Letters | 4 October 2018

What would Smith say?

Sir: Adam Smith’s writings were so definitive that it is said one can find the kernel of every modern branch of economics within them. But Jesse Norman is surely wrong to imply Smith would see merit in Trump’s tariffs (‘Politics trumps trade’, 29 September). Not only did Smith, as Norman points out, regard import taxes as ‘unnecessary’ and ‘absurd’, but he also derided the ‘man of system [who] seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard’. Smith knew humans behave in ways unpredictable to the government planner. Even if a free-trade strategy underlies the US administration’s protectionist tactics, he would have cautioned that things may well turn out differently from the President’s intentions. In any case, as the administration has justified some tariffs on national security grounds and heralded the rejuvenating effects of others on domestic industry, Norman’s interpretation looks overly charitable.