March 20, 2017
The NYT might have wrongly lead readers to believe that presidents prior to Donald Trump supported free trade in an article noting his refusal to go along with a G-20 statement proclaiming the importance of free trade. This is not true.
Past administrations of both parties have been vigorous supporters of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. These protections can raise the price of protected items by factors of ten or even a hundred, making them equivalent to tariffs of 1000 and 10,000 percent. These protections lead to the same sorts of economic distortion and corruption that economists would predict from tariffs of this size.
Past administrations have also supported barriers that protect our most highly paid professionals, such as doctors and dentists, from foreign competition. They apparently believed that these professionals lack the skills necessary to compete in the global economy and therefore must be protected from the international competition. The result is that the rest of us pay close to $100 billion more each year for our medical bills ($700 per family).
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