At one point in my life—perhaps when I was a Frédéric Bastiat Fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center—I would have agreed wholeheartedly with Samuel Gregg’s systematic critique of economic nationalism. I appreciate the clarity and force of his argument that economic nationalism interferes with market processes by not allocating resources for maximal “efficiency.”
It is a critique well rooted in the governing premises of modern mainline economics. Indeed, though Gregg is too polite to say so, his argument invites an unspoken question: isn’t it obvious, on reflection,that tariffs aren’t serious economic policy, but merely craven bids to shore up political support from inevitably-doomed domestic industries? Given the net costs they impose on everyone, defending tariffs must prove to be either irresponsible or cynical. [1]
The question is a reasonable one. But I would suggest that this reflexive sentiment—this suspicion that anyone supporting something so obviously irrational must be either stupid or malign—arises from the degree to which a certain set of (metaphysical) premises related to economics has been established in the field as conventional—even architectonic—wisdom. As Alasdair MacIntyre reminds us, the standards that delimit the plausibility or implausibility of particular claims are never tradition- or discipline-independent.[2] That is to say, Gregg’s critique of economic nationalism unfolds against the backdrop of a particular understanding of the purposes which economic activity serves.
I would note here three important background assumptions: (1) the roughly equal value of all potential consumer preferences within the market, from the perspective of political authority;(2) the intrinsic value of commerce and the use of wealth generation as the normative criterion for economic policymaking; and (3) the principle that apparent limits do not normatively inform economic life.
First, mainline economics generally asserts that individuals, not political authorities, ought to be the ones deciding the sorts of goods and services they want to exchange in the marketplace. Or, more simply, people should basically be able to buy and sell whatever they want, without government getting in the way. In Friedrich Hayek’s words, the state must confine itself to “providing the appropriate environment” for free commerce.[3] Second, mainline economics generally assumes that economic activity, as it conduces to the generation of financial wealth, ultimately serves the common good: as Matthew Mitchell and Peter Boettke put it, “individual micro-behaviors often lead to desirable macro-outcomes.”[4] Third, mainline economics tends to see little normative value in the affirmation of purported “limits” as such. A felt sense of sacrality—of the sacrality of anything at all—represents a barrier to efficient market exchange. This helps explain why a number of economists have extended market logic to question longstanding taboos against the sale of human organs [5] (or even argue for the creation of “baby markets”). [6]
Economically nationalist policies obviously fail to satisfy these standards. For example, protective tariffs attempt to change consumer preferences: they raise the price of foreign-produced goods and services and incentivize domestic consumers to buy from domestic producers, irrespective of whether those domestic consumers might prefer (in a vacuum) to purchase the foreign-made products. By increasing costs, tariffs potentially leave domestic consumers with less purchasing power. And protective tariffs privilege the jobs of domestic producers for reasons that have nothing to do with quality or preference.
But one should not leave off there. I suggest asking a different, and deeper question: must all public policies be assessed according to the disciplinary norms of mainline economics? After all, the Christian tradition has insisted that each of the foregoing background principles must be qualified a priori.
First, Christian thought insists that all potential consumer preferences are not equally valid. Not everything is rightly commodified, even if some individuals would prefer to do so: there may be theological considerations that permissibly restrict the range of goods subject to the logic of modern market processes. Leviticus 25 is illustrative. In relevant part, God imposes a bar on the permanent alienation of land, and the incorporation of a permanent right of redemption (verse 23). So too, Israelites themselves are forbidden from being sold into slavery (verse 42). Importantly, these commands are not issued as arbitrary divine fiats. Each comes accompanied by a specific theological justification. Land may not be permanently alienated, God says, “because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.” And Israelites must not be sold “[b]ecause the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt.” Israelite markets in property and labor would undoubtedly be more efficient, in a strict sense, if these commands were not observed. And yet God imposes these commands anyway, without regard for their “rationality” in the sense of mainline economics, because the nature of the goods in question renders them theologically unfit for dissolution in the market process. God Himself articulates a tradition-specific standard of rationality—the relationship of these particular goods to Him—that places them beyond the “normal” domain of commerce.
