The finger arithmetic of free vs. fair trade

As the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing the limits of the executive branch’s authority on tariffs, it is important to consider the tradeoffs that come with free trade. In American political and business circles, free trade has long been the favored mantra. Investors, executives, and most politicians speak of it with near-religious conviction. According to Google Trends, Americans have searched for “free trade” roughly twice as often as for “fair trade” since 2004. Mentions of fair or reciprocal trade, by contrast, are far rarer—though Donald Trump managed to raise their profile over the past decade.

This imbalance in attention is not just a matter of economic theory. It reflects the political arithmetic that makes free trade a perennial favorite and fair trade a hard sell in Washington. Thi