This should have been called an ‘Ode to Globalism,’ or ‘Love Letters to the WEF.’
Look if you accept globalism at face value and simultaneously accept the precepts of “free trade” as laid out by this paper then you can stop reading past paragraph 2 at the summary of Yeager’s value judgments.
“In other words, people should be free to choose—that is, to pursue their happiness—provided they don’t violate the equal rights of others to their lives, liberties, and estates. This is the principle of freedom or what John O’Sullivan called the “voluntary principle.””
Something interesting happens when you enslave people to work your industries. Your gross margins increase dramatically. And when used as a weapon in guise of free trade you soon find yourself in control of the flow of said trade. This is contra to all of the values put forth by Yeager and O’Sullivan.
So while these are nice to think about as economic concepts, they fail the test of free choice by virtue of a hundred million enslaved laborers making cockrings, iPhone cases, and IoT gadgets with built in spyware, like my $1400 DREAME robovacuum that enjoys turning itself on and following my wife around the house sometimes. Unprompted.
The world at large has given up native capacity to industrialize so we can pay $12 for the wall mounted shampoo and soap dispenser with built in usb-c quick charge (which was built off of a stolen patent/ip that was impossible to litigate and then drowned out by 68 different companies with names like POYJOY, GULFORE, LUCKYSPOKE, etc… on Amazon).
What do you want? People write things dishonestly because their financial situation doesn’t jive with a plan. That’s a bad faith argument. Do you really want free and happy people of the world to have choice and “free trade?” Then that must include all the people - including the slaves that allow the tyranny of China’s trade monopoly to happen.
The slaves and the corruption of China’s 800 different ministries of bribery and bullshit (I’ve personally dealt with them in a past life) that are the backbone of “free trade” must be dealt with - now. Today. If we set to equal footing the people of the mythical free world put forth by this essay then all data in this article should be thrown in a dumpster and set on fire.
You nailed it. This is one of the worst reasoned propaganda articles I've seen. I guess the tariff tantrum continues. CATO needs to ask itself if child slavery is the hill it wants to die defending. What's next...an ode to human trafficking?
Tariffs are still the best route to true free trade, which we do not currently have and never have had. As yet, no one has offered a different, better solution to breaking the status quo of un-free and unfair trade. That means there probably isn't a better way. Arguing to maintain the status quo of un-free and unfair trade "because *freedom*" is dumb, at best.
Worse than that, the argument in the article is being made as if there are no moral elements to consider. But, as you note - the core issue is morality. We should no longer enable China's violations of basic human rights. Enslaving children to make cheap, useless, throw-away junk that by-design ends up in a landfill within 5 years - and probably poisons us along the way - is immoral in every way I can think of.
It's also a bad business model for the US, which our leaders have subsidized against the will of the people by creating one-sided trade agreements to prop up the psychopathic regime in China.
No more support for slavery there (or here in the form of illegals). Tariff them until they yield or collapse. Or maybe CATO or one of their peers can come up with a real alternative solution that isn't "more of the same" fake "free" trade.
I admit I didn't read the article (too much to read and too busy!). But my question is do you STILL free trade with countries that:
-tariff your goods more that you do theirs
-steal your IP
-pay slave wages
-don't have to comply with the same health, environmental, labor regulations
-manufacture even your nations critical military parts and medicines - so therefore have your country by the balls
-provide state funded subsidy's
.....I could go on and on. I agree with a lot if not most of libertarian viewpoints. But one of my favorite libertarian memes is the guy with his head buried in the "orthodox libertarian guidebook" as he walks off a cliff.
IMO, political ideologies should be viewed as tools in the toolbox. Different approaches that will work well in different underlying circumstances and preconditions. They're not religions and their core tenets are not gods. But too many people belong to them in that way.
Political philosophies also rely on sound analysis to have any usefulness in real world situations like this one. Apparently, sound analysis is in short supply. Too many "libertarians" are arguing against tariffs b/c "free trade," completing ignoring that we do not currently have free trade in any meaningful way. The reciprocal tariffs in this instance are a route to free trade, and the only one being offered by anyone, so far as I can see.
