They're not 'beautiful things.' They harm both importing and exporting nations when increased to excess. Milton Friedman, who passed in 2006, is one of history's most admired economists, even winning a Nobel Prize in 1976. As tariff wars go ballistic - here's what Friedman had to say on the topic.
Ticking all the boxes - the latest round of tariffs are already showing the above effects
“We call a tariff a protective measure. It does protect; it protects the consumer very well against one thing. It protects the consumer against low prices.”
"There's a standard cliche, which I am sure you have all heard, that if you have two economists in one room you are bound to have at least three opinions.
Milton Friedman
The subject I am going to talk about today, however, is one subject with respect to which that is not true. With respect to the area of international trade, with respect to the question whether it is desirable for a country to have free trade or to have tariffs and other restrictions on imports and exports, in that particular area economists have spoken with almost one voice for some two-hundred years. Ever since the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, published his great book, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776, the same year in which the Declaration of Independence was issued in this country; ever since then the economics profession has been almost unanimous on the subject of the desirability of free trade. Of course, complete unanimity is hardly ever possible, and every once in a while there have been some deviations from the straight and narrow path. Almost always those deviations have reflected not a disagreement with the fundamental message of Adam Smith, not a disagreement that in the good world free trade would be the best of all possible courses, but they have tended to reflect special circumstances of the time."
You can read the whole transcript of Friedman's 1978 address HERE
