Everyone has the choice to boycott Chinese products. But using the government to force the rest of us into the boycott is coercive and wrong.
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To this day, no event shaped my outlook on politics more than the campaign against Golden Rice held by Greenpeace. Seeing environmentalists campaign against a product that could have saved the lives of 670,000 third world children and prevented another 500,000 from going blind through the destruction of research and abuse of government is something I think about all the time. And it no doubt had a large impact on me throwing away my Ralph Nader books and picking up a copy of Free To Choose.
I say this because this image is not always so direct. Sometimes it is not the upper and middle classes of a first-world nation storming through a third-world nation, but the upper class of a first-world nation writing about how much the lower class of a first-world nation can afford.
Take Ann Coulter as an example. In a recent column, after making the nonsensical claim that “cheap goods from China” caused this outbreak and going over many examples of China doing similar things-many of which were from a decade ago (including her talking about 200,000 maple trees being destroyed, despite the fact I thought “God said ‘The Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.'”) she asks “Is it really worth paying $3 for a T-shirt at Walmart, rather than $9?”
It might be important to note that Ann Coulter has a net worth of $8.5 million. With that kind of money, she could buy all three of Senator Sander’s houses.
This is fairly common among populists. Pat Buchanan has a net worth of $7 million. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, known for his love of tariffs, is worth $860 million. Trade war supporter Rush Limbaugh is worth $600 million. Rush Limbaugh want-to-be and long time protectionist Michael Savage is worth $50 million. And all of them are supporting the policies of a President who is worth $3.1 billion.
Meanwhile, half of the country makes $30,000 a year or less and to be in the top 1% you need to make more than $500,000 a year.
This use to be what the right mocked. Vice President Al Gore giving speeches on climate change before going on his private jet. President Obama and Vice President Biden sending their kids to a private school while being against school choice. Michael Moore, Senator Sanders, and Cenk Uyger fighting against right-to-work laws while also firing anyone they hire who tries to join a union. And I could go on.
This use to be what the people I mentioned above mocked, now it’s what they are. Rush Limbaugh branded himself as someone who said the things that angered and annoyed the well off, elitist activists who tried to run our lives (as well as millions of other Americans, but that’s neither here nor there). But what is he now? The answer: A well off, elitist activist who tries to run our lives.
Sure, he’s fine with people eating McDonalds, using plastic bags, and shopping at Walmart. But at the end of the day, he still wants to jack up the prices of products regardless of how it affects the average American because of some ideological basis.
Of course, this is made worse when life and death is involved. In the case of Greenpeace, it was stopping Golden Rice. In the case of protectionists, it’s stopping medicine from other nations.
As readers of my work, both here and on Medium, are aware, protectionists in Congress are trying to stop shipments of medicine from China during the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump has already banned the federal government from doing so, while Senator Josh Hawley is trying to push a bill through Congress that would expand this to the market place. This will not only cause the supply of medicine to go down, meaning fewer people will get medical help, but will also make whatever medicine is left much more expensive.
Not only that, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just put a new round of sanctions on Iran which would stop medicine from getting to them. For the record, Iranian state media has warned of death-tolls of up to 3.5 million from the coronavirus. But Pompeo doesn’t care, he’s anti-Iran so hurting Iran is all that matters.
To put it bluntly, I have nothing but contempt for the authoritarian ideologues of the anti-China right. If they wish to not buy products from China, that’s fine. In fact, they may end up supporting a local business who could one day compete against the companies they hate so much. But they also wish to force every American, even the ones who could not afford the products in question, to boycott for them. That is usually nonsensical. In the case of medicine, it is evil.
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