The New York Times reported last week that Legend Biotech has developed a potential cure for the incurable and brutally painful disease known as multiple myeloma.
It raises a question: would readers accept tariffs on Legend’s drugs if the corporation weren’t based in Somerset, NJ? Clown question. Cancer in its various forms takes the lives of far too many way too early, so let’s not tax the import of what elongates lives, right?
Some might respond that the point is moot with Legend, since it’s based in New Jersey. The latter is true, but as is so often the case with brilliant advances, the path to them is global. In Legend’s case, its origins are in China where it still has operations.
It’s something to think about considering a present-day reality that includes tariffs on groceries. Some, including U.S. farmers, are defending President Trump’s tariffs. To show all sides of all issues, RealClearMarkets has run commentary supporting Trump’s tariffs by farmers. That’s not a comment that we agree with the tariffs, but it’s recognition that on all matters there are differing opinions.
The deeply held view here is that tariffs on food or groceries are as foolhardy as tariffs on life-saving drugs. Arguably tariffs on groceries are even more foolhardy. Actually it’s not even arguable. Think about it.
While thankfully most of us don’t have cancer, and even fewer of us have the historically incurable multiple myeloma, we’re all reliant on food to survive. A trite statement of the obvious? Sure, but that’s kind of the point.
Most of us wouldn’t be for tariffs if we really knew what tariffs were. And by knowing what tariffs are, we must think of them while contemplating why we get up and go to work each day to begin with.
It’s easily forgotten that we work to get things. Think about this while contemplating tariffs not as a high-demographic reader at RealClearMarkets, but as someone who doesn’t have the time to read RealClearMarkets, or even awareness of it.
The bet here is for every individual reading this piece, groceries are certain. But that’s not true for everyone. Which is probably a better way to contemplate blanket tariffs from Trump, including tariffs on groceries. For many people who are already struggling, the tax exacerbates the getting of what’s already difficult to get.
While our bodies routinely kill off cancer cells growing within us, and while pharmaceutical advances are increasingly equal to cancer forms that were once death sentences, no one has yet happened on a cure for starvation. An overstatement? Yes, and by design.
Sometimes overstatement is required to make more basic points. That we can’t live without food is a basic point, and part of a greater point that the food we can’t survive without is increasingly plentiful and accessible thanks to global cooperation with individuals and machines that produce all manner of goods for us, including food. Yes, when we’re working together, more and more of what used to be scarce is abundant. Which is the point, and it’s about tariffs.
They’re mindless when imposed on groceries for the same reason they’re mindless when levied on cancer cures or any other market good. That’s because it’s the division of work that makes food so plentiful for us, and that similarly leads to healthcare advances that elongate life for us. Why on earth would we ever tax that which lifts every human so brilliantly, and in all ways?
