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As the Trump administration continues to navigate turbulent trade waters, it’s faced with an impossible set of economic trade-offs. These trade-offs, known as Triffin’s paradox, are key to understanding the United States’ current trade predicament.
Much of the current regime is predicated on the notion that ivory tower intellectuals are capable of determining and controlling the “optimal money supply.” In reality, this is preposterous. All the Fed’s tinkering accomplishes is cultural decline, rising prices, and misplaced anger at the private businesses that serve the economy.
Inflation has come to be one the defining economic phenomena of this generation. As the money supply grows seemingly without end, it’s easy to miss how the erosion of our money wreaks both economic and – more subtly– cultural havoc.
Critics of free markets often argue that the competition found in markets is akin to animals in the wild; in the “dog-eat-dog” world of capitalism, they say, people must fight for survival. In this argument, however, lies insidious equivocation. On the contrary, markets are the most effective means for promoting both peace and social cooperation.
While free trade has never been universally popular in America, today its principles are under economic and moral attack from both the left and the right. Yet, the greatest concession that opponents of free trade make is, ironically, their love of the services that the market makes available to them.
Last week the Trump administration hinted at the possibility of new tariffs that would target the European Union and tech giant Apple. As the presidency continues to flip flop on this issue, American citizens should only conclude that the protectionist right is hopelessly deluded on trade.
Free-marketers rightly criticize the Fed for manipulating interest rates, which serve as important price signals to entrepreneurs. Many stumble, however, in applying this same criticism to other forms of price controls, such as interest rate caps, which have been revived earlier this year.
As the stock market climbs out of its tariff-induced April slump, many are hailing the return of a strong economy. Investors should be wary of unbridled optimism, since the Fed is still liable to fire up the money printers.
As of last week, the Federal Reserve has basically admitted it doesn’t know what’s happening in the economy. One thing’s for sure: inflation is still a problem.
With the Fed utterly clueless about inflation and GDP ticking lower, the Trump administration may be in trouble come midterms. As political narratives start to spin up, it’s worth recalling the nature of the so-called “Political Business Cycle.”
The Trump administration is anything but the paragon of free trade. And while their economic arguments fall short, an even stronger case can be made that protectionist policies like tariffs are fundamentally unjust.
