Return of the Trade Enforcement Canard

In defending its tire tariff decision, the White House has glommed on to the “logic” that free trade first requires enforcement of trade agreements. Scott Lincicome exposes the absurdity of that defense here. But with that fallacy serving to undergird what sounds like a pre‐​justification for more trade cases and more trade restrictions, let me remind the reader that we already have 299 active antidumping and countervailing duty measures in the United States, resticting or prohibiting imports from 43 different countries. We have all sorts of restrictions on imported textiles, clothing, footwear, food products, agricultural commodities, lumber, steel, pickup trucks, tobacco, and many, many more products, including tires. But despite all of this enforcement–of rules that are hard to justify, as they penalize most members of society for the benefit of a connected few–we still don’t have free trade in the United States. In other words, we’ve had the enforcement, where’s the free trade?


And if the holier‐​than‐​thou U.S. government is going to focus on enforcement of rules, then by all means do unto others. The United States remains baldly and defiantly in violation of its NAFTA commitments to open U.S. roads to Mexican trucks by the year 2000. The United States remains defiantly in protest of WTO Dispute Settlement Body decisions impugning U.S. cotton subsidies, U.S. prohibitions on gambling services offered by providers in Antigua, the antidumping calculation methodology known as “zeroing,” and the Byrd Amendment. Trade partners in some of these cases are either retaliating or have been authorized to do so.


The argument that more rigid enforcement leads to freer trade will be tested. But don’t let the inevitable slew of new 421 cases and related restictions in the name of enforcement fool you. After the restrictions, the retaliation, and the adoption of similar measures in other countries, free trade will be right around the corner. The next corner. Keep looking…