https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/04/david-stockman/we-dont-need-no-stinkin-trade-war-with-china/

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Trade War With China

By David Stockman

Donald Trump’s war on global commerce is just plain nuts, and not just the pure economic part of it either. With each passing day we hear from more wanna be MAGA big thinkers arguing that the Donald’s Trade Rampage is also about geopolitics and four dimensional Trumpian chess designed to restore America’s global leadership and technological dominance for years to come.

Well, no, true economic prosperity and technological advance comes from entrepreneurs, investors, inventors and risk-takers operating on the free market. They don’t need any help at all from loud-mouthed Washington politicians who generally have no idea what they are talking about and, more importantly, no skin in the game. That’s why the latter are both ineffectual and dangerous: To wit, the Washington pols are always happy to burden, block, batter and impair the honest enterprise of companies large and small if they get it in their minds that “national security” or “national greatness” require the heavy hand of bureaucrats, tax collector, regulators and pork dispensers.

That’s the essence of Trump-O-Nomics. It amounts to nothing more than a rightwing/populist appropriation of the normally leftist-led approach to mobilizing the state’s heavy-hand for the purpose of fixing problems that are either non-existent or badly misdiagnosed. ......