美国还有别的招吗，就这？

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The tide of globalization is receding, at least from American shores. Two successive presidents have come down firmly on the side of tariffs rather than trade agreements as the preferred mechanism for managing international commerce. History shows that we should proceed with caution. While there are political and security reasons for tariffs, America’s new protectionist stance will raise prices, limit consumer choices and risk our growth. The past aggressive and widespread imposition of levies of this sort has made clear that restraining trade brings with it serious risks to economic prosperity , both for the United States and for other affected countries.

Every student in an introductory economics course learns about David Ricardo’s 200-year-old theory of comparative advantage: the idea that by specializing in the products that they can produce most efficiently and then trading with others, nations can be better off . In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Though pitched as a means of protecting workers and farmers during a downturn , the tariffs triggered a wave of global protectionism that exacerbated the Great Depression and contributed to an estimated two-thirds decline in global trade.

Lesson learned, trade liberalization began, and successive accords brought tariffs down sharply, often to minimal levels. That culminated with the North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in 1994, and the admission of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001. As macroeconomists argued, the resulting increase in trade brought consumers in the United States and elsewhere less expensive and often superior goods, helping fuel strong economic growth and moderate inflation .  What macroeconomists missed were the microeconomic effects.  While trade aided overall prosperity, significant pockets of American workers — particularly in manufacturing — lost their jobs or found their wages cut.

The general problem with tariffs is that study after study has shown that they raise prices for consumers and probably cost more jobs than they save, particularly as affected countries retaliate . A Goldman Sachs analysis found that from the start of 2018 to the start of 2020, prices of tariff-targeted goods rose by about 4 percent and the prices of nontargeted goods fell 1 percent. Numerous studies have found that those higher prices were borne almost entirely by American companies and consumers — not by Chinese exporters . A Tax Foundation analysis concluded that the Trump tariffs cost 166,000 jobs.

Retaliation , the inevitable result of tariff imposition, has already begun. The “buy American” provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act helped spur Europe to add its own “buy European” requirements to its new green infrastructure bill. All told, the number of worldwide protectionist trade interventions roughly doubled in 2020 and has remained elevated, according to Global Trade Alert. We need a better approach. Tariffs can be used to temporarily shelter nascent domestic industries — much as Alexander Hamilton proposed when he served as our first Treasury secretary . They can be used judiciously to address unfair trading practices. And they can be used when national security is genuinely at risk. However, we also need to resume removing trade barriers, not increase them.