Freedom Line Blog

Hello.  Good morning.  We need to use this opportunity for an urgent message to American business, large and small (and even tiny), to American agricultural interests, large and small, regardless of crop, if you are or are trying to sell overseas or buy overseas.

Your president is in the process of starting a trade war with the Chinese over imported tires.  He is doing this on behalf of a union, no big news on that.  It is, as most protectionist acts in the global village, silly and ill-advised.  In this case, the potential upside is infinitesimal and the downside, in an unusually fragile economy, similar unto the scariest Halloween movie in which victims are picked randomly and abruptly for slaughter.

You may not be paying attention now, but you better.  Trade wars cannot be contained.  Trade wars cannot be limited to the original countries involved.  Trade wars cannot be limited to specific products or commodities. You wanna talk political triangulation?  Trade wars involve hyperdextrangulation squared. 

The problem with trade wars you ignore is that one day you wake up to learn you have become collateral damage, through no fault of your own, never did one thing wrong in or to any country involved.  Doesn’t matter.  That’s what collateral damage is.  You don’t want to become collateral damage.  You don’t want to explain to your employees and farm workers and families and children that you are collateral damage.

You have three choices.  The first is to call the president and tell him to stop this nonsense before it gets out of hand.  The second is to write the president and tell him to stop this nonsense before it gets out of hand.  The third is to do nothing and play foreign trade roulette.  You do not want to take the third option.

Trust us.  We know.  We once, shall we say, had some proximity to advising on targets for collateral damage in other countries.