So, it suggests to me these "libertarian" thinkers simply don't actually want real free trade. They want the status quo of un-free and unfair trade to continue for some reason they are not saying out loud.
I am far from an expert on trade. So take my BS posts with a grain of salt:) But one of my first rules of taking in information is always, always, always....what is the source of that information? Do they profit off the status quo? Like the lords of easy money parasites on wall street. What is in the personal interests of any author? Not talking about this particular author....but just in general.
Always keep in mind the greatest quote in the history of man kind:
"Do not expect a man to understand if his salary depends upon him not understanding"
A lot of the big voices out there commenting on trade on Fintwit, substack, cnbc, WSJ editorials, FT editorials, CNN, etc... Have benefitted immensely off the status quo the last 40 yrs. A lot these "voices" are coming from the lords of easy money on wall street, the the big corporate monopolies, etc... And always realize, most of the people who voices "get heard" on all this shit are probably worth north of $50 million...including many of the so called "free trade" people in congress.
Well, if there's anything we've learned in the last 5 years or so it's that the "expert" class is really just a clique of wealthy, self-congratulating people living in an echo chamber, who obtained mostly fake degrees - in faulty or false theories and in using flawed techniques - from a handful of chosen DEI-compromised universities. Those chosen universities themselves have benefitted from the status quo, including receiving billions in taxpayer dollars to push the globalist ideology that empowers them. So, I'll take the real world observations of us regular people any day over that.
Regardless, they should be able to see that if everyone else is tariffing the US, there is no free trade. And, if they want free trade, then they'd be arguing against the status quo. So, when they pretend like it's not the case that unequal tariffs already existed, they must be straight-up lying to protect their turf. One more place where Trump blew open the Overton window. Even non-countries tariff the US, lol!
According to Grok: "As of April 2025, nearly all countries impose some form of tariffs on U.S. goods, as tariffs are a common trade policy tool. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data indicate that 190+ countries and territories, including sovereign states and dependent territories, apply import duties on U.S. products to varying degrees."
And as I said in a earlier post on a QTR article a while back, most of the pundits out there pontificating on tariffs only care if stock prices go up. They don't care about tariffs and never did. The only reason they are upset is stock prices are going down. If S&P went back into a bull market, 99% of the tariff talk would just go away. None of these pundits give a rats ass about "free trade". They all just care about stock prices endlessly going up.
Trade can be great and sometimes the freer the better -- under the right conditions. But that judgment seems to depend on the conditions in both trading nations. At bottom that's a political decision and almost everything in "economics" including trade is political.
I have no argument with that. That's essentially what I was saying in my previous comment. Removing tariffs does not necessarily remove all the other barriers to free trade. And those barriers are almost always political.
I agreed with this article ever since I read Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" in the early '90's. But I have to admit that free trade isn't working out for a significant sector of the economy (the workers), and it's not working out for the trade balance of the country as a whole. I think these are two huge problems. I think if you are going to promote free trade then you should also promote a solution to the income inequality and trade imbalance that seems to have been a result of free trade. I am a libertarian and the libertarians believe that the trade imbalance will disappear if we simply balance the federal budget and adopt honest currency policies. As far as I have seen, none of the libertarians have sufficiently explained the connection between the trade deficit and the budget deficit. Until they do, I will have to be against free trade.
I couldn’t agree more. If “free-trade” leads to assets being almost entirely owned by 10% of the population and the erosion of the middle class, then it’s either a turd wrapped in gold or we’re doing it wrong.
You have to have free trade and you can't tax anybody.
If an industry employs 50% of your population, and then Country B undercuts the industry and low--cost imports disemploy half your population. They have to go die.
Quietly. Without protest or complaint.
It was their fault somehow, for not being more "competitive".
This is the optimal world of all possible theoretical worlds.
