Tariffs reproduce the economic logic of a war blockade.

Comment “Free Trade” and we’ll send you an article on Henry George’s argument. Economist Henry George captured the paradox in Protection or Free Trade (1886), writing that protection teaches us to “do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.” He was extending the classical case against mercantilism associated most famously with Adam Smith. Protectionism can protect particular producers, but it does so by making everyone else navigate a more expensive and distorted economy.