Dr. Trump’s Miracle Elixir!

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to “proud Trump man” Nolan McKinney:

Mr. McKinney:

You criticize me for failing “to see that President Trump’s hardball trade bargaining is designed to in the long run bring about a world of unprecedented freer trade.”

Please.

Suppose that “Dr. Trump” has repeatedly ridiculed medical doctors as ignoramuses, and that all of his many utterances about health-care have been pure quackery. Suppose that for decades he has proudly endorsed blood-letting as a cure for cancer, aromatherapy as the best treatment for hypertension, homotoxicology as a remedy for eczema and bipolar disorder, and various lotions as sure-fire means of penis enlargement.

I’m quite certain that you would protest “Dr. Trump’s” forcibly confinement of you as a patient to his “hospital,” and that you would vigorously dispute his assistants’ reassurances that the ultimate effect for you of “Dr. Trump’s” medical treatments will such physical and mental health as you have never before known.

For the very same reason I protest especially loudly Pres. Trump’s forcible confinement of me and other Americans behind his tariff walls. For decades, every utterance out of the man’s mouth on trade reveals that he is a buffoonish quack. And so I find especially laughable your and his apologists’ assertions that the ultimate effect for us Americans of his trade policies will be economic health as we have never before known.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030