At some point in the early days of the “Virus Era”—my term for the multi-year debacle that we endured from early 2020 through some point in 2023 or 2024—I decided to archive email exchanges with a few friends about this peculiar time in our country’s history.
No White House in my lifetime has been a fount of economic wisdom, and the Donald Trump 2.0 version is taking its place in the Pantheon of economic illiteracy.
President Trump was elected in part because he promised to reduce prices and not drag the country into foreign wars. Sadly, President Trump has adopted a tariff policy that will raise prices and abandoned his “America First” foreign policy in favor of a return to Bush-era neoconservatism.
America is faced with serious problems that require immediate action. Illegal immigrants are committing horrible crimes. “Woke” programs are entrenched in our schools, from elementary schools through universities. Judges are abusing their powers in order to block President Trump from cutting the budget and firing federal employees. Some people respond to this dire situation by demanding more power for the president. We must have government by executive order, they say. Is dictatorship such a terrible word? Not if it is for the right cause.
When a government imposes tariffs, the stated intention is simple: protect domestic industry, support local jobs, and strengthen national economic resilience. Yet, from the perspective of Austrian economics, specifically the insights of Ludwig von Mises and Frédéric Bastiat, tariffs are rarely successful in achieving their stated aims. Instead, they generate unseen but profound costs, hidden disruptions, and massive economic dislocations due to the inherent heterogeneity and specificity of capital goods involved.
