Milton Friedman on tariffs and the free trade.

You should shoot the guy shooting the boat. Then patch the boat.

It's OK as long as the rest of the world follows suit to understand the value of free-trade for themselves. They haven't. A quick "awakening" is not terrible to recalibrate the balance. Long term, tariffs ARE bad for all. Most sane countries will drop theirs. Fascists won't.

Here’s what could get more expensive with Trump’s new tariffs.

This ignores the fact that the US policy has removed our goods. The rest of the world isn’t selling us their goods, they are selling our own goods back to us.

Yeah.. but the US has nothing to sell anymore... All the factories have moved out...

Well, Milton….that really hasn’t worked out so well for the American working class…so screw you.

Argument by analogy is the weakest form of argument. This analogy is weak: economies are not boats. It overgeneralizes and invites a false equivalence: the economic impacts of tariffs is far more complicated than holes in boats. The analogy is subjective and lacks rigor.

How do you patch the holes the other guys keep making?

This is the most moronic clip I've ever seen. From a USUALLY smart man. The Japanese dumped DRAM chips on our market in 1980's. We responded like Milton suggested, because a protectionist response would be "demeaning". Did nothing. Our DRAM fabs closed. THEN Japan took the global market away from us, as part of their "managed trade" plan. THEN raised prices after destroying their US competitors. Almost put Intel out of business. They moved to microprocessors.

As a result of this thinking we have destroyed our domestic production capacity, jobs and related wages while racking up nearly $1 Trillion in total trade deficit all in the name of “superpower benevolence”. GTFO

It makes sense if we all come to sensible terms where nobody is shooting boats. If not, we make the boats bulletproof, in America. You may pay a little more for your boat in the short term, but in the long term you create competition and innovation to make better boats.