Letter: Tariffs may be worst of Trump’s bad ideas

Friday April 13, 2018

President should be promoting free trade rather than undermining it.

Editor:

With just over a year in office, it appears that President Donald Trump will be best remembered for his multitude of bad ideas, including tax reform to aid the rich and building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border that illegal immigrants can either tunnel under or fly over.

His latest and possibly greatest bad idea is to place tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. This quickly resulted in retaliatory tariffs by the Chinese on numerous goods, which will have a devastating impact on our local agricultural industry and may ultimately trigger a larger trade war.

To quote Harvard University economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, "Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards."


In a survey of leading economists, none disagreed with the notion that freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any negative effects on employment.

Trump should be working to further global free trade, not advocating policies bound to have negative economic consequences here and abroad.

Bill McIntosh
Jefferson Township

Tariffs may be worst of Trump's bad ideas