Second, the Christian tradition has not treated the business of commerce—and wealth generation as such—as intrinsically salutary—such that “growth” alone could ever be treated as a definitive policy lodestar. Perhaps most famously, Jesus cleanses the Temple in Jerusalem of “people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.” Now, the buying and selling of sacrifices is not itself wrongful in se—but as Jesus stresses, those doing business within the Temple are guilty of “turning my Father’s house into a market!” It is the mode in which this commerce is conducted that is the problem; all forms of commerce are not equally licit. Economically speaking, in driving out the moneychangers and sellers of animals, Jesus creates a deadweight loss. After all, surely it would be more economically efficient to conduct this business as close to the temple as possible: increasing the distance between points of sale and the Temple potentially increases the risk of robbery between locations, and imposes additional transaction costs associated with the transport of animals. But Jesus drives out the sellers and moneychangers anyway, in a stark reminder that there are domains of human social existence in which market efficacy is not the only relevant consideration.
Third, the Christian tradition has insisted that created limits normatively inform economic life. Take the case of Exodus 5, in which an aggrieved Pharaoh commands the enslaved Israelites to produce “bricks without straw.” Here, I can do no better than quote at length Walter Brueggemann, who powerfully describes the underlying theological question of economics underlying this historical episode:
In Exodus 5, we are given a passionate narrative account of that labor system in which Pharaoh endlessly demands more production. What the slaves are to produce is more bricks that are to be used for the building of more “supply cities” in which Pharaoh can store his endless supply of material wealth in the form of grain (see Exod. 1:11). Because the system was designed to produce more and more surplus (see Gen. 47:13–26), there is always more need for storage units that in turn generated more need for bricks with which to construct them. . . .
It is clear that in this system there can be no Sabbath rest. There is no rest for Pharaoh in his supervisory capacity, and he undoubtedly monitors daily production schedules. Consequently, there can be no rest for Pharaoh’s supervisors or taskmasters; and of course there can be no rest for the slaves who must satisfy the taskmasters in order to meet Pharaoh’s demanding quotas.[7]
It is against this backdrop that God, at Sinai, institutes the Sabbath rest. This Sabbath is a direct repudiation of the totalizing production regimen of Pharaoh, one which deliberately attempts to override structural limits: both the need for rest on the parts of market participants, and the basic material requirements of effective production (the use of straw in bricks).
It is tempting for market participants to view such constraints as mere problems to be engineered away. On the logic of mainline economics, it is hard to see why created limits as such should ever be taken as normative constraints on business activity. If a worker freely contracts to subject himself or herself to the most demanding production conditions imaginable, why should they be forbidden from doing so? If employer and employee agree to a regimen of hundred-hour workweeks, this is licit insofar as both parties freely agree. And following this logic, it is not hard to envision a world in which an employer might demand that their employees submit to biomechanical or transhumanist enhancements in order to retain their jobs. A fabrication technician might be asked to consent to the removal of his biological arms, and their replacement with hyperrealistic, synthetic limbs that can manipulate matter more quickly and reliably. If both parties agree to this, is any theological critique of such a practice available?[8]
Ultimately, this is Pharaonic logic, and it is logic that the Christian tradition rejects. If one is tempted to argue that the problem with Pharaoh’s production system was its slavery, not its demandingness, the biblical narrative forecloses this reading. God does not command at Sinai that economic contracts be made with full consent of the parties; He commands rest, full stop. If that is inefficient in market terms, it is an inefficiency woven into creation’s fabric.
Now, none of this yet amounts to an argument for the positive good of tariffs and other economically nationalist policies. My point has simply been to stress the ways in which basic features of the Christian tradition qualify mainline economics’ governing assumptions. So in what sense, if any, are economically nationalist policies congruent with that Christian tradition?
I submit that, within the context of the modern state, the theological principle of respect for created limits as a limitation on economic liberty favors an approach to economic policy that privileges those domestic industries which stably support workers’ ability to live God-honoring lives. Under contemporary conditions, that approach means tariffs and the like. In the simplest terms: a world in which consumers are able to purchase a new television every five years instead of every two, but in which working people are better able to stably support families and enjoy the “mortal goods” of ordinary human life,[9] is more consistent with the vision of human flourishing contemplated by the Christian tradition, than the profit-maximizing status quo.
