Samuel Gregg is the Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research.

He wrote:-

“Blue-collar people today are economically much better off than they were in, say, the 1950s or 1970s.  Their inflation-adjusted average overall income and benefits are considerably higher, their houses are bigger, and they have access to labour-saving technologies their grandparents couldn’t even envisage.

“The paradox of markets is that people pursuing their rational self-interest unintentionally produce many benefits for others, while dirigiste policies intended to help people often hurt them. Minimum wages, to take one example, seek to help the poor but price them out of labour markets, often robbing them of entry-points into the workforce.

“Markets produce the growth that gets us out of poverty. But they also encourage virtues that make us better people while simultaneously working with, rather than against, human nature. All these things make markets morally superior to all the alternatives.”

“It’s too soon to tell if Liberation Day marks the beginning of a new and lasting era of American protectionism. Nonetheless, US exporters should be worried. Protectionism run amok will leave American exporters — from aerospace manufacturers to soybean producers — with increased costs and at a competitive disadvantage in a less friendly international economy. Even worse, they’ll be tempted to embrace cronyism. Trade wars always produce casualties, and, if present trends persist, US exporters will be the first to fall on the field of battle.”