Like Cows Sold Overseas, So Are the Days of Our Lives

It is a common complaint that increasing tariffs stop trade. The reasoning is something like this:

Country A exports product X to Country B. When B imposes tariffs on X, the sale price for its population increases, thereby disincentivizing the purchase of X in B. The consequent reduction of the sale of X in B leads to a corresponding reduction in revenue for A.

This is a genuine problem for A if A does not need X and heavily or even exclusively rely on the export of X for its survival. (Perhaps A requires products that it cannot produce and therefore needs the funds from selling X to purchase them.)

But what if that is not quite the case? Consider the following:

Country A has a lot of cows and exports beef to Country B. And B also has a lot of cows.

Well, having variety isn’t a bad thing but why? To keep sailors, shipbuilders and petroleum producers employed?

So what if trading X stops completely? What is the problem?

Oh, we need to keep the economy going, to keep farmers in business. But both A and B have a population that eats beef. Just eat your own cows.

Yes, but the population of A is too small to buy all of it. Is it really because the population of A is too small or is it that the sale price in B is sufficiently high to make the trade attractive for A?

And if A didn’t sell it, it would have to destroy it anyway. That is indeed what happened to some food products during the Depression. Some people were starving, there was food but there was no trade so it had to be destroyed. That only proves one thing: the lack of access to money to facilitate trade was the problem, not a lack of human effort and production.

By the way, the argument that A must raise beef prices at home if it didn’t export to B is false. It is common that the beef from A is cheaper outside the country than within anyway.

There is one other scenario where the trade is necessary. A relies on B to process and package the beef (or whatever) before shipping it back. The lack of material and infrastructure to process and package one’s own product is retarded and the fact that this artificial setup is self-imposed due to “economics” makes it even more retarded. So get on with it.

Either way, to keep the cow farmers of A fed and their operations functioning, there obviously must be sufficient beef sales. This can be facilitated by dropping the prices just enough to encourage more sales at home. As if people won’t buy more if it is cheaper. Any excess beef can be processed for long-term solutions, such as MREs. This is called “feeding your own people first at a reasonable price”.

The only reason the above is dismissed as “over-simplistic” is because the current debt-based economic system denies access to money, thereby artificially suppressing necessary trade whilst promoting unnecessary trade. To sell one’s steaks cheaper overseas whilst denying one’s own population under the guise of “trade” is nothing short of treason and should be dealt with accordingly.

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