Trump’s Trade War

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah.

Aka Charlie Sheen.

Only on Netflix, September 10th.

Hi, Radio Atlantic listeners.

This is Isaac Dover, staff writer here at The Atlantic.

Last week, President Trump upended trade negotiations with China by hiking tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods from 10% to 25%,

making good on a threat he issued last Sunday, right before a Chinese delegation visited the White House.

After a deal had looked imminent, trade talks had broken down.

Markets worried China would retaliate, and now those worries seem founded.

On Monday, China announced tariffs on $60 billion in U.S.

goods.

A trade war between the world's two largest economies seems to be here, and the risks are dire.

On Friday, Bank of America warned that a trade war could, it said, cause a global recession.

But, as the president infamously tweeted last year, trade wars are good and easy to win.

Trump doesn't sound like a lot of presidents, but it's especially unusual for a Republican president to cheer protectionism the way that he does.

The GOP had long championed free trade, but it's now led by a man who seems deeply skeptical of it.

So today we're going to talk about two huge trade battles, one within the Republican Party, another between the U.S.

and China.

And with me, to help explain both, is a trade expert from the libertarian Cato Institute.

Colin Grabo is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Herbert A.

Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies.

Colin's research focuses on U.S.

trade with Asia and domestic forms of trade protectionism.

Colin, thanks for joining us here on Radio Atlantic.

Well, thanks for having me.

So

let's start with this.

Are we on the brink of a trade war with China?

Is it here?

Well, you could, I think, argue that we're already engaged in at least a small-scale

scuffle, trade battle with China.

It looks like it's about to increase in its intensity.

But yeah, I think it's safe to say it's already here in some form.

What's the difference between a scuffle and a war?

So, I mean, you can, you know, just like there are different types of wars.

The Persian Gulf War, the last 100 hours, was a war, but World War II is also a war.

So it's just a difference of intensity.

Right now, we're looking at tariffs that cover $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, and it looks like we're on the brink of bringing that up to cover everything, all the goods imports.

So the scale is set to intensify.

So let's just break this down.

When we're talking about tariffs, we're talking about money, like extra fees that are imposed for any imports and exports that are going on,

which make it more expensive to do trade with another country.

Exactly.

So tariffs are taxes imposed on imports coming from another country that are paid by U.S.

consumers.

And then typically, we also find tariffs on our exports in retaliation for those imports that have been imposed.

That seems to be where we're headed here with news from China that they want to increase the tariffs on their side.

What does that mean for the economy beyond just the stock market responding and getting worried or making bets on how this is going to go?

Aaron Powell, well, when a lot of people think about tariffs, they think about the things that they purchase at the store becoming more expensive, and that's definitely a big part of the story.

What sometimes gets overlooked is that a lot of the goods that we import from other countries, including China, are what's called intermediate goods.

These are goods that are used in the production of things that we produce in this country.

So, for example, if we put tariffs on Chinese steel, as we have, that's used by a lot of companies to build products, to build buildings, for example, and everything becomes more expensive, and that filters its way through the economy and has knock-on effects.

That money ends up

if it's costing more money to build a building, then that cost is going to be taken up elsewhere, right?

Or if one thing that we hear about a lot is parts for machines, right, that are used in food production or

product production here.

If the machines get more expensive, then the products and the food is going to get more expensive, even if we're not importing

Chinese eggs,

but if we're using...

machines that use Chinese parts.

Exactly.

And also, not only do American consumers pay these costs, but it also makes us less competitive because the cost of our exports can go up because again, the cost of the production increases.

So everybody that buys those products, including consumers in other countries, may feel the cost.

And in turn, they may decide to forego purchasing American products and instead turn to cheaper alternatives from other countries.

And the president does not seem to be concerned about that effect.

He responded to the news about China increasing tariffs by saying that this is the wrong thing to do, that tariffs can can be completely avoided if you buy from a non-tariffed country or you buy the product inside the USA, which he says is the best idea, that zero tariffs, many tariff companies will be leaving China for Vietnam and other such countries in Asia, and that's why China wants to make a deal.

And then he says if this goes on, there'll be nobody left in China to do business with.

It's very bad for China, but very good for the USA.

