Michael Lind asks 'So What If Tariffs Are Taxes?' and gets both his history and economics wrong

Michael Lind asks “So What If Tariffs Are Taxes?” in a recent American Compass article.

He writes that tariffs are good economics, good policy, and essential to reverse the damage allegedly caused by pursuing trade liberalization.

Peter Bergen says Lind 's call for “ Sticks, Not Carrots ” belies a subtle truth: he believes it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure that Americans are well-off.

Bergen: These policies have been tried before, with the same result each time: the impoverishment.

David Rothkopf : Tariffs raise prices and, in response to higher prices, firms in industries using the now more expensive materials cut costs in the form of laying off workers.

This makes tariffs a regressive tax in that the burden falls disproportionately on low-income households, he says.

He says that removing tariffs would also be regressive and disproportionately benefit low- income families.

Rothpf: If Lind is serious about “increasing pre-tax wages” and “reducing inequality, then he needs to look at reducing barriers to trade.

Tax expenditures are not the same thing as “direct appropriations,” says Julian Lind .

Government planning simply cannot replicate the ways free prices in a free market allow businesses to deliver goods that people want at a cost they can afford.