Back in the early part of the nineteenth century, Britain enacted what were known as the Corn Laws, which heavily taxed the importation of common grains such as wheat, oats, and barley.  As an inevitable consequence, food became a lot more expensive for British subjects.  The lower echelons of society were most seriously impacted — whereas the few major landowners profited.  I first became aware of the Corn Laws when I read Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

In rural Ireland, people to this day have kitchen gardens where they grow various vegetables for their own tables.  Potatoes make up a major portion of such produce — and the potato famine of 1845–52 hit the Irish particularly hard.  One of the major benefits from the European discovery of the Western Hemisphere was the introduction of the Solanaceae family of plant species — which includes chili peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes.  Potatoes especially became a major food source for Northern Europe, where the growing season is fairly short.  Poland, Scandinavia, Russia, and Germany, in addition to Ireland, were seriously impacted by the famine that resulted from the fungus that causes potato blight.

In today’s world, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario has “threatened” to place an export tariff on electricity as a potshot in what the media are dramatizing as a trade war.  For some time now, California has banned the import of electricity from other states that is generated by the burning of coal (which just so happens to represent about 20% of American output), even though the electrons that pass through the wires and into your refrigerator are all the same regardless of source.  Also, one of the primary reasons for the several states to originally unite was to eliminate interference with cross-border commerce.

Mr. Trump’s methods in this affair seem fairly obvious: First, he upsets the old order, so he and his accomplices can reconstruct the targeted practice or institution into a more efficient and beneficial form.  He then follows up with purposeful, rational bargaining so as to fill in the remaining blanks.  The irrational ideologues, who oppose Trump’s improvements, are easily made to look foolish — and harmful — in the eyes of the general population.

It still seems likely that tariff targets, such as Canada, Mexico, China, and the E.U., continue to be interested in making a deal.  Mr. Trump wasn’t particularly interested in starting this fray, but he wanted to make a deal in order to correct accumulated non-reciprocal defects in the current set of arrangements.  This time around, it seems pretty likely that the Irish will not starve, and New Yorkers will not have to shiver in the dark.  But the game isn’t over.

Tariffs are a manifestation of what is known as protectionism.  Governments, in order to protect specific businesses within their realm, make their foreign competitors’ products artificially more expensive and, thus, less competitive for the consumer’s dollar.  With this imposed price increase, the public’s standard of living has to be lowered.  China, Canada, Mexico, and the E.U. are now threatening to do this to their own people.  Tariffs also provide revenue for their respective governments, but governments also have many other ways to raise money.

What needs to be said more often is that it’s really hard to build a wall around an economy.  In fact, it’s even more difficult now than it was a few decades ago.  Technology can be blamed — for the invention of sea-going containers, along with seriously expedited communication.  Manufacturing and agricultural production can occur anywhere in the world, and the cost of delivering the produce of such to anywhere else has been made a lot cheaper.

Import duties were a major factor as a cause for the American Revolution.  To put a brake on British taxation of imports into Boston, in 1756, the locals elected Sam Adams to be the tax collector.  He was particularly good at looking the other way while not collecting the tax.  Also, John Hancock, of flamboyant signature fame, was the wealthiest man in all of New England.  He, however, had no formal source of income.  He was a smuggler...er, rather, an undocumented importer.

Image via Pexels.