Power & Market

In his early career, Mises was a vocal supporter of the free trade movement, and well involved in the policy proposals of the free trade associations in Europe. In his later years, he maintained his pure laissez-faire view of international trade, but focused more on the battle of ideas. Although scattered throughout his other works, and not collected in a volume on 'international economics', his analyses on trade and trade policy are meticulous and detailed, but clear-cut, as well as indispensable to a correct understanding of international production and exchange. 

For those reading the recent news on the escalation of protectionist measures between the U.S. and its trade partners, here's an excerpt from Mises's Epistemological Problems of Economics (pp. 237-9). The discussion is fully applicable today, 85 years after it was first published. In a short subchapter, Mises (to use one of his favorite expressions) explodes the fallacy of the infant industry argument for trade protection, and employs an original and often neglected argument that highlights the role of monetary calculation and inconvertible capital goods in production and trade.

The infant industries argument advanced in favor of protective tariffs represents a hopeless attempt to justify such measures on a purely economic basis, without regard to political considerations. It is a grievous error to fail to recognize the political motivation behind the demand for tariffs on behalf of infant industries. The same arguments as are advanced in favor of protecting a domestic product against foreign competition could also be adduced in favor of protecting one part of a general customs area against the competition of other parts. The fact that, nevertheless, protection is asked only against foreign, but not also against domestic, competition clearly points to the real nature of the motives behind the demand. 

Of course, it may happen in some cases that the industry already in existence is not operating in the most favorable of the locations that are presently accessible. However, the question is whether moving to the more favorable location offers advantages great enough to compensate for the cost of abandoning the already existing plants. If the advantages are great enough, then moving is profitable and is carried out without the intervention of a tariff policy. If it is not profitable in itself and becomes so only by virtue of the tariff, then the latter has led to the expenditure of capital goods for the construction of plants that would otherwise not have been constructed. These capital goods are now no longer available where they would have been had the state not intervened.

Every tariff under whose protection new plants come into existence that otherwise would not have been built so long as the older plants established elsewhere were still utilizable leads to the squandering of capital. Of course, the fanatics on both sides of the ocean who want to “make the economy rational” do not care to see this.

It is interesting to see how prices emerge in a hyperinflationary environment like  see in Venezuela. While the government finally cut its “official” exchange rate of 10 bolivars to the dollar, it continues to vastly overstate the value of its currency.

Luckily markets continue to find a way. Assisted by good old fashion corruption, military members and other government officials are able to profit off selling government supplies. Of course the question still remains: how is economic calculation is possible in a monetary climate as extreme as Venezuela?

In 2016, the Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article about a Home Depot employee named Gustavo Diaz who runs one of the most subversive websites back in his home country, DolarToday.com. The website takes information gathered from Venezuela black markets and uses it offer a real market value for the Bolivar. This information undermines the ability of the government and central banks to hide the consequences of their policies, leaving market actors better informed.

As Mr. Diaz puts it:

It’s ironic that with DolarToday in Alabama, I do more damage to the government than I did as a military man in Venezuela.

Another interesting measure has been pieced together by Bloomberg. Their Cafe Con Leche Index looks at the price of a cup of coffee in Caracas. A March 14^th report has a .50 cent cup of coffee now costing 75,000 Bolivars, pushing the annual inflation rate over 4000%.

The rising price does create other challenges though. Increasingly merchants have relied on weighing cash used for transactions, rather than counting. Unfortunately this has created some new challenges for merchants, whose scales are not capable of handling the weights now required to buy goods such as ham. As Patricia Laya writes as part of a fascinating series Life in Caracus:

The store’s deli scales run to only six digits. And ham, my Whatsapp food-hunting community tells me, is retailing nowadays for about 1,480,000 bolivars per kilogram. It didn’t matter that I wanted only a few hundred milligrams. The cost was, at this market at least, incalculable.

A similar dynamic is impeding the use of credit and debit cards. The price of a set of sheets (33,541,963), a pair of Adidas sneakers (10,500,000) or even a slice of lasagna (401,450) can’t fit on the screens of older card machines; the solution is to split one purchase into several transactions. Even the invoice printers that many businesses use for reports to tax authorities are running out of space.

So how does a country like Venezuela reverse this sort of monetary chaos? Luckily the answer there is simple. It must end the socialist policies that destroyed the country, and abandon the Bolivar. At some point the latter will be inevitable. Hopefully for Venezuelans, the former is as well.