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Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

Honestly if country A can make a product X% cheaper than country B because of having less stringent regulation (be it environmental, quality, labor laws...) it's just logical to me that country B should impose a tariff of X% on that product.

I'm not much of a free-market capitalism, but if you have to be, then a free market is not a free market if not everyone is playing by the same rules, right?

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That sounds sensible but the devil's in the details. How do you figure how much of X% is environmental? Do you insist the Chinese have similar pay and conditions for workers? How do you check where the rare earths you are buying in say Singapore actually came from?

In an ideal world some entity could force country A to include externalities such as environment in the price of the goods.

Which is why precautionary and moderate tariffs are suitable, with some discretion for cases where things are especially egregious and/or where the economics are different (low margin vs luxury goods need different levels of tariff).

Probably ideally tariff levels should not directly made by the executive, but rather some kind of review system - (although quangos are another problem).

It's not to prevent a competitive industry which can just produce something cheaper but also to prevent governments which actively use banned practices to give their nation an unfair advantage. More here:

https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1094717028009689089

https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1085193754787512320

I'm a free market capitalist. The response we give is if country A is cheaper we should let them do it and concentrate on what we can do well instead. Even if county A is better in everything, they have limited resources so they are better off buying from us something they could do better just so they can concentrate on what they do well while we get good at something we can do but not as well. In the end the efficiency of scale allowed be working together is better for both of us.

It probably makes sense to ignore the above for things like guns and ammo - in case the other country decides to use this monopoly on military supplies against us in war. This is a worst case though, and is rarely required in the real world.

> This is a worst case though, and is rarely required in the real world.

Is it though? We're currently talking about the national security concerns coming from frickin magnets. We could have the same conversation for soybeans or steel or manure. There are a lot of things that are crucial in a country's functioning.

That argument assumes that country A's economy does not affect lives of citizens in the purchasing country (B?). Global warming, among other effects, violates this assumption. Carbon pricing + tariffs on carbon make complete sense even in the free market capitalist mental framework.

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