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Will: Private sector increasingly gets public largesse

By George Will
Published: October 7, 2018, 6:01am

The descent of American capitalism into a racket is being greased by professed capitalists in government, in collaboration with professed capitalists in what is called, with decreasing accuracy, the private sector. This is occurring under the auspices of Republicans, and while many Democrats are arguing, with some accuracy but more incoherence, this: The government has become a servant of grasping private interests — and should be much bigger and more interventionist.

Protectionism — laws and administrative rulings by which government determines the prices and quantities of imported goods and services — is government regulation. So, it is probable that the current administration, which lists deregulation as among its glistening achievements, is producing a substantial net increase in economic regulation.

The American Action Forum, a center-right advocacy group, says the Trump administration’s deregulatory efforts have saved Americans $1.3 billion this year. That, however, is only about one-ninth of the sum ($12 billion) of taxpayer dollars flowing to a small portion of taxpayers (those who are engaged in agriculture, less than 2 percent of the population) as recompense for injuries the government has done to them, and to all consumers, by protectionist policies that have provoked retaliatory tariffs against U.S. agricultural products.

Most Americans would not recognize a soybean if it were presented to them on a silver salver, but they are invested, in several senses, in agriculture policy. American farmers have picked a bad time to produce a harvest of good news. Because pork, soybean and corn yields are up, the Agriculture Department says farm income is expected to decline 13 percent this year, a trend exacerbated by retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and Mexico, and not nearly mitigated by U.S. government payments.

Prices going up

“China,” says the president strangely, “is now paying us billions of dollars in tariffs.” Tariffs are taxes collected at the border and paid in one way or another by various residents of the importing nation. Bloomberg Businessweek notes that Coca-Cola blamed metals tariffs for its decision to raise product prices. Home Depot is “allowing its suppliers to fully pass along their tariff-related cost increases,” partly because such is the bargaining power of Home Depot (like Walmart’s and Amazon’s) when dealing with its suppliers, whose profit margins are already thin. So, Home Depot (and its shareholders) will sacrifice profits to the extent that the company does not pass on to consumers the tariff-related costs. The billions China is supposedly paying “in tariffs” are figments of the president’s remarkable misunderstanding of the protectionism that is the centerpiece of his agenda.

It is hilarious, but helpful, that the president thinks, or at any rate says, that last week’s mild modernizing revisions of NAFTA have transformed what he previously called the “worst trade deal ever made” into “the biggest trade deal in the United States’ history.” So, about one thing he is sort of right: Trade wars are easy to win — if you sufficiently define victory down.

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