Protectionists Have Nothing but Cheap Scare Tactics

A “red herring” is a fact or assertion that diverts attention from the essence of an argument. Among the reddest of such herrings are observations about some specific but irrelevant features of a particular market.

It's common, for example, for proponents of minimum wages to deny that the same economic analysis used to accurately predict the consequences of rising prices of inanimate goods, such as walnuts, is useful for predicting the consequences of rising prices of human labor. “Workers aren't walnuts!” the wavers of red herrings protest.