Are we facing a tariff war?

Or just self-defense?

This will be a short post. I just found a graphic showing trade barriers, including tariffs, among the G20 nations (the world’s largest economies). The analysis was done by Bank of America. Take a look at this.

America has almost the lowest tariff rate within the G20 and almost the lowest non-tariff barriers. (I assume that the highest numbers, for Argentina, have probably decreased substantially under the leadership of President Milei.)

You really have to wonder what the World Trade Organization has been up to for the last 30 years. In any case, I appreciate the author’s use of scare quotes around the phrase “Free trade”. It certainly is not fair trade.

President Trump is right; the United States has been played for a sucker. I do not blame the other countries on the chart; they are simply taking care of their own societies. The tragedy is that America has not taken care of itself.

The villains, in my opinion, are the tenured professors who justify this nonsense. They delight in elegant theories unburdened by correspondence with facts.

There is a lot of dark muttering online about the bankers, but this is misguided. Bankers manage other people’s money. No one ever asks whose money it is that is being managed.

In any case, I would advise the Trump administration to institute reciprocal tariffs and non-tariff barriers. India and Turkey will get 15% tariffs; the United Kingdom will get 20% non-tariff barriers; and so on. There is no virtue in hollowing out American society to subsidize other countries’ economies.