As we all struggle to estimate the fallout from President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” blanket tariffs, a couple of relevant readings. Monash University economist Zac Gross is a lucky Australian who has the unique privilege of calling his Substack newsletter “Gross National Product.” On Wednesday, Gross made the point often heard from economists, and never from politicians, in countries faced with surging United States economic nationalism: a pure “tit-for-tat” strategy of counter-tariffs does nothing but add to the anti-growth effects of the original injury to trade. It’s smarter to look for pure wins that
lower other trade barriers rather than raise new ones — and one obviously available for countries like Canada and Australia is
to defect from U.S. intellectual-property maximalism.
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