Originally published on Blaze Media.
The Second Amendment guarantees the right for citizens to bear arms. Many conservatives argue that this is the most important right. Why? Our other core rights—freedom of religion, speech, and assembly—are worthless if they cannot be defended. Firearms safeguard freedom.
Yet, these same conservatives have viciously attacked President Trump’s recent 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum imports, describing is as “political rent-seeking at its most brazen”. Some “non-partisan” critics even claimed that Trump’s tariffs are an “unconstitutional power grab”.
These criticisms are not only unfounded, they are completely backwards. Why? The trade deficit is among the greatest—yet most ignored—threats to America’s freedom. America needs tariffs to eliminate the trade deficit and safeguard our national security.
A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
The trade deficit undermines America’s national security because of something called import dependency. Import dependency occurs when a country cannot sustain itself without imports. This often occurs when countries lack a specific natural resource.
For example, Iceland is too cold to grow coconuts, and must buy coconuts from tropical islands. In this way, Iceland is import dependent when it comes to coconuts. Import dependency may not sound important—coconuts are not that important to Iceland’s economy—but what if we replaced coconuts with oil? You can imagine that Icelandic winters would be much less hospitable without fuel.
Even less obvious is the threat posed by dependence on imported manufactured goods, like silicon chips. How could Iceland maintain a modern economy without access to computers? It could not. To make matters worse, it is obvious that whoever controlled the supply of computers into Iceland would wield enormous political leverage over the Icelandic people—do what we say or no computers!
The reality is that any country that depends on imports is vulnerable in this way. One of the best historical examples of the dangers of import dependence occurred during the American revolution. Although this may come as a surprise, the American Revolution almost failed because the Colonies could not manufacture enough cannons, firearms, and gunpowder to resist the British—our former supplier.
It was only when Britain’s European rivals, particularly the French and Dutch, started supplying the Revolutionary Army that the tide turned. For example, France alone supplied the Revolutionary Army with over 80,000 firearms, in addition to swords, knives, and uniforms. America depended upon British manufactured goods, and it was not until this economic dependence was broken that America could free herself from the imperial yoke.
President George Washington recognized this fact, writing that America would not be able to defend its freedoms unless the nation was “independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies”. To this end, his first major piece of legislation was the Tariff Act of 1789, which raised taxes on imported manufactured goods.
One of the legislation’s key aims was to promote the development of America’s manufacturing industry. Even Thomas Jefferson—who initially supported free trade on principle—eventually agreed with Washington. In the wake of the War of 1812, Jefferson wrote:
…experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort: and if those who quote me as of a different opinion will keep pace with me in purchasing nothing foreign where an equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained, without regard to difference of price [we would be well-off]…
Both Washington and Jefferson realized that economics and politics are simply two sides of the same coin. Therefore, to safeguard America’s political independence, we must first maintain America’s economic independence.
My Kingdom for a [Made-in-China] Horse
The American Colonies depended on European imports to wrestle our freedom from the British. Today, we depend on Chinese imports.
Consider that America no longer manufactures enough of the of basic machinery required to manufacture basic household items like knives and forks—never mind the sophisticated electrical components needed for computers and smartphones. In other words, even if we wanted to manufacture forks, we would probably need to buy the fork-making machinery from China.
This is made clear when we look at America’s production of machine tools. A machine tool is a piece of machinery that shapes its output by removing material by way of lathing, planning, drilling, milling, grinding, sawing, or pressing the output. Machine tools transform raw materials into something useful. They are the tools that make tools.
America used to be the leading manufacturer and global exporter of machine tools. Today, America imports of most its machine tools, and only produces 7% of the world’s machine tools. For comparison, Italy produces 8%, while China makes 29%.
To make matters worse, America is becoming increasingly import dependent on technologically advanced products. Every year, we import over $500 billion of advanced technology products from China that we should be buying. Consider silicon computer chips. America buys most of these chips from factories in Taiwan, which are built using photolithography machines build in the Netherlands.
America is import-dependent upon China. This restrains America’s ability to act independently on the world stage, and gives China leverage over America in any prospective military engagement.
Consider what would occur if conflict erupted between America and China. Presumably, America would need to scale-up its industrial production to build more weapons, vehicles, and computers. There is just one problem: scaling-up is just not possible—at least not immediately. Why?
In order to manufacture more equipment, America would need to build more factories. However, America imports almost all of its industrial components and machine tools. That is, America does not even manufacture the things it would need to use to manufacture more things.
Worse yet, America’s workforce lacks the training and experience to manufacture critical goods. What would happen, for example, if China stopped selling microchips? Even if we assume that America has the tools to manufacture microchips—which we do not—we do not have the human capital to manufacture microchips on a large scale. That is, very few Americans know how to build microchips. Heck, very few Americans even have the skills to build the factories themselves.
If America is serious about preserving its national security, reigning-in the trade deficit should be our top priority—just as it was for the Founding Fathers.
