Trumpian Industrial Policy Will Result In MAPA (Making America Poorer Again)

We now have four announced “trade deals”—with the UK, Japan, Vietnam and the EU—and none of them will add an iota to true capitalist prosperity in America. That’s because these “deals” actually amount to an amateur version of “industrial policy”, which is just statist socialism by any other name. It will result in economic impoverishment, not a golden age of prosperity.

The truth is, genuine free market prosperity has no need whatsoever for a political deal-maker in the Oval Office—especially one who capriciously takes America’s trade with the world hostage via import tariff maneuvers and threats in order to extract arbitrary trade purchases and investment flows from counter-parties abroad. For example, how much Japan invests in the US or the level of EU-27 purchases of energy (or anything else) from the US is none of the president’s damn business.