Debunking Charlie Kirk on his “free markets” and “free trade”
The self-stated purpose for Turning Point USA, the group founded and directed by Charlie Kirk, is to “promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.” The first usually goes beyond markets to, for example, guns and speech. The last one is about fewer taxes, fewer regulations, and fewer bureaucrats.
“Free markets” is a phrase many libertarians and conservatives use but is often vaguely or never defined. I want to look at how Kirk defines it and show how his allegiance to “free markets” and its corollary “free trade” is hampered significantly by his sycophancy for Trump.
Defining Free Markets/Enterprise
While Turning Point’s website has no definition of free markets, Kirk’s book Time for a Turning Point is a good place to start for his definition of free markets. In the book Kirk conflates, on his own admission, capitalism, free markets, and free enterprise.
Chapter five is titled “The Effectiveness of Free Markets.” There Kirk quotes an Austrian School economist who has strongly influenced libertarianism in the US. That quote suggests a “market economy” is kept free from “encroachments on the part of officeholders,” or the government. Kirk then suggests that “free markets” are not free when they are “taxed and regulated” in such a manner as to stifle growth and enterprise. He then contrasts a “free market” to a “big-government directed economic order.”
I’ll set aside whether Kirk understands the economist he is quoting and point out that for Kirk a “free market” is not necessarily no taxes or regulations but some amount of both that is too high for growth.
Another element of free markets/enterprise from Kirk’s book is the “checks and balances” of that system which makes “certain greed will not prevail.” The only “check” or “balance” he suggests that might stifle the greed of (his example) Gordon Geeko is private property rights are protected by law. This and other laws would supposedly stop Geeko from robbing everyone. And so he would be forced to make a living by selling something people want to buy.
An aside, this type of argument — laws will stop would-be criminals — is the very one rejected by gun rights advocates like Kirk.
As a second aside, Kirk adds in another part of the book that Turning Point’s chosen mantra “free markets-free people” is on purpose “open-ended” and subject to “students interpretation.”
Defining Free Trade
Here are three tweets by Kirk that include “free trade” within the discussion of NAFTA and the new trade agreement announced by President Trump:
First, as a basic definition of free trade, Kirk does not think free trade includes “crony provisions, loopholes, holding periods, and insider deals” that he does not define. He says “no tariffs” in the tweet, but his book suggests at least room for tariffs, as long as they don’t stifle growth. He also says we have never had “free trade” with Canada, implying again that tariffs are the opposite of free trade.
What we also see in these tweets is a conflation between fair trade and free trade. And this is a first step in seeing how Kirk has turned from libertarian rhetoric to Trump’s rhetoric. “Fair trade” has been the president’s mantra for some time now, though he is not the first to use the phrase.
Here is just one example of Trump using the “fair trade” in a tweet:
As Kirk notes, he wants fair and free trade. This rhetorical adjustment is described by The Weekly Standard in a profile of Kirk:
But Kirk tells me that it is not his job to criticize those with whom he agrees “on the big things.” Maybe that’s the price of politics today — one can’t call balls and strikes anymore without attracting the enmity of fellow conservatives. Intra-party debate on the right is “sinking one’s own ship” or “siding with Hillary.” Kirk happily rationalizes every aspect of the Trump administration and its policies. Protective tariffs? Trade wasn’t free to begin with, and Trump is making it more free: “Fair and free,” Kirk insists. He does add the caveat, though, that he usually wouldn’t support tariffs.
Kirk wrote an op-ed for The Hill in August that said this: “Are tariffs a useful deterrent in a broader effort to level the international market? We don’t know yet how it will turn out.”
Obviously any definition of fairness is subjective but Kirk is willing for Trump to use tariffs — in theory, a move Kirk is against — to bring the US to “truly” free trade with other nations.
But if Kirk is against tariffs, he is against tariffs. And he has never mentioned support for specific, targeted tariffs. So then we are left to say that Kirk is going against his own stated “free markets” principle because of his support for Trump. The Hill op-ed makes clear Kirk allows this move toward tariffs only because it is Trump making it; his spontaneous and upending style is key for Kirk’s trust.
This idea of using tariffs to get fair trade is not unique to Kirk. Lou Dobbs said similar things, in a similarly vacuous way. Beyond the principle being erased, the idea that tariffs will cause free trade is illogical because tariffs are met by tariffs until one country backs down, and then we are left with the status quo. Until negotiations take place to make a deal, which includes some compromise on both sides. Because international trade is always a political topic, not merely between individuals. And so we move toward fair trade, fair defined by governments.
The US has been in favor of “free markets” but also looking out for the interest of US businesses. Those two are not always the same thing. Kirk’s conflation of free and fair leaves out the government’s role in making that fairness, which sometimes limits freedom. Yet at the same time he asserts as right Trump’s move as head of government to make “fairness” by government policy. Kirk is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Kirk has said Ronald Reagan was his example of a great president. Would Kirk had given Reagan such support as he gives Trump? The Weekly Standard also pointed out that Reagan and Trump have different definitions of free and fair trade with Reagan emphasizing free and Trump fair.
NAFTA as Free and Fair Trade
Kirk’s tweets also highlight how he feels about NAFTA, the trade agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada. Here is a quick explainer on NAFTA. Here is a quick explainer on the new NAFTA, the USMCA.
First, Kirk’s tweet about the Canadian “tariffs” on different US products contained a key error: trade lawyer Scott Lincicome points out that there are zero tariffs on products between US and Canada, and since 2008.
[The Canadian milk problem (and Kirk’s claim about 270% tariff) is complex, but is not connected to NAFTA. According to Factcheck.org, “the U.S. could take the case to the WTO, but Trump’s claim that U.S. dairy farmers are “getting killed by NAFTA” isn’t accurate in this case. Ultrafiltered milk, the product at the center of the dispute, wasn’t part of NAFTA and has been exported to Canada tariff-free since the trade agreement was finalized in the early 1990s.”]
The Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Rob Breakenridge notes Kirk claims “Trump is levelling the playing field with Canada…” But “Canada’s tariff rates on such items for countries outside NAFTA are generally lower than the rates that the US applies (and far lower than the numbers Kirk cites). But thanks to NAFTA the tariff rate on all of those items is precisely zero (although we have now announce retaliatory tariffs in response to the steel and aluminum tariffs the U.S. is imposing on us). In other words, Trump isn’t leveling the playing field — NAFTA already did.”
This is why economic expert David Bahnsen suggested some education for Kirk:
As for Kirk’s conflation of fair and free trade under his new Trump rhetoric, how does the new NAFTA fit that? Investors Business Daily put it this way: “President Trump’s new trade deal may well be an improvement on NAFTA. But it’s not yet free trade. Not by a long shot.”
Kirk wrote in Time for a Turning Point that sometimes it is OK for an American company to send jobs overseas because some of that country’s jobs come here. “In a free market, it is not a winner and loser situation,” Kirk added. This seems to be diametrically opposed to Trump’s America First economic policies, which aim to have the US win. Kirk has taken his “free markets” mantra and twisted it into a motto that puts America First.