What do you make of that?

So let's break that down a little bit.

Let's take Apple, for example.

President Trump says, well, you can buy from another country.

Well, guess what?

Apple doesn't produce its iPhones in other countries.

It produces in China.

So some of that, yes, you can avoid.

There are all alternatives, but for some products, there's no alternative.

You buy from China or you don't buy at all.

Now, President Trump would like to see, for example, iPhone production be shifted to the United States or another country.

But that's a very, very difficult thing to do.

It's sort of a long-term play.

Exactly.

To move entire factories, entire

industrial ecosystems is not easily done.

Furthermore, it's interesting because President Trump has indicated that these tariffs are a means to an end, to eventually getting a deal with China, in which case the tariffs presumably would be removed or at least downgrade a bit.

And so are companies going to undertake these shifts to another country and build new production facilities for a tariff that theoretically is at least somewhat temporary,

at least in its intensity, if not, you know, will be eventually whole-scale repealed?

So that's something that has also grabbed me.

Trevor Burrus: So we're talking about what looks like it'll be immediate and short-term pain with the president hoping that it would lead to a bigger change in world relationships over trade.

But China is playing poker here too, right?

And as you say,

and not just China, but thinking, well, if this is just a...

negotiating tactic, we can wait it out, right?

Or am I getting that wrong?

No, I think that China realizes that

the U.S.

is also suffering from this, that this is not a one-way street, that there are costs that will be imposed.

And so far, the Trump administration has been, they've attempted at least to be careful about sparing consumer products, things that people typically buy in stores, and having the costs borne by, again, those intermediate goods and by businesses and companies.

But if you're going to cover everything, well, then we're talking iPhones, then we're talking computers, then we're talking televisions.

And your average American is going going to see that, and they might be upset by that as well.

And that's going to put some pressure on, I think, the White House.

How quickly would they see it?

I think, you know, so if they were imposed immediately, then I believe it takes something like two weeks for a ship leaving Shanghai to arrive in the United States.

So that could be.

Two weeks.

So two weeks, but then of course iPhones, those go on an airplane.

So that's going to be

felt much more quickly.

So by next week, the iPhones could be up in press.

Yes, yes, that could happen.

How did we get to this place where this is even what we're talking about?

It seems like this goes to deep skepticism that the president has had long before he was ever running for office about how trade works.

That is in sync with deep skepticism that a lot of people in the country have about international trade, whether we should be doing it, whether this whole system that has been built up over the years,

not just in America, but with all countries of the world, is not something we should have been been doing.

Well, you're right.

Trump has had a long-standing skepticism of international trade.

Remember, before China, his favorite boogeyman was Japan.

And he even used the same terminology back in the 80s, said, you know, Japan is ripping us off.

And why are they ripping us off?

Well, it's because we import more from them than they import from us.

And in President Trump's mind, imports are bad.

Imports are points that are scored by the other team, and our exports are our points.

And if you use that as a scoreboard, we're losing.

what the president fails to appreciate is that imports are a benefit of trade as we already discussed imports are often used to help build our own products also they make our lives better I mean imports are the entire point of exporting we export in order to get things in return and I think you could even turn President Trump's argument on its head and point out hey we get 500 and something billion dollars worth of products from China and we're only sending them 120 something billion dollars worth of goods you know who's really losing here?

Who's getting ripped off?

I mean, that's what we talk about, the trade deficit.

Yes, exactly.

Which, to the president,

seems like something that is not in favor of America the way the trade deficit is right now.

Yes, exactly.

That's his perception of how it works.

Well, how is that

one get to that perception, I guess?

Is it just a misunderstanding of the math here?

That's the million-dollar question.

I think when it comes to Trump's trade policy, what exactly motivates him?

Clearly, he's surrounded by intelligent people that grasp trade and know that that's a fallacious way of thinking about it.

But Trump, I think he's even said, you know, he believes what he believes.

He's a tariff man.

This is just a deeply ingrained, decades-long-held belief on his part that he's not going to be easily reasoned out of, assuming he was ever reasoned into it in the first place.

When

the president was running in 2016,

the big debate that Barack Obama was trying to finish up as it relates to trade was about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

That was something that notably not only Donald Trump was opposed to, but Bernie Sanders was opposed to, and that Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that she had been involved in the negotiations as Secretary of State, said that she was then opposed to.