I like thought-experiments. A group of 20 people live on an island with a grove of banana and pineapple trees and a diamond mine. The group is happy because they have food from the trees and knowing that, the group carefully tends to the health of the trees. The diamond mines goes untouched.
A boat arrives carrying traders from another island. The traders tell the islanders that they will provide all of the food the islanders need in exchange for some diamonds from the mine. The traders tell the islanders they will no longer have to worry about their food supply nor have to work to maintain the trees. And since the diamonds weren't being used, it would be a win/win for both groups.
So the islanders agree. Years go by and the trees die out because there is no need to maintain them. The diamond mine, which was once filled with diamonds is being depleted with each shipment of food.
One day, the traders arrive with the food and want their diamond allotment. They are told by the islanders that the mine is empty. The traders load the food back onto their boat and as they are about to sail away, the islanders say "But you said this was a win/win for both of us."
And the traders say "It was. But you never realized we not only took your diamonds. We also took your future." And then they sailed away.
Totalising theories never work in reality, but their proponents just keep insisting it's because it hasn't been tried hard enough yet (I can think of another one too). If these guys were to admit it's a failure, wouldn't they have to admit their entire intellectual life has been a gigantic pile of BS? Is that why it just gets stuck in institutions? Their whole economics department would have to admit they've essentially been spreading lies for 40 years?
It's not entirely up to Trump or the USA. Pretty nearly all countries impose tariffs. Our one respite from other country's tariffs is to impose our own. We all know that Trump's tariffs, as they now stand, will be modified as a result of the ongoing negotiations a happening now. One of America's favorite presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, said, "Talk softly, and carry a big stick." That applies here. Negotiations in which only the one side stands to gain anything, and which has nothing to lose is not a negotiation. It is a capitulation. Trump knows better. Make them WANT the negotiation.
Does the term 'free trade' mean anything when our trade is controlled by oligarchs? I think not. Tariffs or no tariffs, we need a true competitive economy with a level playing field.
Tariffs or no tariffs, China does not play fair. They've been ripping off our intellectual property for decades. They've deliberately put American companies out of business, not through competition but through trickery. And as we've seen be the recent rare earths debacle, we are fools to have all our eggs in the one basket. That's NEVER a good idea.
So, yes, I'm in favor of free trade. But I know better than to think it all comes down to tariffs. Tariffs may ultimately bring about freer trade than what we have had without them. And there is NO excuse for a negative balance of trade.
I don’t see how you can say the benefit of free global trade is worth it. I would say the Samsung TV going down in price while improving in quality is not worth having an entire swath of land known as the Rust Belt because all of the people were laid off and left the cities to abandonment. And if the free market is so effective internationally, why can’t it work well nationally?
Free markets and free trade don't exist because the human being is always looking for an economic edge using government . These utopian clowns are one step better than those imaginary unicorns known as Marxists. When the libertarian can find a way to eliminate non tariff trade barriers(the real meat and potatoes of government games) maybe then they can come to the big boy table..Otherwise free trade is a pipedream.
The issue I have is that the author sets the premise with the value judgments from Yeager, which we do not have. If the well-being of humans is supremely desirable and the high and rising standards of living are an important element of that, then why does he skip past that and turn his aim towards Trump’s tariffs? I would argue that the foundation of his argument is invalid if it is a one-sided affair. We clearly have that with China and I would be willing to bet there are many more countries that don’t maintain our standards of well-being, standard of living or freedom. Additionally, he argues from a position where Trump’s tariffs are the starting point of the timeline and repeatedly refers to them as retaliatory while never addressing the existing tariffs and prohibition of many products outright with our trading partners. I appreciate the philosophy behind the argument but the status quo was broken before Trump showed up.
This should have been called an ‘Ode to Globalism,’ or ‘Love Letters to the WEF.’
Look if you accept globalism at face value and simultaneously accept the precepts of “free trade” as laid out by this paper then you can stop reading past paragraph 2 at the summary of Yeager’s value judgments.
