President Trump, Treasury secretary Bessent, and Commerce secretary Lutnick are effectively teaching a course right now on the fundamentals of international trade. How many Americans previously understood that nations around the world use tariffs and other economic tools to keep American-made products from reaching their markets? Hasn’t the United States been spreading the gospel of “free trade” for centuries? Doesn’t commitment to “free markets” separate the civilizational West from more authoritarian countries with “closed” economies? Shouldn’t a “rules-based international order” ensure that the rules are the same for all participating countries?
Or asked another way: How “free” can international trade be if its proponents depend upon a labyrinthine system of rules that requires thousand-page treaties and guidance from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, central banks galore, the Bank for International Settlements, international standards organizations, law firms specializing in commercial and maritime law, more law firms specializing in the administrative law of specific nations, even more law firms specializing in the labor and environmental laws of each nation, and an ever-increasing number of national and international regulatory bodies to tell producers what they can and cannot produce, how and when to produce what they are permitted to produce, and whom to pay for the “privilege” of producing it — all while restricting which domestic consumers around the world are permitted to purchase what the aforementioned producers end up producing?
That long question only scratches the surface of the sheer complexity of international trade, yet even in its oversimplification, it smacks of coercion, extortion, overbearing micromanagement, government corruption, and blatant racketeering. It oozes the “command and control” odor we associate with a Soviet-type, socialist, or similarly centrally planned economy. Nothing about “free trade” in practice sounds remotely free.
It looks like Trump’s policies are an attempt to bring this country back to the pre-1913 standards in the economy. They had almost no debt, no empire, no large standing army, small deficits and gold for money. Trade was not centralized, which is just another word for controlled and the state did not pick anc choose amongst its cronies the winners and losers in the economy. Only the ones benefiting from the current economy are the ones bellyaching about this. The oligarchy doesn’t like that the empire is collapsing upon itself in a demolition.