Unequal Cake

Kinman Tau: It's good business for everyone.
Antonio Serano: Better for you.
--Rapid Fire

Statists like to use asymmetric trade arguments to justify forcible intervention in the trade process. The current one, of course, is that a tariff war with China hurts the US less. Thus the tariffs are ok.

Because consistency is not their strong suit, statists have been known to flip their argument to favor less asymmetry and more equity. For example, if statists believe that one party gains more from trade than the other, then it is ok to tax the transaction more in the spirit of 'fairness' and 'equity.'

When you get down to it, both arguments are a variation of the juvenile claims about cake slices. "No fair, he got more than me!"

Both arguments fail to acknowledge the reality that, when two parties voluntarily engage in trade, they do so because each believes they will be better off than if they did not engage in trade.

Who gets more is immaterial and, when you think about it, immeasurable when you take into account the marginal utilities unique to each party.

The reality is this. When trade is hampered, both sides lose. When trade is hampered, both sides win.