During the first Trump administration, I pointed out that his thinking about immigration committed the fallacy of conflating within-group and between-group differences. In an on-line discussion today, I realized that Trump’s tariff policy is guilty of it as well.1
A thousand memes have already pointed out the silliness of thinking that trade should be balanced with every single trading partner. For example: I buy from the grocery store, but they never pay me to teach them philosophy. By Trump’s logic, I should impose a tariff on groceries until this is rectified.
Trade imbalances can be an economic problem, but at the level of total overall trade. And it may be a problem that trade is with some partners rather than others. So even if Trump is right that trade deficits are a problem, he’s framed the problem in utterly the wrong way.
In the old post, I lament that the fallacy doesn’t have a pithy name. Reflecting on it now, I guess it’s just an instance of reference class problems.