In his book Minority Report, HL Mencken writes: “The desire to save humanity is almost always only a false face of the desire to govern it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the opportunity to serve. This is true even of pious brothers who carry the Gospel (sic) abroad.
With a little rewriting we can update the quote to protectionism:
“The desire to defend the nation is almost always only a false face of the desire to govern it. Power is what all protectionists seek: not the opportunity to serve.”
National defense is a common justification for protectionist tariffs, and it has been taken to absurd extremes: clothespins, sugar, and baby food have all been described as essential to national defense and subject to tariffs.
In a particularly ridiculous example, Senator Rick Scott of Florida called for a ban on garlic grown in China on the grounds that it threatens national security. Perhaps if we were a nation of vampires, this statement would make sense. But it is difficult to see how garlic, even potentially contaminated, poses a threat to national security. Scott argues that garlic poses a potential health threat, but that’s not the same as a national security threat.
The strange thing about Scott’s argument is that he doesn’t need to ban Chinese garlic as a national security threat if it is as dangerous as it claims. We already have a food safety program here in the United States, and foreign products are subject to it as well. If Chinese garlic poses a threat to public health, the FDA has the authority to take action by issuing recalls and effectively banning the contaminated product if it poses a threat to human or animal health. It is unclear why Senator Scott’s law is necessary.
To return to a theme I have emphasized in recent articles, any intervention must be justified beyond mere hypothetical thinking. Simply show that a certain intervention could achieving a desired outcome does not mean that the action is justified or desirable. We need to examine the current state of laws and legislation to see whether intervention is truly justified, or whether it is simply widespread corruption hiding behind a false face. A question that Senator Scott (or others who advocate this intervention) must answer is: why is the current legislation inadequate? It is already illegal to sell spoiled food in the United States. If Chinese garlic poses such a threat, why hasn’t the FDA stopped it?
National defense is one of those justifications that people don’t seem to think about much. It is invoked and simply not questioned. Indeed, this is probably the reason why “national defense” constitutes such a successful false face in the face of rent-seeking: few look too closely at the mask. Perhaps, like the revelers at Poe’s masquerade at Mask of Death readthose who support false claims about national defense are afraid to see what lies behind this mask.
Jon Murphy is an assistant professor of economics at Nicholls State University.