Begin with the data: even critics of tariffs grudgingly admit that they do “work” in the sense that they do in fact shore up domestic industries, even if those industries do business at greater cost than do foreign competitors (which need not, for instance, abide by domestic laws relating to minimum wages, workplace safety, child labor, and so on).[10]But why is it good to support these domestic industries in the first place, particularly if they are less efficient than competitors abroad? This question, I would argue, is basically anthropological in character.
Human life, in its becoming from birth to death, is intrinsically constrained life. It takes time for humans to grow—both physically and mentally—from childhood into maturity. It takes time to acquire new talents and skills, and to master them. Those competencies wane with age, as time grows short and responsibilities intensify, and as the potentialities of youth crystallize into an actualized life history. And yet time, more than anything else, is a resource that cannot really be augmented, and for which no substitute goods exist. It is an irreducible quantum of human experience. To live a human life is, always, to live with death and eternity as ever-impending realities.
This means that human flourishing is a matter of the negotiation of one’s finite time, since the dimensions of that flourishing are always multidimensional. God calls men and women to labor in the world in their own ways—but also to fill the earth and subdue it, and also to call upon His name in prayer and praise, and also to enjoy the good gifts of His creation. It follows from this that the human being is not a finite unit of labor who may be deployed in service of some purpose or other without regard for these other dimensions of flourishing. To reduce the human being to his labor is to render him something other than human, something other than what God has looked upon and called good.
But the contemporary globalized economy has, intentionally or not, led to such a tacit reduction of the scope of human life. Consider a man in his sixties, hands scarred from years mining coal, with children and grandchildren to look after. If his mine is closed as a result of foreign competition undercutting him—perhaps workers abroad are willing to submit to more dangerous conditions, and so drive down prices—in what sense is it reasonable to expect this man to adapt and pivot in the face of this new reality? Is it reasonable to expect him, for instance, to develop a facility with computer coding? The answer should be clear. Either this man struggles (probably in vain) against the simple realities of basic human existence—age, acumen, geographical location, accumulated responsibilities—in an effort to “reskill” along in-demand lines, or the fast-moving market finds no place for him at all.
Few are willing to follow the market’s cruelest logic to this conclusion. Instead, many argue for a top-down policy of “universal basic income”—that is, being paid not to work, because the market can find no place for those it has left behind. But basic income obviously creates a perverse incentive to avoid work in the first place, and in any event the policy is profoundly dehumanizing—reducing individuals to mere societal desiderata, cutting them off from their vocation as workers. Most Americans do not want such a world.
Hence, to the extent they support domestic industries that make such stability possible, tariffs, industrial policy, and other similar measures are justified as means of preserving the opportunity for human beings to engage in modes of labor that are, in fact, consistent with the limitations that are basic to created human existence and that serve human capacities to enjoy the good gifts of God.
Against all of this, the central economic objection to tariffs is that they produce deadweight losses, increasing costs across-the-board by throttling the flow of goods and services produced more cheaply elsewhere. But as I have stressed, this critique assumes uncritically that economic well-being can be reduced to a narrowly financialized understanding of “growth.” Not included in that calculus are larger questions relating to what is commodified in absolute terms (here, labor) and how it is commodified (the implicit requirement that workers adopt hypermobile, adaptive, detached lifestyle practices in order to compete effectively in this new milieu). And it is precisely these basic assumptions of mainline economics that the Christian theological tradition problematizes.
One final point merits mention. A crucial assumption in my argument has been that the state—understood in a post-Westphalian sense—is the primary locus of sovereign power and the basic entity charged with responsibility for policymaking. One might, of course, argue that the Christian tradition entails a global or cosmopolitical obligation to secure economic justice, an imperative which militates against privileging the citizens of one’s own nation at the expense of others. Indeed, an early critic of theologian/politician Abraham Kuyper (a tariff proponent) made exactly this argument against Kuyper’s policies, contending that “Kuyper has scales for morality with two sets of weights; one set of weights for Dutchmen; another set of weights for Swedes (foreigners). Somewhere in Scripture there is a very unfavorable comment on the morality of different sets of weights.”[11] In its strong form, I suspect this claim proves too much: it seems to suggest that any policy pursued on behalf of the nation qua nation is inherently suspect (must a state’s military be deployed into every foreign conflict in which the interests of justice are fairly clear, simply because the interests of justice are theoretically universally binding in character?). And indeed, this larger debate lies downstream from a much larger political-theoretic question about the Christian tradition’s relationship to “nationalism” and imperialism more generally. Those questions lie beyond the scope of this essay. However, I readily admit that the argument I’ve outlined here would look very different within a context of global governance where there is not really any such thing as “international” trade in the first place, where sovereignty has become so fluid that talk of tariffs and other “trade barriers” is simply anachronistic.
