Trade wars underpin, underline, our more general view that political management of the economy - of life itself - is something to be avoided.
The base logic is terribly, terribly, simple. Imports are the benefit of trade, exports the costs. Imports are the labour of Johnny Foreigner that we are able to consume, to our benefit. Exports are our sweat of hand and brow that we send off for some other chappy to consume and benefit from. Exports are costs, imports benefits.
At which point, this:
Rishi Sunak’s plan to scrap thousands of EU laws by the end of this year risks triggering a full-scale trade war between the UK and Brussels, senior figures in the European Union have warned.
Letters from leading EU politicians, seen by the Observer, reveal deep concern that the UK is about to lower standards in areas such as environmental protection and workers’ rights – breaching “level playing field” provisions that were at the heart of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement (TCA).
In retaliation, EU leaders in the European Commission, the European parliament and the council of ministers are preparing what they call their own “unilateral rebalancing measures” in secret meetings in Brussels. Sources say these are certain to include the option of imposing tariffs on UK goods entering the EU single market.
The British Government is considering doing some things which might be of benefit to British citizens, to inhabitants of Britain. Whether they will be or not we’ll leave to one side, it’s not relevant to our point here. The reaction from J. Foreign is that in the face of such absurd provocation they will make their own citizens, their own inhabitants, worse off.
For that is what the imposition of tariffs is. EU folk will no longer be able to - or must pay a higher price to - enjoy the work and labour of Britons. This makes those EU folk worse off. But this is the very threat which is supposed to make us quail in our boots? Europeans will be made worse off so we Britons must not do that?
The reason for this absurdity - and it’s not just the EU subject to this mal-thinking - is that politics views trade through a mercantilist lens. Exports are the aim, piling up the gold bars achieved from them the benefit. This view is 247 years out of date (since the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations) at the least. Yet it is still how politics and trade policy interact.
Given that politics and politicians have had that near quarter millennium to get this point right and have, gloriously and completely, failed to do so, we end up with the insistence that politics and politicians are not the way to decide trade policy. For after all those years if they’ve not managed to note it yet we can safely assume they never will.
A politics and politician free trade policy is one of free trade. Actual, real, whole and total, free trade. So, if politics and politicians are going to be - as they are - really, wholly and totally wrong about trade then we must have free trade, mustn’t we?