Now

we are going into another presidential election campaign season here, and Bernie Sanders running again, opposed to it.

Joe Biden running,

though he was one of the biggest proponents of TPP, hasn't said where he stands on it right now.

And other candidates in the field have been pushed on this issue of trade, seem to be moving among the Democrats more toward the Bernie Sanders position than the Barack Obama-Joe Biden position.

When Trump came in to office, one of the first things he did was cancel the

negotiations.

We weren't in the TPP, but he said we pulled out of the TPP.

We sort of pulled out of the final stages.

He's signed to the not-ratified.

Exactly.

now he's talking about getting in more trade with Vietnam.

Obama's argument in part about the TPP was that it was to counter China as a trading power.

Do you think that this perhaps leads to reopening a thinking about TPP with Donald Trump, or is that just...

I think that's a non-starter with President Trump.

I don't expect that to happen.

So President Trump essentially, by withdrawing from TPP, I think opened up a big hole in the U.S.

trade agenda.

He's tried to plug that somewhat by reaching this alleged deal with China, which we have no idea what that would look like.

And also, there's been an effort to launch talks with Japan and get some kind of trade deal there, because, of course, Japan is the world's third largest economy.

And the president has a very good relationship with Prime Minister Abe in Japan.

Yes.

And also, Japan was the biggest, besides the United States, it was the second biggest part of TPP.

So there was the logic there is that, you know, you get a deal deal with Japan and

you plug part of that hole, you fill part of that gap, and you make up for some of the ground that's been lost.

But I think that the odds of even that happening are by no means certain.

In fact, if I were a betting man, I'd say it's unlikely that a deal will be reached before the next election.

The argument at the core of it from Obama was essentially

This is the way the world is working.

We might as well get ourselves in the best position as it relates to China and international trade.

And this is how I think we should do it.

The core of the argument with President Trump is this does not have to be the way the world works.

We do not have to have international trade like this.

We can move away from it.

We don't need to try to get the best deal out of a bad situation to him.

We can just not have that situation.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: I think that the way President Trump sees, for example, TPP and some of these international trade agreements is that it's the United States essentially being tied down by the Lilliputians.

And we're the United States of America.

We're the world's largest economy.

We should should be dictating terms to others.

And by getting involved in multilateral negotiations, we leave ourselves vulnerable to getting ganged up on.

So why not take these countries on one by one, use our superior economic strength, and bring that to bear?

But I think, as we've seen since the advent of his administration, it's not exactly playing out that way.

And is it that the train has left the station on this and the rest of the world is going to move without the United States?

Clearly.

Japan, for example,

the United States pulled out of TPP, and did the rest of the world stand still?

No.

Japan moved ahead.

They signed on to TPP.

That's now a done deal.

The other

members have proceeded with it.

Japan has also concluded and entered into a free trade agreement with the European Union.

So they're all moving ahead.

They're opening markets.

They're getting new export and import opportunities.

And the United States is treading water at best, if not falling behind.

Let's step aside for a moment and be back with more in a minute with Colin Grabo.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre junk.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

And we're back with Colin Grabo of the Libertarian Cato Institute talking trade and Donald Trump.

Let's take a step back and talk about what happened here with this issue of trade overall in the Republican Party.

When TPP was being negotiated in the years before that, you had people like Paul Ryan, other leading Republicans who were very much for open trade, free trade.

This is now

not where President Trump is and not where a lot of the Republican Party is.

A lot of the Democratic Party is not for

trade also, I should say.

And

they were in the TPP negotiations looking for it was like 25 Democrats to just get them over the line with the Republicans.

How did this change?

How did this happen in the Republican Party?

It's not just Donald Trump, right?

Well, my own armchair speculation here is that actually I think in large part it is Donald Trump, and this is a reflection of the power of leadership.

And I think that unfortunately among many Republicans, perhaps the default setting traditionally has been for free trade, but maybe it was a weakly held conviction.

It wasn't a hill they're willing to die on.

And along comes President Trump and he says, let's blame our problems on China, for example, which is always great to blame someone else for our own problems.

