Written by HARMAN, as agreed upon by ALL MEMBERS of PROJECT 250.
The weekend before I began writing the draft for this page, I bore witness at a social event to a discussion between two young men a year or two below me in school, about one of them enlisting in the Air Force and about the state of affairs in our country. And what struck me was when the discussion turned toward President Trump’s economic policy and how he has supposedly taken our trade policy in an isolationist/protectionist policy, and how “the Republican Party used to be the ones supporting free trade”. I almost visibly scoffed at the way they were talking as though free trade is always good and protectionism bad. I will not claim here or anywhere to have a great idea of what all our President is up to. I have been living under a rock these past couple of years, focusing almost exclusively on what the society Project 250 strives for will look like. I do not study the current state of our country and the world much because I know the world is fucked up, to put it bluntly. I do not need to know how except where necessary to how we will go about creating our new society, I only need to know that it is. Nor, as will be seen elsewhere, will I defend all of Trump’s actions. Though we generally support Trump as the best of the…not worse, but certainly subpar, but still about as good as we can hope for these days…and we are zealots for his campaign promises, we are immensely disappointed in his performance in his second term as President, one of many issues to be discussed further in some other opinion essay. This frustration and annoyance on my part as thus driven me to begin writing this piece in earnest in order to finally sort out my ideas on trade, none of which are an expert opinion, as we are still searching for one and I am still trying to learn but so far seem to be entirely inept at the science that is economics.
On paper, free trade is the ideal order of global business. We at Project 250 want free trade; after all we wholeheartedly believe in the mantra “the freer the market, the freer the people”. Additionally we have found that fewer restrictions allow for better prosperity and greater efficiency, as restrictions tend to make production more costly and trade disrupted. If all nations played fair in the world market, all could trade freely without concern for being taken advantage of or left poorer rather than richer.
We Project 250 members, however, support protectionist trade policies when they are imposed and executed properly. Make no mistake, we are not isolationists—I do not believe the young men I listened to are such persons, but I am aware that some people think protectionism is synonymous with isolation, much to my frustration. Isolationism and absolutely free trade are the opposites on the same spectrum; as with all matters, both extremes are bad, though sometimes one is even worse than the other, and in this case isolationism is even worse than free trade. We regard protectionism to be the moderate middle ground. For us protectionism looks like regulated trade with other nations who take from us more than they give, and outright cutting ties with those countries who treat us with hostility. America must never, and under Project 250 will never, completely shut itself off entirely from the world, but rather with prudence trade with each nation according to how they treat our own.
Perhaps the most popular, or at least controversial, exercise of protectionism today—apart, perhaps, from empty or half-assed campaign promises to bring back domestic manufacturing—is the imposition of tariffs. Many people criticize President Trump for his tariffs against products imported from China, even Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who in 1996 would have been economically MAGA. The problem with tariffs is that they make goods more expensive for the common consumer. That is because the tariff is an import tax, which must be paid by the person or business importing the product, and the more money a business must spend before they can finally sell their goods, the more they must charge for them if they want to make a decent profit.
I for one do not hate tariffs. From what little I understand, I have come to figure that the increased price is an intended consequence—if the price is high enough the goods will be more expensive than domestically manufactured productions, helping domestic companies better compete with foreign companies. The problem comes when the overwhelming majority of a country’s goods are foreign-made. Where is the product that is both sold and made in America? There is my Henry rifle; most of the books I have within reach are printed here, even the newer ones. Yet many more products, from patriotic merchandise to goods from American-born brands are made overseas. My Gadsden snake and YAF coffee mugs came with “Made in China” stickers, my Browning Citori was built in Japan. Hilljack’s hats are made in southeast Asia, his jeans in Bangladesh. The shirt I am wearing as I write says it was printed and designed here, but made down in Mexico with American cotton, while the America 250 shirt I saw Columbia wearing yesterday, she told me when I inquired that it was made in Pakistan. It is not entirely impossible to find American-made alternatives to a given item, but certainly difficult enough that one may have little choice but to purchase the tariffed imports.
