“The present increase in commerce is not to be attributed to ministers, or to any political contrivances, but to its own natural operations in consequence of peace.”
The above insight is unoriginal; Thomas Paine felt it necessary to restate what should have been obvious to all—in 1792! Centuries later, the fact that commerce is a natural consequence of peace seems even less obvious. In the absence of conflict, voluntary exchange is as natural as breathing. Suffocating is unnatural, and that is precisely what happens to people—“the economy”—when their ability to transact is degraded. But there’s hope; the United States Coast Guard endeavors to “maintain the flow of maritime commerce to ensure America’s economic prosperity.” Your author trusts that you can see why this is a bit silly, and it’s why Paine also wrote, “The idea of having navies for the protection of commerce is delusive.”
Just as absurd as the notion that politicians are responsible for the exchange of goods and services is the idea that those exchanges require defense. It’s like believing your author needs a military escort when frequenting his favorite taphouse. The ale flows freely there, and I’m buying; end of transaction. But we’re to blindly believe that commerce requires a third party to maintain its existence. And it’s not just the belief that’s absurd but also the price tag attached to it. The Coast Guard squanders roughly one billion dollars from the private, productive sector to “ensure” that the world’s most productive people receive what they purchased. Though the Coast Guard does other things, in this instance, it acts only as a gruff middleman, facilitating what would’ve naturally occurred without him, just as the patron at a late-night diner receives his order from the curt server instead of getting it from the counter himself.
But brace yourself, as we haven’t yet reached the height of absurdity. The Coast Guard squanders a billion to “maintain the flow of maritime commerce”—patting itself on the back for allegedly ensuring “America’s economic prosperity”—while the U.S. president requires Americans to spend many more billions, impairing the flow of maritime commerce. And here the follies join hands at the altar of profligacy: one branch performs an unnecessary function while another branch of the same tree further wastes what is already wasteful. If the point of tariffs is to induce the domestic population to buy goods from domestic producers, then, if the Coast Guard’s logic is sound, wouldn’t the absence of its (wholly unnecessary) function further incentivize the purchase of domestic goods? Again, if the Coast Guard’s logic is correct, that international trade couldn’t survive without it, wouldn’t foreign producers be less likely to sell to Americans if the Coast Guard were to no longer “maintain the flow of maritime commerce”?
Foreign manufacturers have the greatest incentive to ensure that their goods reach the shores of the world’s richest customer, so the Coast Guard’s function is just as redundant as tariffs are antagonistic. Whether the president’s tariffs are undermining the Coast Guard’s so-called maintenance of commerce or the Coast Guard is undermining human nature, it should be just as obvious now as it was to Thomas Paine in 1792 that both entities are counterproductive, at best. Americans are worse off with one and doubly worse off with both. The choice between protecting commerce or inhibiting it ideally shouldn’t exist, as “neither” is the common-sense answer. The price for these rather expensive, political theatrics is much too high to be so utterly unconvincing. And as long as what Paine called “a band of parasites living in luxurious indolence” continues to pretend that its wasting of tax dollars will somehow alter human nature, they might as well pick just one poison instead of forcing us to pay for both.