To sum up: the question of economic nationalism is—like all issues—theologically fraught. As an approach to policy that properly recognizes created limits—and the “inefficiencies” embedded within the creation that God looked upon and called good—I contend that economically nationalist policies can be justified, and even prudent.
John Ehrett is chief counsel to Senator Josh Hawley.
NOTES
[1] James Bacchus, “Trade Policies of Both Parties Ignore What Most Americans Say They Want,” Cato at Liberty (Sept. 4, 2024), https://www.cato.org/blog/trade-policies-both-parties-ignore-what-most-americans-say-they-want (“[P]olicymakers and decision-makers who should be pursuing the public interest increasingly hear and heed the voices and the views of self-seeking private interests. In trade, this includes those labor unions with workers in trade-challenged declining industries in politically pivotal states, and threatened businesses in those industries in those states that cannot—or will not—meet the challenge of global competition and thus seek to be sheltered from such competition behind protectionist trade barriers.”).
[2] Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 393 (explaining how “our education in and about philosophy has by and large presupposed what is in fact not true, that there are standards of rationality, adequate for the evaluation of rival answers to . . . questions, equally available, at least in principle, to all persons, whatever tradition they may happen to find themselves in and whether or not they inhabit any tradition.”).
[3] Quoted in Matthew T. Mitchell and Peter J. Boettke, Applied Mainline Economics: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Public Policy (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2017), 28.
[4] Mitchell and Boettke, Applied Mainline Economics, 24.
[5] See, e.g., Danny Frederick, “A Competitive Market in Human Organs,” Libertarian Papers 2 no. 27 (2010), https://cdn.mises.org/-2-27_2.pdf.
[6] See, e.g., Walter Block, “On Baby Selling,” Libertarianism.org (Jan. 2, 1979), https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/baby-selling.
[7] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, rev. ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 3–4.
[8] For more, see John Ehrett, “Out of Libertarianism,” Conciliar Post (Oct. 12, 2020), https://conciliarpost.com/theology-spirituality/out-of-libertarianism/.
[9] See Ephraim Radner, Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2024), 45 (meditating on “ordering the goods of birth, family, toil, neighbors, suffering, friendship and joy, and finally death” that are essentially human).
[10] See, e.g., Davide Furceri, Swarnali A. Hannan, Jonathan D. Ostry, and Andrew K. Rose, “IMF Working Paper: Macroeconomic Consequences of Tariffs,” International Monetary Fund (January 2019), 3 (“Tariffs encourage the deflection of trade to inefficient producers”); Erica York, “Separating Tariff Facts from Tariff Fictions,” Cato Institute (Apr. 16, 2024), https://www.cato.org/publications/separating-tariff-facts-tariff-fictions# (“Tariffs allow domestic producers to raise prices and increase profits and, in turn, potentially increase production and stem employment losses.”).
[11] Frederick Nymeyer, “Abraham Kuyper’s Unscriptural and Unsound Ideas on Tariff Protection,” Progressive Calvinism 2 no. 1 (1956): 20; see also Tyler Groenendal, “The Immorality of Tariffs,” Religion & Liberty Online (June 30, 2016), https://rlo.acton.org/archives/87607-the-immorality-of-tariffs.html (“Tariffs are immoral because they unfairly benefit one group of people over another through the coercion of the state. They erode individual choice, while simultaneously reinforcing nationalist ideas.”).
[12] See generally Kok-Chor Tan, Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) (discussing these questions of cosmopolitan justice, implementation, and governance).
