Biden’s Protectionist Trade Agenda Will Increase Prices. In Fact, It Already Has.

With annual inflation running higher than it has in 40 years, President Joe Biden announced during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address that “my top priority is getting prices under control.”

In Biden’s telling, rising prices are the result of monopolies and near-monopolies in the economy taking advantage of consumers by jacking up prices. “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation—and it drives up prices,” he said during Tuesday’s address. Later, he promised a “crackdown on these companies overcharging American businesses and consumers.”

There’s not a lot of evidence to support that diagnosis, but let’s just go with it for a moment. If concentration in the marketplace was somehow to blame for rising prices, then it would make sense to attack that problem by expanding competition. Give consumers more choices and they will naturally flock to lower-priced alternatives, putting pressure on other sellers to keep prices down.

The problem, for Biden, is that so much of his economic agenda is pointed in exactly the opposite direction. In one breath, he complains about the lack of consumer choice driving up prices. With the next, he proposes to further restrict consumer choice.

“We will buy American to make sure everything from the deck of an aircraft carrier to the steel on highway guardrails are made in America,” Biden said, before promising that his administration would make some of the “biggest investments in manufacturing in American history” to bring about “the revitalization of American manufacturing.” – READ MORE