The Trump administration is filled with people who are giddy at the prospect of “getting America going again” through tariffs. That’s a notion that many voters find appealing, especially when Trump tells them that those nasty foreigners have been ripping us off. (This is the flip side of the Democrats’ revving up their base by saying that Americans are being ripped off by the superrich who don’t pay their fair share in taxes.)

But is it true that we can “rebuild” America through tariffs?

Robert Graboyes thinks not. In his latest Bastiat’s Window post, he relies on some of his experience to argue that tariffs are bad policy.

Here’s a slice:

Mercantilism has much in common with Humorism. From antiquity till the early 1800s, Western philosophers swore by Humorism, which held that disease was caused by an imbalance of bodily humors; doctors treated patients by draining their blood, using lancets and leeches. From antiquity till the early 1800s, Western philosophers swore by Mercantilism, which held that economic distress was caused by an imbalance of trade; politicians treated economies by tariffs and other impediments to competition. Humorism was debunked by scientific theory by around 1820–validated by 200 subsequent years of data. Mercantilism was debunked by economic theory by around 1820–validated by 200 subsequent years of data. Doctors abandoned bloodletting by the mid-1800s. Politicians are slower learners than doctors.

Graboyes offers a bit of history regarding African countries, which he studied years ago:

Most countries in the region were destroying their economies by imposing tariffs, quotas, exchange controls, capital controls, and draconian regulations. Nigeria, for example, used tariffs to encourage industrialization; the result was to turn a once-mighty exporter of food into a half-starved basket case alternating between importing food and too-poor-to-import food.

Hmm. . . . Seems as though laissez-faire is better than turning the management of the economy over to politicians who think they know much more than they do.

Also worth reading is Robert Johnson’s Quillette essay, “What’s So Terrible About Trade Deficits Anyway”

A slice:

There is no moral or rational basis for claiming that the EU is exploiting the US. Like Vietnam, the EU goes over and above what should be expected in terms of US imports, and there is no reason to suggest that there is any extra US importing capacity they could muster in order to eliminate the trade deficit. A rich country must accept that poorer countries or blocs will almost certainly buy fewer goods than richer nations, simply because they have less capital with which to do so. Indeed, these examples show that the US has lower trade deficits than would be expected from the available capital in the economies with which it is trading.

Johnson’s conclusion sticks the landing:

Trump’s fixation with trade-deficit “offenders” is punishing the very nations that could one day erase those deficits through development and prosperity. US consumers, businesses, and economic growth will all suffer as a result of the US president’s inability to grasp this elementary logic. There seems to be just one long-term strategy behind all this: unleash populism for immediate electoral returns, blame someone else for the problems that populism inevitably causes, and let someone else deal with the long-term consequences.