Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face
[…] The Trump administration believes that it must act swiftly and take a wrecking ball to the way international trade has been organized. What they are attacking is David Ricardo’s economic theory that everyone benefits by making what each country makes better than the other countries. Under normal circumstances, the U.S. has been happy to let numerous other countries prosper under very generous trading rules. Post-COVID-19, the current presidential administration believes that the prior system is unsustainable because it has been massively subsidized by U.S. deficit spending. The interest expense and future principal payments look ominous. […]