“In other words, people should be free to choose—that is, to pursue their happiness—provided they don’t violate the equal rights of others to their lives, liberties, and estates. This is the principle of freedom or what John O’Sullivan called the “voluntary principle.””
Something interesting happens when you enslave people to work your industries. Your gross margins increase dramatically. And when used as a weapon in guise of free trade you soon find yourself in control of the flow of said trade. This is contra to all of the values put forth by Yeager and O’Sullivan.
So while these are nice to think about as economic concepts, they fail the test of free choice by virtue of a hundred million enslaved laborers making cockrings, iPhone cases, and IoT gadgets with built in spyware, like my $1400 DREAME robovacuum that enjoys turning itself on and following my wife around the house sometimes. Unprompted.
The world at large has given up native capacity to industrialize so we can pay $12 for the wall mounted shampoo and soap dispenser with built in usb-c quick charge (which was built off of a stolen patent/ip that was impossible to litigate and then drowned out by 68 different companies with names like POYJOY, GULFORE, LUCKYSPOKE, etc… on Amazon).
What do you want? People write things dishonestly because their financial situation doesn’t jive with a plan. That’s a bad faith argument. Do you really want free and happy people of the world to have choice and “free trade?” Then that must include all the people - including the slaves that allow the tyranny of China’s trade monopoly to happen.
The slaves and the corruption of China’s 800 different ministries of bribery and bullshit (I’ve personally dealt with them in a past life) that are the backbone of “free trade” must be dealt with - now. Today. If we set to equal footing the people of the mythical free world put forth by this essay then all data in this article should be thrown in a dumpster and set on fire.
You nailed it. This is one of the worst reasoned propaganda articles I've seen. I guess the tariff tantrum continues. CATO needs to ask itself if child slavery is the hill it wants to die defending. What's next...an ode to human trafficking?
Tariffs are still the best route to true free trade, which we do not currently have and never have had. As yet, no one has offered a different, better solution to breaking the status quo of un-free and unfair trade. That means there probably isn't a better way. Arguing to maintain the status quo of un-free and unfair trade "because *freedom*" is dumb, at best.
Worse than that, the argument in the article is being made as if there are no moral elements to consider. But, as you note - the core issue is morality. We should no longer enable China's violations of basic human rights. Enslaving children to make cheap, useless, throw-away junk that by-design ends up in a landfill within 5 years - and probably poisons us along the way - is immoral in every way I can think of.
It's also a bad business model for the US, which our leaders have subsidized against the will of the people by creating one-sided trade agreements to prop up the psychopathic regime in China.
No more support for slavery there (or here in the form of illegals). Tariff them until they yield or collapse. Or maybe CATO or one of their peers can come up with a real alternative solution that isn't "more of the same" fake "free" trade.
I admit I didn't read the article (too much to read and too busy!). But my question is do you STILL free trade with countries that:
-tariff your goods more that you do theirs
-steal your IP
-pay slave wages
-don't have to comply with the same health, environmental, labor regulations
-manufacture even your nations critical military parts and medicines - so therefore have your country by the balls
-provide state funded subsidy's
.....I could go on and on. I agree with a lot if not most of libertarian viewpoints. But one of my favorite libertarian memes is the guy with his head buried in the "orthodox libertarian guidebook" as he walks off a cliff.
IMO, political ideologies should be viewed as tools in the toolbox. Different approaches that will work well in different underlying circumstances and preconditions. They're not religions and their core tenets are not gods. But too many people belong to them in that way.
Political philosophies also rely on sound analysis to have any usefulness in real world situations like this one. Apparently, sound analysis is in short supply. Too many "libertarians" are arguing against tariffs b/c "free trade," completing ignoring that we do not currently have free trade in any meaningful way. The reciprocal tariffs in this instance are a route to free trade, and the only one being offered by anyone, so far as I can see.
So, it suggests to me these "libertarian" thinkers simply don't actually want real free trade. They want the status quo of un-free and unfair trade to continue for some reason they are not saying out loud.
