OLD BETHPAGE, NY – AUGUST 30: A drone is flown for recreational purposes in the sky above Old Bethpage, New York on August 30, 2015. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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Openness to foreign production is the single greatest national security strategy the world has ever known. And nothing else comes close.
That’s because foreign countries are loathe to aim their guns and missiles at their best customers. To say the latter is costly, impoverishing, and by extension a threat to national security insults obvious.
Basic common sense about the unrelenting genius of open markets comes to mind as the federal government threatens to ban the drones produced by DJI, a China-based economy. The ban would weaken the U.S. economy by harming U.S. businesses and sapping U.S. productivity, all while perilously reducing the cost of a future invasion by China that so many conservatives fear.
To see the harm of a ban, let’s start with nuWay Ag. Farah Stockman at the New York Times reports that “Over the past three years, Mike Yoder [owner of nuWay Ag] made a name for himself in rural Ohio selling a spray-drone trailer kit that saves farmers money and weeks of labor by dropping seeds, fertilizer and fungicide from the sky.” The challenge, Stockman reports, is that DJI’s drones are “on the verge of being banned in the United States.” Let’s count the ways this blatant U.S. protectionism is economically injurious. To the U.S.
For one, Yoder’s business is reliant on DJI’s drones just to keep afloat, let alone grow. As Stockman reports, “Mr. Yoder recently had to let go of two of his 22 employees because he couldn’t get enough DJI drones to sell to make payroll.”
From there, stop and think about why Yoder is so reliant on the drones. Per Stockman, they’re an elemental part of “a spray-drone trailer kit that saves farmers money and weeks of labor by dropping seeds, fertilizer and fungicide from the sky.” Which is the point, or should be.
Imports by their very name elevate Americans. In the rural portion of Ohio where Yoder operates, the drones that he imports substantially increase the productivity of U.S. farms alone.
Which raises what should be an obvious question: why on earth is the allegedly growth-focused Trump administration in the process of banning DJI’s drones? The question rates asking because the greatest foreign policy strategy the world has ever known other than open markets to foreign plenty is a booming economy. Think about it.
Governments don’t attain their spending power from Pluto, rather they get it via their taxable access to production. Which means the bigger the economy, the greater the means to erect an impermeable national defense system.
Please keep these basic truths in mind as the Trump administration hides behind “national security” as the impetus for its protectionism. There’s no national security in the latter, and there isn’t precisely because imports improve the economy of the country importing exactly because division of labor is the greatest driver of productivity that the world has ever known. If the Chinese really wanted to hurt us, they’d cease exporting to us. Get it?
Which is a long way of saying that in banning DJI’s drones, the Trump administration harms the U.S. businesses reliant on selling them, the U.S. businesses reliant on use of them, along with the American workers harmed by a relative lack of labor division so essential to growth.
Which means that in banning DJI’s drones, the Trump administration is imperiling U.S. national security. Not only does its protectionism weaken the U.S. economy that must grow if we’re to maintain a robust national defense, but it also lowers the cost for China to eventually invade us by shrinking the U.S. customer base of China’s companies.