Why Tariffs are a Nightmare for Freedom and Peace

And why libertarians need to challenge the artificial construct of 'the right'.

Photo by Teng Yuhong on Unsplash

This was originally a post on the simple subject of why I'm opposed to tariffs. After I wrote an article advocating hardline opposition towards Trump's 'liberation day' antics, I received some responses questioning my hardline anti-tariff stance. I promised that I would write a post outlining my position on tariffs, i.e. why I believe the liberal use of tariffs is fundamentally illiberal. The first half of this article will still be covering this topic. However, as I wrote the post, I began thinking about something else: why was I now defending fundamental tenets of classical liberalism and libertarianism that everyone would have assumed all classical liberals and libertarians were on board with, at least before the rise of Trump? I mean, given that I have repeatedly stated my libertarian sympathies, my staunch opposition to trade protectionism would have been a given, at least from the perspective of someone reading my work in 2015. Apparently, not so much for those reading my work in 2025. But why? The second half of this article will be dedicated to exploring this question.

But first, let's talk about tariffs. My view is that tariffs are an unacceptable use of government power, because the government is actively putting their thumbs on the scales, and choosing winners and losers in defiance of the natural operation of the invisible hand of the free market. This has always been the main argument against tariffs. While the same form of argument has been used to justify opposition to many different kinds of government intervention, tariffs are a particularly bad form of government intervention for several reasons:

Firstly, tariffs effectively make many imported goods commercially unviable and hence not available for purchase in the domestic market. This represents a direct assault on the freedom of choice of consumers, and hence is qualitatively a bigger assault on economic freedom than, say, a massive increase in income tax. Consumers might enjoy imported goods not just because they are cheaper, but rather, because such goods are simply not available domestically, because of cultural, demographic or other factors. Tariffs take this freedom of choice away, therefore leading to less freedom by definition.

Secondly, tariffs disrupt the global supply chain, often at multiple points, and make some innovations impossible or at least much more difficult. This, again, leads to less choice for the consumer. It also forces companies to have to consider government policy, which would likely include geopolitical concerns that would otherwise not be relevant to the business, at multiple points of the production and supply processes, and to prepare to adapt to rapid changes in such policies if necessary. This greatly reduces business freedom and flexibility.

Thirdly, given that tariff levels are arbitrary, and are usually applied at different levels towards different countries and different products, this gives the government a lot of leeway to apply its power arbitrarily. Classical liberals have always been particularly skeptical of government power when it is applied arbitrarily, for good reason. In the American context, this issue is compounded by the fact that it is the President, not Congress, that sets tariff levels. Thus all this arbitrary power is in the hands of just one person. The President is really like a King when it comes to tariffs. And we have just seen the kind of havoc King Donald was able to inflict on the markets, without any checks and balances.

Fourthly, normalizing the President's power to apply tariffs in a unilateral and arbitrary way, with such profound effects across all areas of life, would inevitably mean inserting high-stakes arguments about tariffs into politics, thus creating one more issue where the electorate can be divided, polarized, and manipulated by politicians seeking power. There is a good reason why classical liberals have long wished to remove as many issues as possible from the political contest, and turn them into a matter of private choice or market competition. This, I believe, is just as much a core characteristic of liberalism as abstract concepts like freedom and equality. It makes the political process less contested, and hence more rational and more peaceful. Re-normalizing tariffs would be a big step backwards in this regard.

Finally, tariffs inevitably lead to increased conflict between countries, and the formation of tribalist blocs of countries that are prone to persistent conflict. A less globalized economy would also mean that countries have much less incentive to avoid physical war with each other. There is a good reason why, back in the days when trade wars were the norm, actual wars involving physical violence were also the norm. The world has been much more peaceful since the advent of free trade, and we want to keep it that way. We certainly don't want the bad old days of almost constant warfare back. That would be unimaginably horrible, given that all superpowers have nuclear weapons nowadays.

Besides the fact that tariffs are bad for freedom, what's even worse here is that Trump is massively expanding the use of tariffs in a way not seen for several generations, thus setting back the cause of individual freedom back by almost a century at least. As a libertarian reformist, I have long advocated for a gradualist approach when trying to bring about freedom, because this is the only sustainable and practically feasible way. This means that I have never agreed with the 'taxation is theft' crowd, nor do I always advocate the immediate abolition of anything that represents some kind of intrusion into individual freedom. But to take a great leap backwards like what Trump is doing now is simply unacceptable for any libertarian, period. It's just like how a libertarian wouldn't be okay with bringing back religious laws, or military conscription, or segregation, or any other anti-freedom policy that we're supposed to have moved past long ago. In other words, when it comes to freedom, I believe that immediatism is unwise, but regression, especially radical regression, is also always unacceptable. Therefore, even if it might not be realistic or desirable in the whole scheme of things to abolish all trade barriers immediately, the act of actively launching a worldwide trade war that indiscriminately targets all types of goods from basically every country on Earth is still totally unacceptable to libertarian reformists like myself.