I am far from an expert on trade. So take my BS posts with a grain of salt:) But one of my first rules of taking in information is always, always, always....what is the source of that information? Do they profit off the status quo? Like the lords of easy money parasites on wall street. What is in the personal interests of any author? Not talking about this particular author....but just in general.
Always keep in mind the greatest quote in the history of man kind:
"Do not expect a man to understand if his salary depends upon him not understanding"
A lot of the big voices out there commenting on trade on Fintwit, substack, cnbc, WSJ editorials, FT editorials, CNN, etc... Have benefitted immensely off the status quo the last 40 yrs. A lot these "voices" are coming from the lords of easy money on wall street, the the big corporate monopolies, etc... And always realize, most of the people who voices "get heard" on all this shit are probably worth north of $50 million...including many of the so called "free trade" people in congress.
Well, if there's anything we've learned in the last 5 years or so it's that the "expert" class is really just a clique of wealthy, self-congratulating people living in an echo chamber, who obtained mostly fake degrees - in faulty or false theories and in using flawed techniques - from a handful of chosen DEI-compromised universities. Those chosen universities themselves have benefitted from the status quo, including receiving billions in taxpayer dollars to push the globalist ideology that empowers them. So, I'll take the real world observations of us regular people any day over that.
Regardless, they should be able to see that if everyone else is tariffing the US, there is no free trade. And, if they want free trade, then they'd be arguing against the status quo. So, when they pretend like it's not the case that unequal tariffs already existed, they must be straight-up lying to protect their turf. One more place where Trump blew open the Overton window. Even non-countries tariff the US, lol!
According to Grok: "As of April 2025, nearly all countries impose some form of tariffs on U.S. goods, as tariffs are a common trade policy tool. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data indicate that 190+ countries and territories, including sovereign states and dependent territories, apply import duties on U.S. products to varying degrees."
And as I said in a earlier post on a QTR article a while back, most of the pundits out there pontificating on tariffs only care if stock prices go up. They don't care about tariffs and never did. The only reason they are upset is stock prices are going down. If S&P went back into a bull market, 99% of the tariff talk would just go away. None of these pundits give a rats ass about "free trade". They all just care about stock prices endlessly going up.
You obviously don't get it. ;-)
What doesn't he get?
That free trade is God's will. If you're not a saint you're a sinner.
I don't think God concerns Himself with economics.
Not having tariffs does not mean we do have free trade. I have a previous comment that outlines my concerns.
True. But neither do many economists, evidently.
I trust my sarcasm above was evident.
Trade can be great and sometimes the freer the better -- under the right conditions. But that judgment seems to depend on the conditions in both trading nations. At bottom that's a political decision and almost everything in "economics" including trade is political.
I have no argument with that. That's essentially what I was saying in my previous comment. Removing tariffs does not necessarily remove all the other barriers to free trade. And those barriers are almost always political.
I agreed with this article ever since I read Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" in the early '90's. But I have to admit that free trade isn't working out for a significant sector of the economy (the workers), and it's not working out for the trade balance of the country as a whole. I think these are two huge problems. I think if you are going to promote free trade then you should also promote a solution to the income inequality and trade imbalance that seems to have been a result of free trade. I am a libertarian and the libertarians believe that the trade imbalance will disappear if we simply balance the federal budget and adopt honest currency policies. As far as I have seen, none of the libertarians have sufficiently explained the connection between the trade deficit and the budget deficit. Until they do, I will have to be against free trade.
I couldn’t agree more. If “free-trade” leads to assets being almost entirely owned by 10% of the population and the erosion of the middle class, then it’s either a turd wrapped in gold or we’re doing it wrong.
You have to have free trade and you can't tax anybody.
If an industry employs 50% of your population, and then Country B undercuts the industry and low--cost imports disemploy half your population. They have to go die.
Quietly. Without protest or complaint.
It was their fault somehow, for not being more "competitive".
This is the optimal world of all possible theoretical worlds.
