I've seen economists argue that most of the benefits of low tariffs actually comes from increased imports. Increasing imports increases the consumer surplus from the cheaper goods and is an easy way to increase a country's standard of living without much effort.
Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Macau all have 0 import tariffs, and rather than mass unemployment they are incredibly rich by international standards.
Switzerland, Hong Kong are banking centers. Singapore, and Macau focus very heavily on manufacturing and pass through trade.
One issue I have with economists and their theories of tariffs is they are unable to consider the effects of institutional tariffs and subsidies. Meaning companies while the could buy foreign products instead buy locally produced ones. And the banking sector shows strong preferences to who they extend capital to. For instance providing capital to build a factory and refusing to loan money to buy back shares.
Other than Switzerland, those entities are basically built around a single large city. I doubt that their experience is very telling for countries that have a large non-urban population.
So a banking haven, with banks so massive they'd require the big US banks to get over 10x larger to match the relative scale to the Swiss economy.
A tiny, highly regulated gambling haven, that can't be replicated to the US scale at all.
And then two tiny islands in Hong Kong and Singapore, with a combined 13 million people.
That's a really terrible comparison sheet for arguing low tariffs are a big benefit to the US economy.
Now show me the same for: Germany, France, UK, Japan, Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, Brazil, Russia, Spain, South Korea. The world's largest economies, and countries that actually have serious population sizes.
My point is that 0 tariffs doesn't automatically equal disaster. But I agree that there's not enough evidence to say that unilaterally reducing tariffs to zero is actually the best policy, although some economists do make that argument.
Those are all tiny "money/finance" economies and in the case of macau - a gambling economy. None of them are major manufacturing countries or economic powers.
They have 0 imports because they hardly produce anything.
Most of the top 20 wealthiest countries have tariffs.
Also, I don't know why we keep deferring to economists as if they know anything since they are wrong about everything ( even the nobel prize winners ) and economics isn't an empirically testable science. Economics is a religion more than a science. It's ridiculous we treat it as a science.
Remember that we are supposed to have been in a world ending global recession for the past two years according to one of the most "eminent" economists.
>Also, I don't know why we keep deferring to economists as if they know anything since they are wrong about everything ( even the nobel prize winners ) and economics isn't an empirically testable science. Economics is a religion more than a science. It's ridiculous we treat it as a science.
"A friend of mine once said: You know what the problem is with being an economist? Everyone has an opinion about the economy. Nobody goes up to a geologist and says, 'Igneous rocks are fucking bullshit.'"
Of course not. Bullshit petrifies into coprolites, which would then only be found in sedimentary layers. And even then you could only find the appropriate types of coprolites in middle-Pleistocene layers from 2 Mya or later.
Of course, Keynesian geology continuously redefines the speed of time and the mass of the kilogram, such that if you look at a rock that classical geology says is 30g and deposited 10 Mya, the Keynesian might say it is 200g and 30 Megayears old. Then the Chicago geologist, the Marxist geologist, and the Austrian geologist would chime in: "No it isn't!" and have a grand bout of shouting and fisticuffs. Most hard sciences actually like their units of measurement to have constant value, and their data reduction calculations to remain the same.
Like, for instance, defining a US dollar to be the money value of a coin minted from 26.73g of .900 silver, and then never changing it again.
> "A friend of mine once said: You know what the problem is with being an economist? Everyone has an opinion about the economy.
That's the problem with all pseudosciences - politics, social sciences, etc. Everyone has an opinion and they can't provide any empirical tests to get at the truth.
That's the difference between a science like physics and a pseudoscience like economics.
It's why two economists with contradictory views can win a nobel prize at the same time.
> Nobody goes up to a geologist and says, 'Igneous rocks are fucking bullshit.'"
Because a geologist can show you that igneous rocks are not "bullshit". Empirically, physically. They can provide empirical tests to differentiate an igneous rock from bullshit.
I think that the point is that "economist says" should be the beginning of a debate, not the end - it's a data point, but not conclusive evidence in favor of or against whatever's being referenced in most situations
What other inputs into the decision should be included? I'm kind of at a loss as to what other approaches would complement an economic one, even acknowledging the severe limitations of the discipline.
Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Macau all have 0 import tariffs, and rather than mass unemployment they are incredibly rich by international standards.