The president will have to choose between restricting trade and limiting low-skill immigration.
There is a contradiction at the heart of Trumpism’s embrace of protectionism and restrictionism. President Donald Trump often portrays international trade less as a non-zero-sum form of cooperation and more as a battle to the death, in which wily foreigners have for years been winning at the expense of ordinary Americans, thanks in large part to the treacherousness of U.S. elites. His call for steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports is very much in keeping with his mercantilist instincts. At the same time, the president advocates more stringent limits on low-skill immigration.
You might think these policies complement each other. And as a matter of cultural sensibilities, there’s no denying that they tend to go together. The trouble is that offshoring is essential to making limits on low-skill immigration tolerable for large employers, at least for the foreseeable future. Just as you can’t have your cake and eat it too, you can’t slam the door shut to low-skill labor while also slamming it shut to imports of the goods and services an abundant supply of low-skill labor makes possible.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Atlantic (paywall)
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Reihan Salam is the president of the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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