Quote of the day - on Trumpish economics and free trade

Shared from Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek - the riposte to Peter Navarro, Trump's economics advisor from George Selgin, Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia:

Thank goodness that, being more enlightened than in the past, we no longer will tolerate, much less provide a public forum to, such uncouth bigots as still persist in accusing the Jews of trying to take over our economy and subvert our way of life by lending us money on better terms than our fellow gentiles can offer. No sir. We have advanced well beyond that. We now devote op-ed space in the New York Times to uncouth bigots who blame the Chinese for trying to take over our economy and subvert our way of life by selling goods to us for less than what our own manufacturers can offer.

There are two things I take from this 'neo-mercantilism': the first is that, from my experience at least, there are plenty of Trump supporters who still cling to that old Jews taking over the world shtick - this, as it happens, is something they share with a lot of Jeremy Corbyn supporters (up to the substituting of the word Jew with Rothschild or Zionist).

Secondly, we have got trapped in popular myth-making over imports. Popular opinion thinks it is a bad thing for places somewhere else in the world who can make stuff cheaper than us to be allowed to sell that stuff to us. The argument is wrapped up in stuff about protecting jobs, supporting "emerging industries", and supporting business. The idea of trade has become some sort of international sales push where we try to flog loads of our stuff to foreigners on the back of things called "trade deals". The idea that open trade is mutually beneficial seems to have been lost in our discussions. No-one is saying that trade isn't something negotiated by governments but something freely entered into by individual people and companies.

More than anything else, it is this lie- that trade is a zero-sum game at which we can win or lose - that allows for the malign politics of isolation, protectionism and import-substitution. As a result Trump, Farage, Corbyn and Le Pen are able to exploit a population stuffed by all the media with nationalist myths of sinister foreigners doing us out of our fair share. If we lose the idea of trade - open, free and fair - we risk moving to a new dark age where international power goes to the men with the biggest sticks and where the ordinary consumer pays more for lower quality goods because those men haven't finished waving those sticks yet.

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No Professor Lang, Brexit won't lead to food riots...

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Tim Lang, Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City University thinks Brexit could lead to food riots:

But given that the WTO rules are “the lowest common denominator” and the Codex Alimentarius is determined in meetings that are “dominated by big business and lobbies [making] the EU look like the most democratic organisation in the world”, this is far from ideal. The result would be food riots, says professor Lang.

Yes folks, this eminent food 'expert' thinks there'll be food shortages, huge price hikes and general chaos because we'll be outside the CAP and subject to the 'common external tariff'. Here's a sample:

The immediate impact of the decision to quit the 28-member state bloc looks like rising food prices in a country that produces and grows less than 60% of the food it eats and is particularly reliant on imports from the EU for fruit and vegetables.

Speaking to FoodNavigator yesterday, Tim Lang predicted it could take five to 10 years for the UK to become food self-sufficient in food products, if that extreme scenario ever arose. And in the meantime? “People will pay more for food. The British people have voted to raise the food prices," he said simply.

Now, given that Prof. Lang and his pals have been agitating for more expensive food for ages, you'd have thought they'd have loved all this but let's take them at their word. Do they really think those Spanish tomato growers, Italian orange farmers and French wheat barons are suddenly going to whack up the price of the stuff they're selling into one of their biggest markets? Or - as Professor Lang seems to hint - stop selling to us entirely. For a Professor of Food Policy this seems incredibly ill-informed on the basics of trade.

There might be an impact on prices if the pound falls against the Euro. But set against that the UK having better access to non-EU markets in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa - all of which grow the same crops as those Spaniards, Italians and French farmers - and it might be that us having more choice will actually drive prices down for the fruit and vegetables Professor Lang is so bothered about.

We have no need at all - none - to become self-sufficient in food because leaving the EU increases the security of our food supplies by taking us outside the anti-trade restrictions of the CAP and other EU controls. That a Professor of Food Policy doesn't see this should worry us. But then it's Tim Lang and he's nearly always wrong.

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