Fair Trade

It was thirty days around the Horn
The captain says it's thirty five more
The moon looks and the crew ain't stayin'
'There's gonna be some blood' is what they're sayin'
--Jay Ferguson

As we have noted in the past, Leftists often invoke the concept of 'fairness' when attempting to justify use of government force. Redistribution of income, for example, is often framed as a fairness issue.

But Leftists don't have a lock on fairness as a positive substitute symbol. When it suits their needs, people on the Right like appeal to people's sense of fairness as well.

For instance, President Trump has justified his tariff plan as necessary to foster 'fair trade.' Tariffs help 'even the playing field,' so the argument goes, against countries judged to be giving their firms an unfair leg up via subsidies and other mercantile programs.

Whenever political partisans from either end to the statist spectrum utter the term 'fairness,' take it as a euphemism or justification for use of government force to advance an agenda. When the Right promotes trade that is governed by discretionary rule, and it has a long history of doing so, it is a far thing from true fairness.