At one point in my life—perhaps when I was a Frédéric Bastiat Fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center—I would have agreed wholeheartedly with Samuel Gregg’s systematic critique of economic nationalism. I appreciate the clarity and force of his argument that economic nationalism interferes with market processes by not allocating resources for maximal “efficiency.”
It is a critique well rooted in the governing premises of modern mainline economics. Indeed, though Gregg is too polite to say so, his argument invites an unspoken question: isn’t it obvious, on reflection,that tariffs aren’t serious economic policy, but merely craven bids to shore up political support from inevitably-doomed domestic industries? Given the net costs they impose on everyone, defending tariffs must prove to be either irresponsible or cynical. [1]
The question is a reasonable one. But I would suggest that this reflexive sentiment—this suspicion that anyone supporting something so obviously irrational must be either stupid or malign—arises from the degree to which a certain set of (metaphysical) premises related to economics has been established in the field as conventional—even architectonic—wisdom. As Alasdair MacIntyre reminds us, the standards that delimit the plausibility or implausibility of particular claims are never tradition- or discipline-independent.[2] That is to say, Gregg’s critique of economic nationalism unfolds against the backdrop of a particular understanding of the purposes which economic activity serves.
I would note here three important background assumptions: (1) the roughly equal value of all potential consumer preferences within the market, from the perspective of political authority;(2) the intrinsic value of commerce and the use of wealth generation as the normative criterion for economic policymaking; and (3) the principle that apparent limits do not normatively inform economic life.
First, mainline economics generally asserts that individuals, not political authorities, ought to be the ones deciding the sorts of goods and services they want to exchange in the marketplace. Or, more simply, people should basically be able to buy and sell whatever they want, without government getting in the way. In Friedrich Hayek’s words, the state must confine itself to “providing the appropriate environment” for free commerce.[3] Second, mainline economics generally assumes that economic activity, as it conduces to the generation of financial wealth, ultimately serves the common good: as Matthew Mitchell and Peter Boettke put it, “individual micro-behaviors often lead to desirable macro-outcomes.”[4] Third, mainline economics tends to see little normative value in the affirmation of purported “limits” as such. A felt sense of sacrality—of the sacrality of anything at all—represents a barrier to efficient market exchange. This helps explain why a number of economists have extended market logic to question longstanding taboos against the sale of human organs [5] (or even argue for the creation of “baby markets”). [6]
Economically nationalist policies obviously fail to satisfy these standards. For example, protective tariffs attempt to change consumer preferences: they raise the price of foreign-produced goods and services and incentivize domestic consumers to buy from domestic producers, irrespective of whether those domestic consumers might prefer (in a vacuum) to purchase the foreign-made products. By increasing costs, tariffs potentially leave domestic consumers with less purchasing power. And protective tariffs privilege the jobs of domestic producers for reasons that have nothing to do with quality or preference.
But one should not leave off there. I suggest asking a different, and deeper question: must all public policies be assessed according to the disciplinary norms of mainline economics? After all, the Christian tradition has insisted that each of the foregoing background principles must be qualified a priori.
First, Christian thought insists that all potential consumer preferences are not equally valid. Not everything is rightly commodified, even if some individuals would prefer to do so: there may be theological considerations that permissibly restrict the range of goods subject to the logic of modern market processes. Leviticus 25 is illustrative. In relevant part, God imposes a bar on the permanent alienation of land, and the incorporation of a permanent right of redemption (verse 23). So too, Israelites themselves are forbidden from being sold into slavery (verse 42). Importantly, these commands are not issued as arbitrary divine fiats. Each comes accompanied by a specific theological justification. Land may not be permanently alienated, God says, “because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.” And Israelites must not be sold “[b]ecause the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt.” Israelite markets in property and labor would undoubtedly be more efficient, in a strict sense, if these commands were not observed. And yet God imposes these commands anyway, without regard for their “rationality” in the sense of mainline economics, because the nature of the goods in question renders them theologically unfit for dissolution in the market process. God Himself articulates a tradition-specific standard of rationality—the relationship of these particular goods to Him—that places them beyond the “normal” domain of commerce.
