Whenever the subject of trade comes up, many right-leaning free traders and left-leaning neoliberals alike trot out the same talking point: “The economists all agree tariffs are terrible!” And perhaps they do — or at least most of them do. Barriers to free and unfettered trade may well appear “inefficient” as a matter of an economic model’s “deadweight loss” — and they may well conflict with David Ricardo’s much-heralded 19th-century trade theory of “comparative advantage.” It may well be the case that “consumer surplus” is indeed harmed by restrictions on the free flow of goods.
But this is classroom theory. And the “dismal science” that is the economics profession is not always known for its close relationship to, well, real life.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, elites of both parties in the U.S., overly…