Something weird has been happening in libertarian circles, and it has accelerated worryingly in the past few years: self-identified libertarians apparently aren't as united in opposing tariffs as they once were. The first time I saw it, it was like seeing the sun rising in the west for the first time. I mean, people who were otherwise arguing that taxation is theft (i.e. much more ardently libertarian than myself on the libertarian scale) were now saying that tariffs are a 'different' kind of taxation, and they don't count. This is ridiculous because, even a flat and relatively low tariff rate, like the 10% Trump has put on all countries except China for the time being, is still effectively a federal sales tax on all imported goods. Put it simply, there isn't a valid libertarian case for even entertaining the idea of increasing tariffs across the board, let alone actively cheering for an administration that has put international trade wars at the center of its economic policy. Libertarians are for minimal government intrusion into individual freedom, period. As I saw someone say during the 'liberation day' fiasco, it is their right if they wanted to buy a cheap T-shirt from China or Vietnam that likely isn't going to last a year, and that it should be none of the government's business that they exercise that right.

Indeed, before the rise of Trump, not only would libertarians have strongly agreed with the aforementioned statement, so would most conservatives, most liberals, and most people in the mainstream of the Western political landscape. Seen from this perspective, the rise of Trump has had a major deleterious effect on freedom, by effectively moving the Overton window of the political landscape towards authoritarianism, where more government coercion becomes increasingly normalized. At least theoretically speaking, then, libertarians should be united in opposing Trump. However, while many libertarians (including myself) have been very vocal about our opposition to Trump and Trumpism, other self-identified libertarians have been very supportive of Trump, perhaps even more than the average conservative! This is why, in the biggest ironic moment ever, Trump was actually invited to the US Libertarian Party's convention last year, and actually spoke at that convention, trying to convince card-carrying members of the Libertarian Party to vote for him! As I said at the time, it's like a Fortune 500 CEO being invited to a socialist convention. In other words, totally ridiculous, in my humble opinion. If self-identified libertarians could become Trump curious and tariff curious, what other planks of freedom might they drop next? Stop defending free speech? Be cool with the government waging culture wars? Trump has really induced a major existential crisis in libertarianism, and by extension, a crisis in belief in freedom itself throughout the West.

The Trump-induced crisis in libertarianism, particularly (but not limited to) American libertarianism (because it seems to have also infected Canadian and Australian libertarianism at least), has actually been going on for several years now, and I have covered this topic quite a few times. I have long maintained that I believe the biggest reason for the Trumpist infection of the libertarian movement is its long-standing adjacency to the political bloc called 'the right', and many anti-Trump libertarian observers have agreed with me on this point. Libertarianism became aligned to the right historically because of its emphasis on economic freedom. I have long questioned the wisdom of this approach, given the right's association with both religious authoritarianism and military interventionism during the Bush-43 era. However, in the Trump era, this association makes even less sense, because the Trump administration, the current standard bearer of the 'right', respects neither social freedoms like free speech, nor economic freedoms like free trade. The main disadvantage of being in 'the right' is that the libertarian movement is subject to the influence of the very well-funded right-wing influencer sphere, which has an agenda of getting everyone on board with the Trumpian agenda, for purposes of political powerplay. Self-identified libertarians who consume too much of this propaganda often get a distorted view of the reality, and justifications for Trumpian policy on distorted, unsound, and ultimately unlibertarian grounds. The right-wing influencer sphere also exerts peer pressure on other people, from the guests going on their shows and podcasts, to (implicitly) the audience watching or listening to them, to agree with their unusually well-synchronized viewpoints. Principled libertarianism is honestly often no match for this kind of sophisticated, multi-level psychological warfare. This is a major reason why I believe libertarianism must 'leave the right' if it is to avoid being forever changed by Trumpism.

I guess if we wanted to untangle the relationship between libertarianism and 'the right', the question we need to ask is, what is 'the right', anyway? Many might say that 'the right' is simply shorthand for conservatives, but then, Trumpism is clearly not very conservative, by the standards of Burkean conservative philosophy, or even the late 20th century conservatism of Reagan and Thatcher, but nobody would question that Trump is on the 'right'. Going back to the original meaning of the word, coined during the time of the French Revolution, also doesn't work, because most of today's 'right' clearly don't support a monarchy, the very thing that defined the French right back in the 18th century. This leaves the final possible definition: that the 'right' is simply a collection of people, groups and ideas that is skeptical about the ideas of the 'left' (by 'left' here I mean real leftism, not center-left like mainstream Democrats or Labour). These left skeptics include classical liberals, libertarians, moderates or centrists, conservatives, reactionaries and the far-right alike. Their common ground is that they disagree with ideas like postmodernism, the oppressor vs. oppressed worldview, artificially enforced equality of outcome, the idea that 'deconstructing' the status quo is good for progress, etc. However, they might not have much common ground otherwise, and they should not be lumped together into a 'right' that is forced to somewhat agree with each other. As a progressive conservative and libertarian reformist, I certainly don't have much common ground with reactionary populists who want to use state power to wage the culture wars and turn back the clock on decades of social progress. My skepticism of the left, my disagreement with leftists, is all about the model of change that society should adopt, and certainly not about whether society should be inclusive and fair towards minorities, for example.

This is why, ultimately, I believe that for libertarianism to thrive, or at least to stop being contaminated by authoritarian reactionary ideologies it should have nothing to do with, the very idea of 'the right' needs to be challenged. People who are skeptical of the philosophy of the 'left' might nevertheless have strong and valid disagreements with each other, and should not be pressured to form a 'coalition', where the loudest and most well-funded elements get to set the agenda for everyone. The political construct of 'the right' is simply a way to enslave free thinking left-skeptics to an agenda funded by billionaires for their own benefit, whether it be Trumpism, neoconservatism, or some other thing. This is why the dismantling of the idea of 'the right' is necessary for the liberation of libertarianism.

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Progressive Conservative Manifesto, the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.