Second, the Christian tradition has not treated the business of commerce—and wealth generation as such—as intrinsically salutary—such that “growth” alone could ever be treated as a definitive policy lodestar. Perhaps most famously, Jesus cleanses the Temple in Jerusalem of “people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.” Now, the buying and selling of sacrifices is not itself wrongful in se—but as Jesus stresses, those doing business within the Temple are guilty of “turning my Father’s house into a market!” It is the mode in which this commerce is conducted that is the problem; all forms of commerce are not equally licit. Economically speaking, in driving out the moneychangers and sellers of animals, Jesus creates a deadweight loss. After all, surely it would be more economically efficient to conduct this business as close to the temple as possible: increasing the distance between points of sale and the Temple potentially increases the risk of robbery between locations, and imposes additional transaction costs associated with the transport of animals. But Jesus drives out the sellers and moneychangers anyway, in a stark reminder that there are domains of human social existence in which market efficacy is not the only relevant consideration.
Third, the Christian tradition has insisted that created limits normatively inform economic life. Take the case of Exodus 5, in which an aggrieved Pharaoh commands the enslaved Israelites to produce “bricks without straw.” Here, I can do no better than quote at length Walter Brueggemann, who powerfully describes the underlying theological question of economics underlying this historical episode:
In Exodus 5, we are given a passionate narrative account of that labor system in which Pharaoh endlessly demands more production. What the slaves are to produce is more bricks that are to be used for the building of more “supply cities” in which Pharaoh can store his endless supply of material wealth in the form of grain (see Exod. 1:11). Because the system was designed to produce more and more surplus (see Gen. 47:13–26), there is always more need for storage units that in turn generated more need for bricks with which to construct them. . . .
It is clear that in this system there can be no Sabbath rest. There is no rest for Pharaoh in his supervisory capacity, and he undoubtedly monitors daily production schedules. Consequently, there can be no rest for Pharaoh’s supervisors or taskmasters; and of course there can be no rest for the slaves who must satisfy the taskmasters in order to meet Pharaoh’s demanding quotas.[7]
It is against this backdrop that God, at Sinai, institutes the Sabbath rest. This Sabbath is a direct repudiation of the totalizing production regimen of Pharaoh, one which deliberately attempts to override structural limits: both the need for rest on the parts of market participants, and the basic material requirements of effective production (the use of straw in bricks).
It is tempting for market participants to view such constraints as mere problems to be engineered away. On the logic of mainline economics, it is hard to see why created limits as such should ever be taken as normative constraints on business activity. If a worker freely contracts to subject himself or herself to the most demanding production conditions imaginable, why should they be forbidden from doing so? If employer and employee agree to a regimen of hundred-hour workweeks, this is licit insofar as both parties freely agree. And following this logic, it is not hard to envision a world in which an employer might demand that their employees submit to biomechanical or transhumanist enhancements in order to retain their jobs. A fabrication technician might be asked to consent to the removal of his biological arms, and their replacement with hyperrealistic, synthetic limbs that can manipulate matter more quickly and reliably. If both parties agree to this, is any theological critique of such a practice available?[8]
Ultimately, this is Pharaonic logic, and it is logic that the Christian tradition rejects. If one is tempted to argue that the problem with Pharaoh’s production system was its slavery, not its demandingness, the biblical narrative forecloses this reading. God does not command at Sinai that economic contracts be made with full consent of the parties; He commands rest, full stop. If that is inefficient in market terms, it is an inefficiency woven into creation’s fabric.
Now, none of this yet amounts to an argument for the positive good of tariffs and other economically nationalist policies. My point has simply been to stress the ways in which basic features of the Christian tradition qualify mainline economics’ governing assumptions. So in what sense, if any, are economically nationalist policies congruent with that Christian tradition?
I submit that, within the context of the modern state, the theological principle of respect for created limits as a limitation on economic liberty favors an approach to economic policy that privileges those domestic industries which stably support workers’ ability to live God-honoring lives. Under contemporary conditions, that approach means tariffs and the like. In the simplest terms: a world in which consumers are able to purchase a new television every five years instead of every two, but in which working people are better able to stably support families and enjoy the “mortal goods” of ordinary human life,[9] is more consistent with the vision of human flourishing contemplated by the Christian tradition, than the profit-maximizing status quo.
