- The party’s back on!…
- The nationalist case for free trade…
- April 15 is now under a week away! If you haven’t yet, you need to learn about this loophole that can LEGALLY save you thousands in taxes this year
Dear Reader,
Yesterday afternoon the president announced a 90-day tariff truce — China excepted:
- I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately…
- Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately.
Champagne corks on Wall Street went popping.
Sparklers were set alight… as were celebratory cigars.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was in short order 2,000 points up and away.
The index ended trading 2,962 points to the good.
Both S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite assumed identical trajectories.
Trump Was Almost Right
The president labeled it “the biggest day in financial history.”
The fellow is given to boastful bombast and sweeping exaggeration.
Yet he came very near the mark.
Yesterday’s bonanza represented the third grandest one-day spree since World War II.
All, once again, is joy.
Except — perhaps — among despisers of Mr. Musk.
Tesla stock rampaged some 23% yesterday.
The Pivotal Moment We’ve Been Waiting for
“This is the pivotal moment we’ve been waiting for,” gushed Ms. Gina Bolvin of the eponymous Bolvin Wealth Management Group.
“The immediate market reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, as investors interpret this as a step toward much-needed clarity,” she added.
Here Piper Sandler chief strategist Michael Kantrowitz wipes the perspiration from his brow:
“While uncertainty isn’t headed to zero, the worst-case scenario is off the table most likely.”
Yet Morningstar’s chief strategist — a certain David Sekera — counsels caution:
- It’s still too early to signal an all clear. Trade negotiations have yet to start and once they do, there will be positive and negative headlines as each party positions itself to extract the maximum amount of concessions possible.
I hazard there is justice here.
The president is a very resolute fellow. And he is keen to have his negotiating partners blink their eyes before he blinks his eyes.
And I suspect he will bellow threats that frighten the horses on occasion.
Thus I am with Mr. Sekera. I too advise prudence.
Two Questions
Here I raise a question: With the president’s tariffs suspended… is the United States economy still fated for recession?
Prior to yesterday’s stock market jubilations many economists were howling about one.
Some gave up to 70% odds of recession this year. I have yet to discover updated projections.
Here I raise an additional, more theoretical question:
Is there a nationalist case for free trade?
Free trade is broadly considered a one-worlder’s project.
Many of its drummers, buglers and trumpeters fancy themselves citizens of the world.
They read their sheet music from The Economist or Financial Times — the latter of which exhorts each reader to “be a global citizen.”
Their attachments are loose… as are their national loyalties.
Open Borders!
Borders are obsolete, they bellow.
Borders choke the free flow of goods and people. Borders divide rather than unite.
Meantime, free trade laughs at borders… and joins the world in a happy embrace.
Only Donald Trump and his corn-fed, stump-toothed, mouth-breathing “deplorables” are against it.
But to many of these cosmopolitans, free trade is a mere stalking horse for a larger political project.
That project is global governance. And national sovereignty is in the way.
They must therefore knock down fences… and open up borders.
But as economist Joseph Salerno notes, these globalists cannot claim free trade as their own.
Free trade — in fact — has direct ancestry in nationalism.
The Nationalist Case for Free Trade
Here are some of free trade’s original drummers:
Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo and Frédéric Bastiat — free market giants all.
Yet they took the national view. Salerno:
- Despite their devotion to free trade, the classical economists were nationalists. They viewed free trade as one of the most important means for advancing the security, prosperity and cultural achievements of their own nations…
- [They] recognized the existence of profound differences among nations and nationalities and loved their own nations above all others…
Here Mr. Salerno cites economist Razeen Sally, chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies:
- Hume and Smith stick to considerations of the nation and the national interest as practical objects of analysis. This is a point of absolutely vital importance. Note that Smith does not expatiate on the wealth of “the world”; rather he focuses on the wealth of nations…
No Vague Cosmopolitanism
Next we come to 20th-century British economist Lionel Robbins:
- There is little evidence that [the classical economists] often went beyond the test of national advantage as a criterion of policy, still less that they were prepared to contemplate the dissolution of national bonds… I find no trace anywhere in their writings of the vague cosmopolitanism with which they are often credited…
In yet further defense of nationalist free trade, Salerno shovels up the bones of economist Edmund Silberner (dates 1910–1985):
Though hostile to militarism, [the classical economists] make it clear that their attitude is opposed neither to an enlightened patriotism nor to the principle of nationalities…
Thus rests the prosecution — free trade was conceived in the national interest.
Yet today’s one-worlders have twisted, bent and stretched free trade out of all semblance.
They peddle a counterfeit good… at least by the lights of the classical economists.
I say return trade to its original spirit.
I say return trade to the national interest.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
