Charlton Allen, writing for americanthinker.com, has just provided a voice of sanity regarding the tariffs imposed (but easily rescinded) by President Trump. It is titled “We Didn’t Start The Trade War – We’ve Just Finally Joined It”.
Mr. Allen’s overall point is that Trump’s tariffs are not the imposition of unfair impediments for countries looking to trade with the United States. They are the evening up of unfair impediments that have been imposed by the countries being hit with those tariffs – which have decimated our manufacturing base and made us perilously dependent on other countries for goods we must have. Like, for example medical supplies (among many, many others).
Here is the beginning of Mr. Allen’s commentary:
When President Donald Trump slapped a fresh round of tariffs on European and Asian imports, the professional hand-wringers and legacy press clodpolls sprang into choreographed action.
Headlines and television anchors blared warnings of trade wars, economic isolation, and diplomatic fallout. The bureaucratic priesthood that worships at the altar of “free trade” without reciprocity—from Brussels to Brookings—launched into familiar homilies: tariffs are regressive, Trump is reckless, and globalism is gospel.
But let’s pause the hysteria momentarily and apply something vanishingly rare in today’s media-industrial complex: perspective.
The prevailing orthodoxy treats tariffs as anathema to prosperity—an outdated relic of 19th-century mercantilism. But this overlooks a simple truth: for trade to be free, it must also be fair. For decades, American policymakers—both Democrats and Republicans—have tolerated a grotesquely asymmetrical global trade regime that has hollowed out the American industrial base and made us dangerously dependent on foreign powers, friend and foe alike.
Trump’s critics are wrong. These tariffs aren’t a calamity. They’re a much-needed course correction
Absolutely true. And absolutely intolerable. We are not at the point where this damages the United States, we are far past that point. And it MUST be addressed and remedied.
If Donald Trump’s initiatives significantly improve the current tariff imbalance between us and most other countries, it will be a result of incalculable importance to the United States.
May it have great success.
