American manufacturers already face steel prices of nearly twice the world export market price owing to taxes and restrictions. Where steel mills add $36 billion of value to the economy, manufacturers that use steel add “over $1 trillion — or 5.8% of GDP” and employ over 6 million people, notes Cato’s Dan Pearson. Naked protectionism for one industry will have a devastating effect on others that employ 46 times as many people.The essay notes, as does one of the articles cited yesterday, that other countries, and the European Union, can also play the protectionist game.
Which also does nothing to help entrepreneurs, irrespective of their lines of business, discover their comparative advantages.
(There's probably a way to interpret trade wars as meaning "women and minorities hardest hit," but that's a subset of consumers, and consumers take it in the shorts as trade barriers take hold.)
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