A Note on Trade and Inequality

Trans-oceanic cargo ship on the Columbia River. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Oren Cass, the head economist of Compass, had a column in the New York Times this week touting Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs. The gist of the piece is that “free trade” has not worked out as economists’ textbooks promised and we should look to take a different path.

As someone who was very critical of the major trade deals of the last three decades, I would say that they did work out very much as the economists’ textbooks promised.