Trade Wars ... What Fun!

SEE HEREI am a proponent of free trade believing that it is the best and truest form of economic freedom. However free trade only works when it is, well, free, when all sides are playing by the same rules. There are various ways to undermine free trade, tariffs being one of the most obvious, but also government subsidies to industries that allow them to produce at a lower cost because they have been subsidized. This is relatively stupid since it rewards inefficient competitors with your dollars and you receive essentially nothing in return. So here we have Brazil raising tariffs on U.S. goods because of U.S. subsidies of domestic producers, or so they say. All in all this sort of thing just makes products more expensive for everyone, reduces the volume of trade and lets the government posture and pretend they are doing something when in fact, as always, they are just demonstrating how government is like sand in the wheels of progress.