A reader on my Facebook thread defending J.D. Vance’s opposition to capitalism:
We live in an economic “protectionist” world … Free trade will never follow a Idealist Milton Friedman Economic model again as long as there are States that use their economies as weapons to prop up their own economic initiatives like social welfare states or to pursue Global Military and economic dominance against us … Trade imbalances are the tools they use to defeat us ! IMO that is what Vance is talking about … the same as what Trump is now doing … and you don’t see that ? or am I missing something ?
My reply:
If every nation on earth were economically free, tariffs would be unnecessary. Because Americans opt to trade with totalitarians and slave holders like Communist China, Communist Canada and others, our government has to take some steps in self-defense. President Trump’s use of tariffs is an extension of his foreign and defense policy. The need for tariffs and other barriers to oppose bad governments is not a case against the free market. It simply shows how desperately the whole world needs free markets. At home and abroad, government is the problem, not unregulated markets. A better economist than Friedman is Ludwig von Mises; also his student, George Reisman, who wrote Capitalism. I have read all their books.
The faulty premise in what you (and others on this thread) have written is to assume that tariffs are the only or most important issue in human behavior and economics. False. If we didn’t have free markets and the wealth and profits they produce, there would be nothing to tax or impose tariffs on, because the economy would be stagnant. Again, the onus is on J.D. Vance to define his alternative to free markets. And if he is so great, does this mean the Republican Party will no longer be in favor of capitalism? We need Reagan and Thatcher as never before–at a minimum. If the Democrats regain power, as they likely will if their opponent is as weak and contradictory as Vance, then all this will be moot. Mamdani’s policies will be America’s, if we let Democrats anywhere near the federal government again.