Quote of the Day: Tariffs = Act of War on Ourselves

Any interference with the operation of the marketplace, however done, is analogous to an act of war. A tariff is such an act. When we are "protected" against Argentine beef, the effect (as intended) is to make beef harder to get, and that is exactly what an invading army would do. Since the duty does not diminish our desire for beef, we are compelled by the diminished supply to put out more labor to satisfy that desire; our range of possibilities is foreshortened, for we are faced with the choice of getting along with less beef or abstaining from the enjoyment of some other "good." The absence of a plenitude of meat from the marketplace lowers the purchasing power of our labor. We are poorer, even as is a nation whose ports have been blockaded.

Moreover, since every buyer is a seller, and vice versa, the prohibition against their beef makes it difficult for Argentineans to buy our automobiles, and this expression of our skills is constricted. The effect of a tariff is to drive a potential buyer out of the marketplace. The argument that "protection" provides jobs is patently fallacious. It is the consumer who gives the worker a job, and the consumer who is prevented from consuming might as well be dead, as far as providing productive employment is concerned.

~Frank Chodorov in 1959 from Chapter 6 of his book The Rise and Fall of Society, excerpted here.