That's attractive, I think.

And I think a lot of Republicans in private perhaps know that President Trump is on the wrong path, but they're also leery of crossing him.

And I think that if President Trump was to do a 180 tomorrow and say, guess what?

We're getting back into TPP.

I've decided that's a great deal.

The Republican Party would absolutely cheerlead him.

I don't think he'd lose a great deal of votes if he were to do that.

But what is that thinking that says we don't think this is a good idea, what President Trump is doing, but we're...

I mean, that's a political calculation.

I won't ask you to get into that.

But if there are people who sincerely believe that, how do they reconcile that, do you think, with what's going to happen in their home states, home districts, as what you see, the effects of this being come into play?

Well, what's interesting here is I think we see any number of stories out there in the media about reporters that go out to the Midwest and they interview people from agricultural states and they say, well, what about this trade war?

You guys mostly voted for Trump.

You're bearing the cost of this.

Have you had a change of heart?

And so far, prevailing sentiment seems to be no.

We still back him.

We still think that there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

There's light at the end of the tunnel.

We're going to come out of this thing in better shape.

And they have just essentially placed their trust in Trump and they're willing to see this thing out and continue to bear costs.

I was in Montana recently talking to the governor there, Steve Bullock, who is a Democrat, a Democrat who is looking to run for president against Donald Trump, if he can get through what is a pretty big field.

And he said to me a very similar thought of what he has heard from Montanans, although he pointed out that with the wheat production in Montana, if they don't get to export their wheat, that Montanans would have to eat 400 loaves a week,

each one.

So that's the stat that he came at me with.

That's what we're looking at here.

This major, major impact, but still as it gets filtered through the political prism of things,

not catching in the same way.

We were talking a little bit about how Bernie Sanders and other Democrats running for president are on trade.

I wonder, is there a difference between where Donald Trump is and where Bernie Sanders is, and Elizabeth Warren are, who are sort of the most prominent Democratic voices in taking apart what international trade looks like.

Aaron Ross Powell, that's an interesting question because I think, of course, if you were to ask Bernie Sanders or Senator Warren their thoughts on Trump's trade policy,

they would try to separate themselves.

They would not embrace Donald Trump's trade policy.

I think what a lot of Democrats would say is that they might do some similar things, but they do it in a smarter way.

Exactly what would make it smarter, I'm not sure.

My own speculation is that if we had a Democrat in the White House right now, or one of these nominees were to win, we'll absolutely continue to see bashing and criticism of China.

The question I have is, would they engage in tariffs?

Would they have used this tariff-driven approach?

I'm skeptical of that.

I'm not sure.

And I'd love to see them questioned about that and where they stand exactly on these tariffs and their thoughts on the use of tariffs as a centerpiece of one's trade strategy.

I can speak just

from knowing a little bit about where one candidate is on this, Kamala Harris, who has

said that she would have not been for TPP and does not like NAFTA, does not like this new trade deal that the president has put forward as the NAFTA 2.0, but says she doesn't want tariffs.

So that's where at least one Democrat running is.

But if you look at the position, besides the question of what to do with tariffs, which seems like a tactic, but the position of Bernie Sanders and the position of Donald Trump, Do you see any substantive difference?

And clearly, they're both incredibly skeptical of the value of trade, and they both

have this attraction to the idea of America first and looking out for American workers.

And we should buy domestic, for example.

So clearly, there are lots.

I think a Venn diagram of the two of them would show significant overlap.

So the issue that you spend a lot of your time thinking about is something called the Jones Act, which we were discussing right before we started.

It was a Jeopardy question recently, and none of the contestants got it.

What is this?

This is something that I think to most people sounds like trivia that is even too low to get onto Jeopardy.

Exactly, exactly.

It's a shipping law that was passed back in 1920.

It says that ships or vessels that transport goods between two points in the United States have to meet four conditions: and that's that the ships are U.S.

flagged and registered, that they are at least 75% U.S.

crewed, at least 75% U.S.

owned, and these vessels have to be built here in the United States.

And what caused it to be passed in 1920?

Was it protectionism then?

So this is, of course, in the wake of World War I.

And during World War I, the United States suffered from a lack of ships to get our men and our material and supplies from the United States to Europe.

