https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/04\/all-trade-is-reciprocal-trumps-tariffs-interfere-with-that-reciprocity<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“trade isn’t some state-level exchange in which one government mugs another. It takes place voluntarily between individuals and businesses.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“”In their criticism of global trade and imports, Vance and the GOP platform don’t mention several important things: the American consumer, private property, and the freedom that people should enjoy to voluntarily exchange goods and services,” he noted. “Some folks call this liberty and the pursuit of happiness: people freely choosing to buy and sell what they want, not what the government dictates.”<\/p>\n
And what do we call voluntary exchanges between willing participants? Well, as economist Roy Cordato wrote for the John Locke Foundation in 2018, “all trade, by definition, is reciprocal. It is best to think of a trade as simply two parties coming together for mutual gain with each of them giving up something that they possess for something that they want more.”<\/p>\n
So, in order to eliminate trade deficits with other nations that aren’t really a problem to begin with, the Trump administration is hiking tariffs to raise the cost of imported goods so that Americans will buy less of them. That’s interference in the free reciprocal exchanges chosen by consumers and businesses. And the price of that interference comes out of Americans’ pockets. That’s because, as the Tax Foundation’s Alex Durante warns, tariffs are taxes that, while partially paid by foreign firms, are mostly a burden for people in the countries that impose them\u2014especially as they rise to the heights we now see.<\/p>\n
“If the US imposes a large enough tariff, the resulting reduction in economic activity would also entail a meaningful increase in unemployment,” adds Durante.”<\/p>\n
https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/04\/all-trade-is-reciprocal-trumps-tariffs-interfere-with-that-reciprocity\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[221,217,165,290,208,141,226,170],"class_list":["post-17212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-donald-trump","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-imports","tag-tariffs","tag-taxes","tag-trade","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17213,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17212\/revisions\/17213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}