It's economics 101!
this was a pretty picture of Xi and the people's republic... no mention of corporate espionage and american IP theft felt like a pretty big omission
I like thought-experiments. A group of 20 people live on an island with a grove of banana and pineapple trees and a diamond mine. The group is happy because they have food from the trees and knowing that, the group carefully tends to the health of the trees. The diamond mines goes untouched.
A boat arrives carrying traders from another island. The traders tell the islanders that they will provide all of the food the islanders need in exchange for some diamonds from the mine. The traders tell the islanders they will no longer have to worry about their food supply nor have to work to maintain the trees. And since the diamonds weren't being used, it would be a win/win for both groups.
So the islanders agree. Years go by and the trees die out because there is no need to maintain them. The diamond mine, which was once filled with diamonds is being depleted with each shipment of food.
One day, the traders arrive with the food and want their diamond allotment. They are told by the islanders that the mine is empty. The traders load the food back onto their boat and as they are about to sail away, the islanders say "But you said this was a win/win for both of us."
And the traders say "It was. But you never realized we not only took your diamonds. We also took your future." And then they sailed away.
Totalising theories never work in reality, but their proponents just keep insisting it's because it hasn't been tried hard enough yet (I can think of another one too). If these guys were to admit it's a failure, wouldn't they have to admit their entire intellectual life has been a gigantic pile of BS? Is that why it just gets stuck in institutions? Their whole economics department would have to admit they've essentially been spreading lies for 40 years?
I'm in favor of free trade, but...
It's not entirely up to Trump or the USA. Pretty nearly all countries impose tariffs. Our one respite from other country's tariffs is to impose our own. We all know that Trump's tariffs, as they now stand, will be modified as a result of the ongoing negotiations a happening now. One of America's favorite presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, said, "Talk softly, and carry a big stick." That applies here. Negotiations in which only the one side stands to gain anything, and which has nothing to lose is not a negotiation. It is a capitulation. Trump knows better. Make them WANT the negotiation.
Does the term 'free trade' mean anything when our trade is controlled by oligarchs? I think not. Tariffs or no tariffs, we need a true competitive economy with a level playing field.
Tariffs or no tariffs, China does not play fair. They've been ripping off our intellectual property for decades. They've deliberately put American companies out of business, not through competition but through trickery. And as we've seen be the recent rare earths debacle, we are fools to have all our eggs in the one basket. That's NEVER a good idea.
So, yes, I'm in favor of free trade. But I know better than to think it all comes down to tariffs. Tariffs may ultimately bring about freer trade than what we have had without them. And there is NO excuse for a negative balance of trade.
I don’t see how you can say the benefit of free global trade is worth it. I would say the Samsung TV going down in price while improving in quality is not worth having an entire swath of land known as the Rust Belt because all of the people were laid off and left the cities to abandonment. And if the free market is so effective internationally, why can’t it work well nationally?
🍻
Free markets and free trade don't exist because the human being is always looking for an economic edge using government . These utopian clowns are one step better than those imaginary unicorns known as Marxists. When the libertarian can find a way to eliminate non tariff trade barriers(the real meat and potatoes of government games) maybe then they can come to the big boy table..Otherwise free trade is a pipedream.
The issue I have is that the author sets the premise with the value judgments from Yeager, which we do not have. If the well-being of humans is supremely desirable and the high and rising standards of living are an important element of that, then why does he skip past that and turn his aim towards Trump’s tariffs? I would argue that the foundation of his argument is invalid if it is a one-sided affair. We clearly have that with China and I would be willing to bet there are many more countries that don’t maintain our standards of well-being, standard of living or freedom. Additionally, he argues from a position where Trump’s tariffs are the starting point of the timeline and repeatedly refers to them as retaliatory while never addressing the existing tariffs and prohibition of many products outright with our trading partners. I appreciate the philosophy behind the argument but the status quo was broken before Trump showed up.
Trump is using tariffs to get to free trade, he has said so. It was said "you have to take the medicine."