Tough Luck on Trade
Suppose the U.S. Constitution mandated unilateral free trade with no exceptions. Much could go wrong. A pessimist could fairly ask all of the following:
What if other countries take advantage of our unilateralism to drastically raise their tariffs?
What if other countries strategically predate on our critical industries, leaving us vulnerable in a major crisis?
What if hostile countries buy and stockpile strategic resources from us, then get really hostile?
What if some unforeseen trade issue, an “unknown unknown,” arises, and our leaders are unable to respond because the Constitution ties their hands?
There are many handy responses to these challenges. Like: “If the problem is that bad, we can amend the Constitution to make an exception.” But a pessimist could readily retort, “What if amending the Constitution takes too much time to avert disaster?” When push comes to shove, the defender of unilateral free trade has no response better than, “Tough luck.” Unconvincing, but as I’ve explained before, “Tough luck” is what every conceivable social system tells you in the end:
Name any political system. I can generate endless hypotheticals to aggravate its supporters. The right lesson to draw: Every political perspective eventually has to say “Tough luck” when confronted with well-crafted what-ifs. There’s nothing uniquely hard-hearted or cruel about libertarianism. Defenders of democracy, nationalism, liberalism, conservatism, the American Constitution, and social democracy all eventually sigh, “Life’s not fair,” or “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
Case in point: Suppose that instead of Constitutionally-mandated unilateral free trade, you leave trade policy to the U.S. federal government. A pessimist could easily ask all of the following:
What if Congress passes legislation to delegate tariff policy to the President, leaving the whole economy at the mercy of one power-hungry man?
What if voters elect an economically-illiterate protectionist to the presidency?
What if the President laughs in the face of stock market collapse and severe economic distress, or tries to shift the blame to the Federal Reserve?
What if the President treats friendly trading partners like dirt, making up false accusations about their abusive trade practices when the shoe is on the other foot?
What if the President antagonizes less-friendly trading partners for no reason, sharply raising the risk of world war?
There’s only one major difference between the first set of what-ifs and the second. Namely: Every item in first set is hypothetical, while every item in the second set has actually happened. Except for #1, in fact, they all happened in the last six months!
Sure, you can sigh, “Well, that’s democracy.” But that’s just democratic fundamentalism’s version of “Tough luck.” The reasonable approach, in contrast, is to acknowledge that neither strict free trade nor “pragmatic” protectionism offer anything like perfect safety — and ask “Which set of what-ifs is more fanciful?”
I know my answer.
Before 2024, a constitutional amendment mandating free trade seemed a bit borderline, since there are some legitimate reasons, from a pressure mechanism and negotiations to positive and negative externalities from certain industries to revenue, why modest tariffs, wielded by a competent government, might be good.
All that is dead, dead, dead. Tariffmageddon alters the risk profile of the government having tariff powers drastically, giving it insuperable advantage to a permanent, constitutionally mandated commitment to unilateral free trade. It's a heavy lift but that's the thing to work for.
Independent of the question of free trade, essentially this identical argument applies to every policy position that you personally favor. Yes, the elected government is allowed to change policies, but it maybe isn't a good idea to try to enshrine a particular set of policy preferences from a particular time into the constitution specifically to make them hard to change.
Really, the problem with this specific issue is item number 1 in the second list, as its an abdication of the constitutionally-mandated responsibility of Congress.