When I spoke earlier this year at the Universidad de Libertad in Mexico City, I explained why Trump’s trade policy is mistaken (confirmed on “Liberation Day“).
But I acknowledged near the end that there might be some exceptions to free trade. Here’s that portion of my remarks.
Here’s the slide that I was sharing during that part of my speech.
You’ll see that I gave three potential reasons to restrict trade.
If you pay attention to my remarks, I openly admitted that I don’t know how strong these arguments are, either in general or with regard to China.
Indeed, I’ll even admit that I don’t want them to be true, both because I like free trade and I also want a peaceful and prosperous China.
But I also acknowledge that policy makers in Washington should consider those three points when enacting trade policy.
That being said, I want to emphasize what I said in the last 30 seconds of my speech, which is that none of the three exceptions apply to 95 percent-plus of the world’s nations.
Needless to say, Trump did not follow my advice.
He didn’t just target China. Instead, he also imposed his destructive trade taxes on every allied and friendly country (while inexplicably sparing Russia, a country that presumably deserves to be punished).
