Today’s column is about international trade, but I’m not going to regurgitate my usual arguments about the benefits of free trade or get wonky about creative destruction.
Instead, I’m going to make a point about the glib, hypocritical, and dishonest nature of politicians.
Here’s a tweet from Logan Dobson. He shows what Biden said in 2019 about Trump’s protectionism, followed by what Biden said just now said about doubling down on Trump’s policies.
In other words, Joe Biden in 2019 understood that tariffs on China are actually taxes on American consumers, but Joe Biden in 2024 has forgotten that lesson.
To be fair, I’m sure Biden does not do his own tweets, and maybe his aide who does social media today is not the same person that he had back in 2019.
But you would think there would be some attempt to avoid a complete flip flop.
Speaking of flip flops, Erica York of the Tax Foundation has a tweet exposing the hypocrisy and inconsistency of Biden’s top trade appointee.
She notes that the bureaucrats working for the United States Trade Representative have acknowledged that protectionism raises prices for consumers, but Katherine Tai then said the opposite in a preposterous attempt to defend the President’s new policy.
By the way, Biden and his Trade Representative could have made honest arguments. They could have justified their policy, for instance, by arguing that China is a special case because of that nation’s industrial policy or something like that.
But, instead, they’re doing Trump-style protectionism and pretending otherwise.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
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Image credit: Mgunn | Public Domain.