And so there was a perception that we needed to do something to shore up our merchant marine and that if we embrace this kind of protectionism,

it would ensure a vigorous and vital U.S.

maritime sector.

So 1920, shoring up our merchant marine, is something that you care about in 2019.

Why?

Because this law ends up increasing the cost of transportation, which is something that affects all parts of our economy.

Why don't you explain why that is,

how this is about shipbuilding,

but it's because of the costs that trickle down and filter down, right?

If you could build cheaper ships in another country, then companies wouldn't wouldn't have to cover the cost for buying the ships uh that would be as high right is that basically what it is yeah well let's also consider the fact that uh in the entire united states there are 99 ships that meet those four conditions these are large ocean-going uh ships you know in the world there are over 10 000 ships so right there you've taken 99 of the world's ships out of the equation so that reduces competition and then you have to buy these u.s built ships well the problem there is that these ships are typically four or five times more expensive than ones built in a foreign shipyard so instead of paying, say, $50 million, you're paying $200 plus million dollars.

And of course, those costs get passed along to consumers.

And transportation is a vital part of our economy and affects everything.

Aren't you going to, if you got rid of the Jones Act, which is what you want to see happen here, aren't you going to put a lot of American shipbuilding jobs

out of the way?

People are not going to have their jobs anymore.

Well, it's funny you bring that up because actually just a couple weeks ago, the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, released a report on the costs of the Jones Act and they said that repeal of the Jones Act would realize economic benefits of $64 billion and furthermore among the chief beneficiaries US shipbuilding.

This has not been an asset for U.S.

shipbuilding in my opinion.

If you look at Europe, there is no Jones Act there and yet they have, I think, vigorous shipbuilding industries.

They have lost some of their shipbuilding to Asia, but they found new areas to specialize in and they have moved up the value chain, which is what I I think would happen here in the United States.

I just reject the argument that the country that has designed the iPhone, that can design rockets that land themselves, that can design advanced Boeing jets, has nothing to contribute to the shipbuilding world.

I simply reject that.

And what we know is that the status quo is not working and U.S.

shipyards are closing.

The Philly shipyard, for example, has laid off two-thirds of its workforce over the last year.

Even with the Jones Act.

Exactly.

The status quo is not working.

So when we talk about people losing their jobs, that's what's happening now.

I mean, it seems to be a microcosm of this larger question of trade and protectionism, right?

Absolutely.

So you're saying that

if there were a removal of this protectionist law, it would lead to maybe more shipbuilding.

Yes.

Maybe more efficient and cheaper shipbuilding, which could create more jobs in the United States.

And in the meantime, would

potentially lower costs on consumers in a major way.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, I think that when we look at protectionism, the idea is, well, we're sparing them from international competition.

No, no, no.

We're denying them international competition.

International competition is what makes you better.

Let's think about it right now.

If we were to suggest the idea that all planes that flew between two U.S.

airports had to be domestically made, people would think that's crazy.

Boeing is not great in spite of international competition.

It's great because of it.

It's great because it has to compete with Airbus, for example.

You take away that competition, you reduce people's incentive to innovate and improve.

Is it just that we're not looking at the math in a big enough way when we have these conversations, that most people see the immediate cost?

The basic way of thinking about this is that I'm getting charged less this way and not thinking, well,

I could even be much less than that, but it requires a lot of abstract calculations.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Exactly.

The costs of any sorts of change are very readily apparent.

We can see who the losers will be, for example, the people that have to face increased competition, that will see some kind of disruption in their lives.

But the benefits are more diffuse.

They're not readily apparent.

We can't say to someone, if this trade agreement is passed or if the Jones Act is repealed, you will get a job.

You will personally benefit.

That's not obvious.

And then furthermore, we just have the more general phenomenon of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.

So when it comes to the Jones Act, for example, people that benefit from the Jones Act, or at least perceive themselves as benefiting from the Jones Act, you can be sure they're up in Congress all the time saying, keep this law in place.

This is the best.

And the people who benefit are the shipbuilding.

It's the shipbuilders.

It's also also the people that crew these ships because they don't have to worry about foreign competition.

