer goods or government bonds, can’t be bullied into compliance with a political agenda. They aren’t governed by the philosophies and desires of men like Mr. Vance. They are governed by the laws of economics the way the physical world is governed by the laws of gravity. You can moan about them all you want, you can lament the trade-offs they demand and the constraints they impose, but you can’t ignore or wish them away. No amount of political will or spilled ink can overrule them. Supply and demand are undefeated.

This is bizarre. Analogizing the laws of economics to the laws of gravity seems to make Vance’s point, since most “tools” leverage physical forces like gravity — whether it’s a simple tool like a hammer, or a complex tool, built with political will, spilled ink, and according to the desires of politicians, like the Hoover Dam. We use the laws of gravity to build the very structures that also protect us from the laws of gravity.

Markets are regularly bullied into compliance with political agendas, though, more often they are simply seduced and channeled into doing so. See: human history. There are limits to this, but they are not different or specially divided from the other limits human nature imposes on the ambitions of government.

Markets are in fact governed by political communities. They always have been. Trade would not occur in the absence of mechanisms for redress, which require shared ideas about reciprocity and institutions for mediating and resolving disputes. Anyone telling you otherwise is confused, or has a conflict of interest.