Navarro’s Faith-Based Case for Tariffs – By Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review) / Jan 17 2020
Our economy is strong but its strength has come in spite of Trump’s tariffs rather than because of them.
The president’s trade adviser recently made the case in the Wall Street Journal that the president’s tariffs have helped the economy. I’ll examine some of its claims in sequence. Excerpts from him are in italics.
Though the current economy is among the strongest of the past 50 years, critics of President Trump’s transformational trade policies continue to insist that the tariffs are hindering rather than helping the boom.
Of course an economy can be strong while also being hindered by misguided government policies. The administration itself takes the view that some government policies, which it would like to change, harm the economy.
Why have the gloom-and-doom forecasters been so wrong?
Navarro has at this point not identified any forecaster who has been wrong—and, spoiler alert, he won’t go on to identify one—although we can stipulate that anyone who thought that tariffs would by themselves stop a relatively strong economy from being relatively strong was indeed incorrect.
Continue to article: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trade-policy-tariffs-peter-navarro-examining-claims-they-helped-economy/
