imports

Trade wars are dangerous and harmful policies for governments to pursue.

On August 29, Research Fellow H. Sterling Burnett was a guest on the Energy Matters to discuss how the G-20 Summit nations snub and isolate the United States for their decision to leave the Paris climate agreement.

Listening to the rhetoric coming from the Trump Administration, it would be easy to assume that America’s balance of trade deficit is causing market misery and economic harm to the people of the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When now-President Donald Trump first burst onto the political scene, one of the ways he made a name for himself was by ridiculing many of the trade deals the United States has spent the last several decades cutting.

Listening to the presumptive Republican and Democratic candidates for the White House, the average voter would think that international trade and investment is a zero sum game in which there is a “winner” and a “loser.” Their economic policy assumption is that other countries are gaining at the international trade game at the expense of the United States.

The media are, of course, almost uniformly Leftist – which means they just about always toe the Party line. Including the belief that in order to help the poor – government must perpetually grow. Of course we conservatives also want to help the poor – we just think shrinking government is the way to actually do it.