I participated in a symposium on tariffs for Civitas Outlook, along with Samuel Gregg, Richard Epstein, Veronique de Rugy, and G. Dirk Mateer.

Here’s the gist of my entry:

Trade is not a special case where Americans should trust the experts in Washington, D.C., to order their lives for their benefit. When Democrats want to use taxes and incentives to with the U.S. energy supply, conservatives rightly see the dangers of unintended consequences and decry the insufficiency of government planners’ capability to reorder the economy in the national interest. It is no different for trade. If an administration led by a protectionist president and fully staffed with protectionists can’t pull off a coherent protectionist strategy, who could?

You can read the whole thing here.