TRADE IS NOT A FOUR-LETTER WORD

Tariffs be damned: Global trade is a net good, and any consumer should be grateful for it.

Hochberg, former president of the Export-Import Bank, served as CEO of Lillian Vernon Corporation, the firm his mother founded “at our kitchen table.” In working there, he writes, he and his family were hot on the heels of Richard Nixon in opening up to China, where, though modernization had yet to hit in 1972, they offered products and materials that were unavailable or much more expensive in the West. Making China a modern villain in the trade wars is misguided, he argues. Granted that “with the largest workforce on the planet, massive state-owned enterprises, and a desire to dominate high-value manufacturing sectors, it took very little time for China to become a formidable competitor for export business”; competition is what it’s all about. Hochberg surveys several products and categories to make his case: Everyone like tacos, after all, but the components of tacos alone reflect the interplay of trade, with parts coming from nearly every continent. Just so, many people would be lost without their smartphones, which are made from materials gathered in Africa, designed in the U.S. and Europe, and manufactured in China and other Asian nations. The author digs deeper: Consider that half a century ago, all 50 states found it necessary to pass “lemon laws” to protect consumers from badly made cars; now such things are objects of antiquity given that stiff global competition has made every automaker up its game. There are disincentives aplenty, on the other hand, for “nativizing” trade. One of Hochberg’s most pointed examples is the Foxconn plant that will open next year in Wisconsin through the largest subsidy (at about $4 billion) ever given to a firm and at the cost of seizing private property through eminent domain and breaking all sorts of environmental laws “in the hope that this Taiwanese company will prove to be a good bet.”

A rousing, well-argued defense of global trade in a time of isolationist entrenchment.