And it's also the companies, the carriers that own these ships because they also don't have to worry about foreign competition.

You know, down in Puerto Rico, the Jones Act is mainly felt by the non-contiguous states and territories, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam.

Earlier this decade, there was actually a case filed by the Justice Department against three of the four carriers that service Puerto Rico, the shipping companies.

They found they were engaged in price collusion.

They all got together and decided to set prices.

There were tens of millions of dollars in fines handed out.

I believe five or six executives have gone to prison over this.

That would be impossible without the Jones Act in place.

And you're saying that if this were not there and we were looking at a worldwide competition, you couldn't have that kind of it would be extremely difficult to get everybody from around the world in a room.

But yeah, if everyone's based here in the United States and there's only four of them, yeah, you can make those meetings happen.

You can pull that off.

Again, though, what that means is in the short term, you will probably see people lose lose their jobs.

Some people will.

I mean, but that's true of everything.

I mean, that's true of Netflix.

That meant that people blockbuster lost their jobs.

I mean, if tomorrow, a cure for cancer was invented, people would lose their jobs.

Oncologists would lose their jobs.

There are always, you know, every example of progress you can think of involves someone losing their job.

The iPhone loses a job.

Remember when I was a kid, we used to go on a road trips to my family.

You'd have to buy a road atlas.

When's the last time anybody bought a road atlas, a paper map?

You know, people use their phones to navigate now.

So that's, that's someone lost their jobs.

I don't know how it would get around.

I can't imagine actually sitting behind a car or behind a wheel

trying to figure out.

So you show me something good in life, I'll show you someone lost their job because of that.

But we know that on net, we all benefit, and there are people that gain jobs.

And we need to think about those people, those unseen people.

You are having conversations on Capitol Hill about this.

Is this something that is just an obsession of yours, or is there

an interest in addressing it?

There is the good news about the Jones Act is that when people learn about it, they think, well, that's crazy.

That's a bit outrageous.

You have to build ships here in the United States.

I mean, I can buy a car from another country, a truck, a train, anything, other form of transportation.

And I think people

grasp pretty readily that this is unfair.

This is unwise economic policy.

So the bad news is people tend to be ignorant about this law.

There isn't much awareness about it.

But once you turn people on, I think you usually get a willing audience.

People perk their ears up a bit.

So do you think that this will change at any point soon?

I think that are we going to go from having the Jones Act, which is, according to the World Economic Forum, the world's most restrictive example of a cabotage law.

Cabotage are these laws that govern the ability to transport goods within a country.

Are we going to go from having the world's most restrictive example to no Jones Act and no cabotage law?

No.

not overnight, certainly.

But I think there's absolutely room for reform and refinement of this and modernizing this to bring it more in lines with 21st century realities.

Here we are.

We're at the cusp of a presidential election campaign getting really intense.

We are also

getting into,

again, somewhere between a trade scuffle and a trade war, as you framed it.

We've talked about the dynamics in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, how people are feeling it on the ground, and how quickly they could start to feel things differently.

When you put all those pieces there, and you think about what that'll mean for trade policy over the next year and a half and potentially

whoever wins in the 2020 election.

Where do you think that leads us?

I can't, I'm leery of making predictions, but I'll tell you what I hope for.

And what I hope for is that

maybe the silver lining here is that we haven't really had a trade war in quite some time.

And this can be a learning experience.

And fortunately, we're getting a demonstration of the costs of a trade war.

We're seeing people whose businesses are losing competition, their competitiveness, losing customers because of this.

We're going to see, we have already seen consumers paying more for certain products.

And I think the costs of the trade war are going to be driven home in a big way, and people may hopefully come to have a new, renewed appreciation for the virtues of free trade.

It seems like, as with many things with Donald Trump, we see

what has been an academic discussion essentially on many, many issues.

Yes.

Now tested, and we can see what happens and whether people like it or they don't.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

All right.

Colin Graba, thank you for joining us here on Radio Atlantic.

It's been a pleasure.

That'll do it for this week of Radio Atlantic.

Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

Our theme music is the Battle Hymn of the Republic, as interpreted by John Baptiste.

You can find show notes and past episodes at theatlantic.com/slash radio.

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Thanks for listening, and catch you next week.