Tariffs are not always economic suicide like they are so often made out to be. China tariffs the hell out of our exports, and their economy is about as well as it ever has been. Furthermore they are often the weapon of choice in trade wars, where one country raises tariffs in retaliation, often in retaliation to another country levying tariffs. Now why on Earth would a nation that is being hurt by another country want to hurt itself even more by levying tariffs? But like everything else, they are a tool of statesmanship, a tool which the statesman must understand how and when to deploy it in order to attack the foreign adversary while avoiding harm to his own people as much as possible.
But does that mean that we should give up tariffs, and put up with other nations tariffing us while we pay their companies for our clothes, hardware tools, and cooking utensils? Absolutely not. We must start bringing back manufacturing to America, an issue that will be discussed in other essays wherever relevant. Every American-born company that has moved its production overseas must be legally required to bring their manufacturing back home. The one exception we are willing to make is if they sell their products in other countries. Honda, for example, is a Japanese company, but they assemble cars to be sold to Americans with factories built in America, same with Volkswagen. We don't want to require all foreign companies that sell to Americans to bring their manufacturing here; my Franchi shotgun was made in Italy, as all Italian shotguns should be, and I would have no qualms if my VW Passat was made in Germany. If a foreign company, so long as it is from a friendly nation, wants to bring some of its manufacturing here, is perfectly fine by us, so it is only fair if we allow our companies to do the same; but we find it entirely superfluous to ship all of one’s raw materials across the ocean to be assembled into finished goods by (to use socialist or Confederate American terms) wage slaves, and then bring them back across the ocean to be sold to the home country.
I see little harm that can come from returning our manufacturing back here. The only downside ever offered to me is that it will raise prices. Can prices not rise on goods made overseas? So what if things get a little more expensive? I’m willing to pay a higher price for something made by a fellow American. The one thing making imports cheap is that the goods are made by wage slaves. Americans can and do demand higher wages. Sometimes they demand more than they deserve, but they make multiple dollars for every hour they work. Their counterparts or the people who “took their jobs”, whether migrant workers here or wage slaves overseas, are happy to work and sweatshops for less than a dollar. You want to talk about wage slavery? Go find a documentary about sweatshops in China or Bangladesh. I had to watch one in high school. I felt pity for the Bangladeshi mother who said that it was the only job she could get, and she would be on the streets if American businesses who outsource to Bangladesh packed up and took their manufacturing back home. But at the end of the day we must prioritize our own people, and say to hell to the rest of the world. That Bangladeshi mother is not our responsibility, she is the responsibility of the Bangladeshi government. I understand the reason for moving work overseas: businessmen want to save money. Everyone does, and so I am willing to tolerate it, but only when it does not hurt American workers and consumers. I do not care if business men put their own needs first—I care if they favor foreign workers and governments over our own people.
Overall I do believe that the pros of domestic manufacturing vastly outweigh the cons. Employment will rise, and we will no longer rely on countries whom we should not even rely on to begin with; our meat, pharmaceuticals, and military assets should especially not be made overseas. The point is not to make everything we could possibly want or need ourselves. Some things, especially certain fruits, cannot be grown here in abundance. The point is to become as economically independent as possible, so that in the event a country we import from should be invaded or for any other reason stop trading with us, we shall not be crippled by broken supply chains. Moreover anyone who cares any about air and water pollution ought to be on board with this change. Bringing manufacturing back within our borders will, even if only marginally, reduce how much our ships are on the sea, reducing our so-called carbon footprint and the number of shipwrecks sending oil and other pollutants into the depths. How much fuel, metal, plastic, and everything else is lost in shipwreck, I do not want to know.
Our economic policy, in sum, will be on a sort of crede sed verifica basis. Above all we do want total free trade, but we want it to be fair trade; it is our wish to play fair with the world and to see all nations play fair with each other. But our main interest must always be the security and prosperity of the American people; if we cannot trade freely without enabling or empowering foreign entities who might wish to attack us, or without leaving our people poorer and our partner richer than before the trade, then we shall shift to protectionism. If a trade war happens, I can right now in my limited understanding assume that the country who starts it only does so because they expect us to accept their unfair trade, and when we do not, they get mad at us for standing up for our own people. If that is the case, then to them I say, ‘tough luck’.