>Removal of trade barriers is always good, even if it's unilateral and asymmetric.
then just make it. A strong statement and a pdf link isn't very convincing.
Here’s an easy one: suppose that an industry generates negative environmental externalities that are not properly priced, and that international trade leads to an expansion of that industry in your country. Then that trade may indeed reduce national welfare
Okay so he admits that externalities can outweigh our more traditional views of gains from trade and then he moves on to state and refute a different argument.
The case for these tariffs is best going to be made through the externality argument though and tariffs/trade restrictions are an example where we believe externalities are outweighing our benefits. Seen through this lens common economic reasoning would tell us that a large improperly priced externality requires a tax to bring the item up to the proper price. In trade this tax is called a tariff and it's common sense to use it if you believe your country is being indirectly harmed by free trade.
Trump (but more probably his advisors) believe there are large external effects to having a strong technology industry at home in the 21st Century. Accordingly they are using tariffs and trade restrictions to maintain that.
My degree happens to be in economics, but okay. The argument is that trade barriers, both unilateral and bilateral, cause economic losses and are therefore bad. The belief that asymmetric trade barriers result in the unrestricted country "losing" is wrong - removal of trade barriers results in a reduction of deadweight losses even without symmetry. This is well-supported economic consensus with acceptance among economists comparable to that of climate change among climatologists.
>Okay so he admits that externalities can outweigh our more traditional views of gains from trade and then he moves on to state and refute a different argument.
No, he really doesn't. His point is that the proper solution to externalities is to price them in domestically, and tariffs in lieu of environmental policy harmonization are "second best" with unconvincing arguments in favor.
However, this discussion is about using tariffs as a tool to combat externalities unrelated to trade and is tangential at best to our discussion.
>The case for these tariffs is best going to be made through the externality argument though and tariffs/trade restrictions are an example where we believe externalities are outweighing our benefits. Seen through this lens common economic reasoning would tell us that a large improperly priced externality requires a tax to bring the item up to the proper price. In trade this tax is called a tariff and it's common sense to use it if you believe your country is being indirectly harmed by free trade.
This is precisely where Trump is wrong. Removal of trade barriers has positive externalities, not negative. It is a Kaldor-Hicks improvement.
>Trump (but more probably his advisors) believe there are large external effects to having a strong technology industry at home in the 21st Century. Accordingly they are using tariffs and trade restrictions to maintain that.
This is not in line with their stated reasoning. They believe tariffs are necessary because trade deficits are losses.