Begin with the data: even critics of tariffs grudgingly admit that they do “work” in the sense that they do in fact shore up domestic industries, even if those industries do business at greater cost than do foreign competitors (which need not, for instance, abide by domestic laws relating to minimum wages, workplace safety, child labor, and so on).[10]But why is it good to support these domestic industries in the first place, particularly if they are less efficient than competitors abroad? This question, I would argue, is basically anthropological in character.
Human life, in its becoming from birth to death, is intrinsically constrained life. It takes time for humans to grow—both physically and mentally—from childhood into maturity. It takes time to acquire new talents and skills, and to master them. Those competencies wane with age, as time grows short and responsibilities intensify, and as the potentialities of youth crystallize into an actualized life history. And yet time, more than anything else, is a resource that cannot really be augmented, and for which no substitute goods exist. It is an irreducible quantum of human experience. To live a human life is, always, to live with death and eternity as ever-impending realities.
This means that human flourishing is a matter of the negotiation of one’s finite time, since the dimensions of that flourishing are always multidimensional. God calls men and women to labor in the world in their own ways—but also to fill the earth and subdue it, and also to call upon His name in prayer and praise, and also to enjoy the good gifts of His creation. It follows from this that the human being is not a finite unit of labor who may be deployed in service of some purpose or other without regard for these other dimensions of flourishing. To reduce the human being to his labor is to render him something other than human, something other than what God has looked upon and called good.
But the contemporary globalized economy has, intentionally or not, led to such a tacit reduction of the scope of human life. Consider a man in his sixties, hands scarred from years mining coal, with children and grandchildren to look after. If his mine is closed as a result of foreign competition undercutting him—perhaps workers abroad are willing to submit to more dangerous conditions, and so drive down prices—in what sense is it reasonable to expect this man to adapt and pivot in the face of this new reality? Is it reasonable to expect him, for instance, to develop a facility with computer coding? The answer should be clear. Either this man struggles (probably in vain) against the simple realities of basic human existence—age, acumen, geographical location, accumulated responsibilities—in an effort to “reskill” along in-demand lines, or the fast-moving market finds no place for him at all.
Few are willing to follow the market’s cruelest logic to this conclusion. Instead, many argue for a top-down policy of “universal basic income”—that is, being paid not to work, because the market can find no place for those it has left behind. But basic income obviously creates a perverse incentive to avoid work in the first place, and in any event the policy is profoundly dehumanizing—reducing individuals to mere societal desiderata, cutting them off from their vocation as workers. Most Americans do not want such a world.
Hence, to the extent they support domestic industries that make such stability possible, tariffs, industrial policy, and other similar measures are justified as means of preserving the opportunity for human beings to engage in modes of labor that are, in fact, consistent with the limitations that are basic to created human existence and that serve human capacities to enjoy the good gifts of God.
Against all of this, the central economic objection to tariffs is that they produce deadweight losses, increasing costs across-the-board by throttling the flow of goods and services produced more cheaply elsewhere. But as I have stressed, this critique assumes uncritically that economic well-being can be reduced to a narrowly financialized understanding of “growth.” Not included in that calculus are larger questions relating to what is commodified in absolute terms (here, labor) and how it is commodified (the implicit requirement that workers adopt hypermobile, adaptive, detached lifestyle practices in order to compete effectively in this new milieu). And it is precisely these basic assumptions of mainline economics that the Christian theological tradition problematizes.
One final point merits mention. A crucial assumption in my argument has been that the state—understood in a post-Westphalian sense—is the primary locus of sovereign power and the basic entity charged with responsibility for policymaking. One might, of course, argue that the Christian tradition entails a global or cosmopolitical obligation to secure economic justice, an imperative which militates against privileging the citizens of one’s own nation at the expense of others. Indeed, an early critic of theologian/politician Abraham Kuyper (a tariff proponent) made exactly this argument against Kuyper’s policies, contending that “Kuyper has scales for morality with two sets of weights; one set of weights for Dutchmen; another set of weights for Swedes (foreigners). Somewhere in Scripture there is a very unfavorable comment on the morality of different sets of weights.”[11] In its strong form, I suspect this claim proves too much: it seems to suggest that any policy pursued on behalf of the nation qua nation is inherently suspect (must a state’s military be deployed into every foreign conflict in which the interests of justice are fairly clear, simply because the interests of justice are theoretically universally binding in character?). And indeed, this larger debate lies downstream from a much larger political-theoretic question about the Christian tradition’s relationship to “nationalism” and imperialism more generally. Those questions lie beyond the scope of this essay. However, I readily admit that the argument I’ve outlined here would look very different within a context of global governance where there is not really any such thing as “international” trade in the first place, where sovereignty has become so fluid that talk of tariffs and other “trade barriers” is simply anachronistic.
