By any serious measure, and certainly by every economic metric, the claim that the United States has been “ripped off” or “mistreated” by its trading partners over the past several decades is incoherent. The rhetorical scaffolding upon which the Trump administration’s protectionist tariff regime rests is a fundamentally flawed understanding of international trade. It substitutes a mercantilist worldview — discredited since the eighteenth century — for evidence-based economic policy, and in so doing risks sabotaging the very system that has helped drive US prosperity, innovation, and leadership in global commerce.
The administration’s argument is built on the premise that large bilateral trade deficits — particularly with China, Mexico, Germany, and Japan — represent exploitation. In fact, a trade deficit is not a measure of being “taken advantage of;” it is a simple macroeconomic identity. It reflects the fact that the United States consistently imports more than it exports, with capital inflows from abroad financing both private investment and public debt. This inflow — recorded as a capital account surplus — signals that global investors view the US as a safe and attractive destination for capital. Far from being a symptom of decline, this pattern is a reflection of economic strength and international confidence in US institutions. Trade deficits are not inherently bad; in fact, they often correlate with periods of strong growth and low unemployment.
The administration’s use of tariffs as a blunt-force tool to “correct” these deficits reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of comparative advantage, one of the most basic principles in economics. By imposing tariffs on imports, the government reduces consumer choice, raises input costs for American firms and the cost of living for households, and invites retaliatory measures that harm US exporters. The idea that protectionism leads to economic strength has been discredited repeatedly — whether during the Smoot-Hawley debacle of the 1930s or more recent empirical studies on the costs of steel and aluminum tariffs imposed in March 2018 under Section 232.
Moreover, the assertion that past trade agreements — such as NAFTA, the WTO accession of China, or the US-Korea FTA — were one-sided giveaways is economically unserious. Those agreements were negotiated to promote mutual gains through the reduction of barriers to trade and investment. Some industries contracted, as expected in any process of specialization and reallocation. But far more jobs were created in sectors where the US holds competitive advantages: high-tech manufacturing, advanced services, and capital-intensive production. Consumers have benefited from lower prices, and American firms gained access to global supply chains that improve productivity and innovation.
It is undoubtedly emotionally comforting and politically expedient to tell out-of-work machinists, demagogues, and nativists that the only reason their jobs disappeared is because America was “ripped off” by cunning foreigners. It’s a narrative that flatters the ego and assigns blame elsewhere, suggesting that American workers were betrayed and that blue-collar workers in the US are too noble, too skilled, or too moral to compete in a crooked game. But the truth is more mundane and more painful.
While it’s true that high union wages in the American Midwest were easily undercut by equally capable workers abroad, the deeper force was the relentless advance of automation and technological change, which rendered entire job categories economically obsolete. Scapegoating trade agreements for this transformation ignores that the greatest dislocation came not from container ships, but from code and machines. And for all the wailing about dignity and livelihoods, the fact remains: American consumers, including many of those simultaneously lamenting lost factory jobs, consistently choose cheap goods over preserving high-wage, low-efficiency employment in their own communities. They vote with their wallets at Walmart, not at the ballot box — and what they’re currently voting for, consciously or not, is the dismantling of the very economic world they claim to miss.
The Trump administration also frequently complains about “unfair” trade practices, but fails to distinguish between legitimate grievances — such as intellectual property theft or forced technology transfers — and the broader reality of global competition. Instead, it lumps all trade imbalances into the same narrative of betrayal, ignoring the role of domestic policy failures. Blaming Mexico or China, for example, for deindustrialization in the US ignores the effects of automation, underinvestment in education and infrastructure, and a tax code that rewards rent-seeking over productive enterprise. Consider as well that the same government that extended hundreds of billions in loans for unproductive, ideological college degrees is now bemoaning the fact that populations an ocean away are frequently more ready and able to occupy and support massive industrial and manufacturing sectors.
In fact, contrary to what the Trump administration claims, if there has been a shift away from free trade and toward coercive, erratic, and protectionist trade behavior, it has mostly been undertaken by the United States. Over the past three decades, the United States has steadily shifted toward unfree trade, even before Donald J. Trump took office. According to the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World, US trade freedom peaked in the 1990s — ranking eighth globally — before entering a long-term decline. By 2000, the US had slipped to 22nd in trade freedom — and today, it has dropped even further, ranking 53rd.
Similarly, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom shows a downward trend in the US trade-freedom score from the early 2000s to the present.
This gradual move toward trade restrictions has intensified sharply under Trump’s ascendancy. The implementation of Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, along with escalating tariff campaigns against China, the EU, and other major partners, pushed the US into one of the most protectionist positions among its top ten trading partners. While other advanced economies have maintained or increased trade openness, America reversed course — undermining its own leadership in the rules-based trading system and fueling policy volatility. This shift not only weakened American credibility but also raised costs for domestic consumers and firms, all at a time when the global trend favored liberalization rather than retreat.
Perhaps most damaging is the abandonment of multilateral frameworks in favor of a transactional, zero-sum approach to trade. The imposition of tariffs on allies and strategic partners, much under the absurd guise of “national security,” has undermined American credibility in institutions like the WTO and alienated countries that share America’s long-term interests in a rules-based global system. Rather than using these institutions to enforce rules and settle disputes, the administration has opted for ad-hoc coercion, making trade policy unpredictable and undermining business confidence.
The notion that America’s trading partners have been “laughing at us” or “getting rich at our expense” is empty demagoguery, but not only that. It is economically backward as well. Trade is not a zero-sum game. When American consumers buy foreign goods, they do so voluntarily, because those goods offer better value. When foreign nations sell to the US, they often reinvest the proceeds in US assets — Treasury securities, real estate, and factories. That flow of goods and capital has enriched the US economy, not impoverished it.
(The idea that trade deficits with foreign nations are to blame for the $37 trillion tower of US government debt is a textbook abdication of responsibility. That debt wasn’t imposed on us — it was voluntarily offered, eagerly purchased, and politically normalized, with the proceeds spent on the two “fares”: welfare and warfare. From allies to adversaries, the world simply bought what the US government was all too willing to issue.)
The tariff-centric trade doctrine currently dominating the policy landscape is built on interest group pandering and economic myth. The idea that America has been systematically exploited by its trading partners over the past 30 years is not supported by data, logic, or the historical record. What has actually happened is that US policy has until recently embraced open markets, competition, and global integration. Doing so resulted in enormous gains in productivity, innovation, and consumer welfare as a result.
To reverse this trajectory in the name of imagined victimhood is to embrace decline, not renewal. A nation with a $21 trillion consumer economy, in the top ten of proven oil reserves worldwide, home to seven of the top ten universities on the planet, and unmatched global reach claiming to be a victim of smaller, mostly economically undifferentiated nations — many of them developing countries — is not so much unconvincing as it is pathetic.