Today, we find ourselves witness to a troubling dispute between supporters of free trade and supporters of tariffs. I say “troubling” because many of us find ourselves simultaneously on different sides of the dispute. In fact, because of the multiplicity and subtlety of viewpoints toward this dispute, it may truly have more than two sides. Ultimately, though, underlying the debate is the question of how best to preserve life and liberty, and the answer weighs heavily in favor of one side of the argument.

Supporters of free trade claim that the wealth Americans have long enjoyed is due to free trade. Agreed, if “free trade” is interpreted to mean economic liberty. Economics is the art of creating wealth, and any wealth-creation enterprise necessarily marshals start-up capital, labor, management, and profit. In our collective experience, successfully orchestrating all that requires economic liberty.

But the tariff supporters insist that wealth creation is synonymous with productivity, and that production should be protected from foreign competition. Also agreed, although free traders rejoin that protection entails increased prices, that is, inflation. Well, yes, agreed, in that it increases prices for the products protected. The protection comes at a price.

So it is that many of us occupy multiple stances toward free trade and tariffs. Can we sort this out? If a crisp solution is a bridge too far, perhaps we can at least gain some useful perspective.

Let us first consider the distinction between ends and means. Tariffs are clearly a means, not an end. What about wealth? For those who love money, wealth is an end. But in our sober moments, we reject that; wealth, too, is a means. However, wealth is a necessary means, the pursuit of which consumes much of our time and energy.

What is our priority as a civilization? Our Declaration of Independence lists the great purposes of government as the maintenance and protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interpreting “the pursuit of happiness” to mean, in a single word, “wealth,” we can simplify the three-fold litany to “life, liberty, and wealth”. But there is a discernable order: first, life; then, liberty; then, wealth. If it’s necessary to observe priorities among the three, life trumps liberty, and liberty trumps wealth.

Of course, we would like to maintain all three. But what if we cannot? Maintaining life and liberty (and wealth?) requires military power.

In his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Yale Professor Paul Kennedy exhaustively documents that national military power depends upon national industrial power. Hence, national industrial power trumps the mere accumulation of personal wealth.

To proclaim free trade uber alles is to commit the fallacy of accident, argumentum a dicto simpliciter ad dictum sequndum quid (loosely translated as “arguing from a generalization to a recognized exception”). Even more loosely translated, this fallacy of accident says, “the devil is in the details.”

Some questions are best answered with another question. For example, the question “Are you in favor of tariffs?” is best answered with “Tariffs on what?”

As TVA staffer Chuck Glover said to Ella Garth in Wild River: “Mrs. Garth, sometimes we can’t remain true to our beliefs without hurting a lot of people.”

The art of avoiding the fallacy of accident is the art of paying close attention to all the details, to the totality of the circumstances. Thus, our stance, or stances, on tariff policy require consultation with the totality of circumstances.

We certainly find personal wealth attractive, but what if this totality of circumstances includes war and defeat looming on the horizon at the hand of a certain foreign nation that is rapidly preparing for war with us, even assembling a concert of fellow nations to join against us in this war, all while our own military power and readiness erodes?

What if this certain foreign nation is buying up our farmland and flooding our markets with cheap products, thereby driving under our own industries upon which our military power depends?

Perhaps these “what ifs” are merely apparitions of an overwrought imagination.

Perhaps not.

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