To sum up: the question of economic nationalism is—like all issues—theologically fraught. As an approach to policy that properly recognizes created limits—and the “inefficiencies” embedded within the creation that God looked upon and called good—I contend that economically nationalist policies can be justified, and even prudent.
John Ehrett is chief counsel to Senator Josh Hawley.
NOTES
[1] James Bacchus, “Trade Policies of Both Parties Ignore What Most Americans Say They Want,” Cato at Liberty (Sept. 4, 2024), https://www.cato.org/blog/trade-policies-both-parties-ignore-what-most-americans-say-they-want (“[P]olicymakers and decision-makers who should be pursuing the public interest increasingly hear and heed the voices and the views of self-seeking private interests. In trade, this includes those labor unions with workers in trade-challenged declining industries in politically pivotal states, and threatened businesses in those industries in those states that cannot—or will not—meet the challenge of global competition and thus seek to be sheltered from such competition behind protectionist trade barriers.”).
[2] Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 393 (explaining how “our education in and about philosophy has by and large presupposed what is in fact not true, that there are standards of rationality, adequate for the evaluation of rival answers to . . . questions, equally available, at least in principle, to all persons, whatever tradition they may happen to find themselves in and whether or not they inhabit any tradition.”).
[3] Quoted in Matthew T. Mitchell and Peter J. Boettke, Applied Mainline Economics: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Public Policy (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2017), 28.
[4] Mitchell and Boettke, Applied Mainline Economics, 24.
[5] See, e.g., Danny Frederick, “A Competitive Market in Human Organs,” Libertarian Papers 2 no. 27 (2010), https://cdn.mises.org/-2-27_2.pdf.
[6] See, e.g., Walter Block, “On Baby Selling,” Libertarianism.org (Jan. 2, 1979), https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/baby-selling.
[7] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, rev. ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 3–4.
[8] For more, see John Ehrett, “Out of Libertarianism,” Conciliar Post (Oct. 12, 2020), https://conciliarpost.com/theology-spirituality/out-of-libertarianism/.
[9] See Ephraim Radner, Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2024), 45 (meditating on “ordering the goods of birth, family, toil, neighbors, suffering, friendship and joy, and finally death” that are essentially human).
[10] See, e.g., Davide Furceri, Swarnali A. Hannan, Jonathan D. Ostry, and Andrew K. Rose, “IMF Working Paper: Macroeconomic Consequences of Tariffs,” International Monetary Fund (January 2019), 3 (“Tariffs encourage the deflection of trade to inefficient producers”); Erica York, “Separating Tariff Facts from Tariff Fictions,” Cato Institute (Apr. 16, 2024), https://www.cato.org/publications/separating-tariff-facts-tariff-fictions# (“Tariffs allow domestic producers to raise prices and increase profits and, in turn, potentially increase production and stem employment losses.”).
[11] Frederick Nymeyer, “Abraham Kuyper’s Unscriptural and Unsound Ideas on Tariff Protection,” Progressive Calvinism 2 no. 1 (1956): 20; see also Tyler Groenendal, “The Immorality of Tariffs,” Religion & Liberty Online (June 30, 2016), https://rlo.acton.org/archives/87607-the-immorality-of-tariffs.html (“Tariffs are immoral because they unfairly benefit one group of people over another through the coercion of the state. They erode individual choice, while simultaneously reinforcing nationalist ideas.”).
[12] See generally Kok-Chor Tan, Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) (discussing these questions of cosmopolitan justice, implementation, and governance).
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