When Should National Defense Override Free Trade?

We both agreed to this one. I don't I'll take this one first. I don't love this answer. I just think it's like implied uh that it what all the logic that you're accepting, once you've accepted the sort of like minarchist logic of well, we might we need national defense, all it's it's in the same way that it spills over it, it spills over on uh this one. This I don't I don't love this one. I would still try to minimize it because I think markets work, free trade works, but it's like I I can't my I can't be completely agnostic about my nation's military capacity. I can't be completely agnostic about my nation's ability to you know to produce arms we shouldn't rely on China for our pharmaceuticals, right? If you you if you need if you need bombs and materials, those shouldn't be manufactured overseas.

They should be made here, right? Pharmaceuticals you said yeah, we're we're very reliant on China for the case. How does that relate to national defense citizen? Well, we need to we need to, as a nation, collectively move our trade of pharmaceuticals away from China towards nations that are less hostile. Why are we buying pharmaceuticals from the same country that poisoned us with COVID-19? Uh so I do think national defense justifies departing free trade, and so did Adam Smith. If you read Wealth of Nations. I'm just not following this argument because the national the classic argument to me is like, oh well, we can't like there actually is a difference if my nation is full of knowledge workers versus has factories because in a time of war the factories can be produced munitions, whereas my email jobs, you know, so there's positive externalities from the perspective of the nation.

I do think I do think that there are I think modern exigencies. I think the the the founding fathers could have never had to deal with bulk you know hypersonic missiles and nuclear weapons, and that since there are new threats, they're going to have to be new theories in order how to counter these threats. So I see the United States as you know being overly reliant on uh technology and pharmaceuticals from people who clearly wish us ill will. Um and I don't know what sort of, you know, I I'm not saying that it has to have tariffs or things like that. But I like the fact that Donald Trump is working to bring manufacturing of microchips to the United States. We invented those things. We should absolutely be able to manufacture those things here. But we should obviously go after the taxes and the regulations and the unions that makes it more difficult to produce things here in the United States, and that should be our primary focus.

But I do think it is a problem that we relied on when we needed ventilators, when we needed masks, when we needed pharmaceuticals, that we had to buy them from the same power that inflicted us with the disease. So I think that that's a that is a sense that is justifies departing from free trade. But otherwise, we should be doing what Donald Trump and Javier Malay are doing. Donald Trump has even said specifically he would drop all of the tariffs reciprocal reciprocally if they would drop theirs. He was right. And I wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all have the same relationship that Javier Malay and Donald Trump has with other countries. But the fact is is that those countries, they lay those trade policies on us and they they could they do currency manipulation. How many scams are coming out of China and Russia and Nigeria all the time?

We're all paying for that, whether we like it or not. We're paying the cost of those scams in high in the form of higher fees at our banks for transactions and things like that, additional security. Your banks are charging you higher fees because of those scams. So I mean there are there are hidden costs to trade that uh maybe the Cato Institute isn't going to bring up when they talk about these things. So we agreed on this one, but I think, yeah, your your scope here is is quite a bit broader than mine. If I if I were to give any considerations here, it would basically be along the argument. I'd potentially accept arguments about chips, AI, anything that's cutting edge, it's military related. The idea being that like there if there really is a difference to my if if if the most powerful AI companies are made are in my nation and they and they produce 100 billion dollars of revenue versus um you know there's a makeup company or food or uh there's uh sports companies or entertainment companies and they're producing a hundred billion dollars in revenue.

There really is a difference in my nation between those two things. The name the industry with military capacity has positive externalities to the benefits of my nation in terms of the defense of my nation. And so that's really the only consideration that I would potentially give here, because I do believe that one of the roles of government can potentially be to correct you know externalities. But when it comes to the production of other goods, of goods where I can't see any plausible national defense claim, and even here I would want to be careful. I just I I think that the pros I I'm generally very pro-free trade. I think the pros generally outweigh uh the cons. I think uh there is an infinite amount of labor that Americans can be doing, and we're all consumers. And so generally things being made in other countries that can be brought here, that's that's often very good for us.

Yeah, no, I agree. I I want to have a very large thing. I agree, but I yeah, and and I think like you said, it's important to be specific. But I mean, I do think that it that the Chinese communist government probably would use pharmaceuticals as like another way to introduce pathogens to the United States. I I do think that COVID-19 may have been uh an actual attack on the United States specifically. Um well, I'm I'm a little bit I suppose I'm a little bit more skeptical of of some of these, but I don't know for how much down the rabbit hole I want to I want to go down on these. Do what do we want to bounce to the bounce to the next topic? Yeah, let's go. I want to get everybody tired. Uh oh, I I like this one. This one, this one is teed up for you, also.