Opinion | I Hope I Am Wrong, but I Am Pretty Pessimistic : Four Economists Dissect Trump s Tariffs – The New York Times

Rose: Jason, in your own guest essay on tariffs, you described the reasoning behind reciprocal tariffs as obviously absurd. Where do you part ways with Oren?

Jason Furman: If you combine all the remaining tariffs, you re still talking about an overall rate in the 20s, well above anything seen in the United States for over a century, or in any other major country in the world today. This has been unleashed by a misunderstanding of basic economics, which starts with imports. They re good, not bad. They re good for consumers who buy products we barely produce, like bananas. They re good for industries that rely on imported parts to make their products. Any attempt to curb imports also reduces exports. And exports are also good because they let Americans work in higher-paid, more productive jobs.

One place I agree with Oren is the implementation has been a disaster. But let s not make tariffs like communism, something people argued was good in theory but bad in practice. If you have a policy with an extremely narrow path to perfect implementation that goes awry, maybe blame the idea, not the implementer.

via www.nytimes.com

Pretty good mooting of the issues about tariffs.

I find this all depressing as I think tariffs are on balance a terrible idea and likely to lead to much economic distress in the future. That our current trade regime is a mess I have no trouble believing, and that China is taking advantage of our relative openness I also have little doubt. But Trump’s response to this seems grandiose and perhaps even unhinged. I’m also not happy how he seems to be imposing this on our nation’s economy by executive decree.

I like cheap goods from China and other developing countries. My shop is full of knock off tools I got on Temu and similar sites. They’re not half as good as American, Canadian or German (the best!) tools, but they’re a fifth the price. I wish we could buy Chinese cars as well. Americans don’t want to work for the wages the Chinese work for and don’t blame us for that. Much of the rest Trump supports I do as well, but tariffs are apparently where he wants to hang his hat and I fear we’ll all rue this day. Tariffs also present a perfect opportunity for cronyism and corruption which will set in soon enough if we go down this road.