Commentary
President Donald Trump confirmed this week that new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China will go into effect on March 4. For weeks and months, a chorus of conservatives and libertarians have savaged Trump’s fondness for tariffs. Tariffs punish your own people, said John Stossel in Reason Magazine. Tariffs are taxes, and taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices, said Sen. Rand Paul. The optimal level of tariffs is zero, said Walter Block in the Financial Post. They’re not wrong. But like Trump himself, sometimes tariffs are not that crazy.
