Some people are erroneously inclined to credit Paul Krugman with some kind of wisdom because he holds a Nobel prize in economics. That’s foolish in general, because most of Krugman’s commentary is on matter in which he holds no special expertise, such as Keynesian macroeconomics and whether Republicans cause mass shootings.
But even on the subject of international trade, Krugman’s area of expertise, it’s foolish to credit his writings with any wisdom, because he is in the tank for Democrats enough to be willing to set all his expertise aside.
We can demonstrate this by looking at his changing opinion on whether we should pressure China to do something about their overvalued currency. In 2003 he said that getting tough with China was stupid, because we have very little leverage over China. Today he says that getting tough with China is vital. What changed his mind? Not China’s currency; the Yuan is substantially less overvalued today than it was in 2003. What’s changed is that it’s now Democrats that are talking tough to China, not Republicans.
Who knows what Krugman’s real opinion is? Perhaps he has the mental flexibility/inconsistency actually to hold different opinions on international trade depending on who is in office. On the other hand, perhaps he was simply lying either in 2003 or today. Either way, his professional expertise is either gone or useless.
But what is striking is how disjoint the two pieces are. In 2003, he wrote about our lack of leverage over China, which he didn’t even discuss in 2011. In 2011, he writes about the possibility of a trade war (he discounts it) and a variety of other issues which amazingly didn’t even come up in 2003. Coming from a supposed academic, it’s telling that he behaves as though the core issues have changed in eight years.
POSTSCRIPT: The most revealing difference is the amount of his 2003 column he dedicated to personal attacks on President Bush, which — strictly speaking — weren’t relevant to the policy at all. He could barely spend a few sentences on actual policy; attacking Bush’s putative stupidity and evil is where his passion lay. In 2011 he has no such boogeyman to attack. The best he can come up with is the Club for Growth. But he gives it the old college try, deploying his trademark dishonesty:
In the last few days a new objection to action on the China issue has surfaced: right-wing pressure groups, notably the influential Club for Growth, oppose tariffs on Chinese goods because, you guessed it, they’re a form of taxation — and we must never, ever raise taxes under any circumstances. All I can say is that Democrats should welcome this demonstration that antitax fanaticism has reached the point where it trumps standing up for our national interests.
Did the Club for Growth really oppose tariffs because they are a form of taxation? Here’s what they said:
Passage of such legislation, or similar legislation, could lead to a costly trade war that would destroy jobs. . . Supporters of this underlying bill believe that cheap imports from China are harming our nation’s manufacturers, but they fail to realize that China ships intermediary goods and raw materials to the United States, not just final consumer products. These cheap goods are used by our nation’s businesses to produce final products that can be sold at competitive prices.
In short, they made a fairly standard argument for free trade.
The only place Krugman has to hang his hat is later where the statement refers to tariffs as taxes. This is somewhat clumsy wording (although tariffs literally are taxes), written as a segue to what they think should be done instead (lower taxes on capital). But nowhere did they put forward tariffs-as-taxes as the reason for opposing tariffs. Krugman made that up completely.
(Via JustOneMinute.)
Internet Scofflaw 