Against Doomerism
More trade myths and autism "epidemics"
There is no economic emergency. The entire case for upending American trade is built on a slew of myths — some of which I touched on last week. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard protectionists defend Donald Trump’s new tariff regime by bleakly noting that the U.S. economy is a mere husk of its glorious old self. And the only way to save it is by “bringing back” jobs and giving the struggling working class a chance. We have “deindustrialized,” says JD Vance.
Is our manufacturing base perfect? No, but output is at an all-time high. The United States is the world’s second-largest manufacturer and exporter after China, which has four times the population. Of course, most Chinese workers toil in monotonous, low-paying jobs that Americans no longer need or want.
I’m sorry, but there is no dynamic economy in which workers do the same things in the same way in the same place forever. If we did, people would still be panning for silver in Tombstone.
Yet, billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick contends that Trump’s tariffs will eliminate a foreign “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones” and bring them to the U.S. Why?
U.S. manufacturers lead the world in capital-intensive, high-skill industries, producing sophisticated products in aerospace, biotechnology, and high-end electronics. We are the world’s leading exporter of food. We don’t need people or machines screwing things together any more than we need linotype operators.
“My God, do you support the sweatshops in Asia?” Yes, “sweatshops” are a massive improvement to starvation. Trade will lift those nations in a couple of generations and create new trading partners.
Moreover, what if American workers don’t want sweatshop jobs — or even manufacturing jobs? Think tankers and populist politicians seem enthusiastic about a future with millions of obedient workers screwing together phones for minimum wage, but there’s an average of 500,000 open manufacturing jobs in any given month. Less than 8% of manufacturing workers are under age 25.
Only about 17% of the U.S. economy is goods and services imported into the United States. You’re only a slave to globalism in your imagination. The problem is that it amounts to $4 trillion of economic activity every year — around the yearly GDP of Germany.
The rest here.
On this week’s podcast, Mollie and I debate the issue.
There is also no “autism epidemic”
Nutjob RFK Jr. told Donald Trump this week during a cabinet meeting that the government will know what caused the 'autism epidemic' by September.
I wrote on this topic a few months ago:
The idea that anyone had any useful handle on the number of autistic children in the past, much less used the same criterion as we do today, is preposterous. Autism wasn’t even a separate diagnosis from schizophrenia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1980, the year RFK claims the affliction began rising.
Before 1991, the federal government lumped children with autism in with other “intellectual disabilities.” In 1994, the definition of autism included Asperger syndrome and children on the milder end of the spectrum.
Researchers didn’t start trying to track autism until 2000. It wasn’t until 2006 that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended screening all children for autism during routine pediatrician visits in the first two years, and many still did not. It wasn’t until 2013 that present guidelines were instituted.
And…
Even now, there’s no objective test for autism — no blood test — for diagnosis. So, for instance, the prevalence of autism has varied greatly between states, which points to different levels of awareness and testing. In 2010, 1-767 children in Iowa were diagnosed with autism, while in Maine, the number was 1-67. Even now, there are significant disparities in states such as Rhode Island, Maryland, and Florida, and Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
But the Make America Healthy Again Commission actually contends that “Autism spectrum disorders had the highest prevalence in high-income countries,” which seems to strongly indicate that wealthier counties have better awareness, better diagnostic tools, and more testing.
At least 27 major studies have found no connection between MMR vaccines and autism. Doctors have told me there are many others.
One small additional possible reason for a rise in autism is that more Americans are having children later. In one meta-analysis, researchers found that advanced maternal age posed a small risk of autism. Which is one more study than has ever found any link between vaccine shots and autism. But studies have shown autism likely begins in the womb, long before any vaccines are even given to children.
RFK Jr., though, has convinced thousands of Americans that they’re partially responsible for their children’s autism — a trend he once compared to the “holocaust.” He’s ensuring thousands more will put their children in needless danger by avoiding vaccines for absolutely no scientific or rational reason.
The rest here.
Good reads
I’m in the process of writing a review of Douglas Murray’s “On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization.” I can’t recommend it highly enough. More later.
Trump Is Wrong About McKinley's Tariff Legacy — Matt Welch, Reason
Trump Isn’t the First President to Blow Up the Trading System — Matthew Continetti, FP
I also appeared on Tony Kinnet’s show on the Daily Signal.
Until next week.
As a retired speech-language pathologist, I agree that there is no dramatic rise in cases of autism. I first leaned of the condition as an undergraduate in the mid-70s; the definition was that of a rare childhood condition with very narrow parameters. Never even heard of Asperger’s until I had left graduate school. So of course with an expanded definition and more diagnostic tools, the incidence will increase. It’s simple math.
A dirty little secret: while attending a professional conference, I heard the presenter tell us that doctors sometimes “help” parents by giving their child with language delays a diagnosis of autism. Why? Insurers are more likely to pay for therapies. In fact, shortly before I retired, the mother of a client told me her daughter’s pediatrician offered such help. To her credit, the mother refused.
Meanwhile, RFK Jr — an attorney who has no professional training in medicine or its support services — has panicked vast numbers of American parents into believing there is an autism pandemic.
All you need to increase the diagnosis of anything is to create a spectrum. And there are those who genuinely don’t find it odd or insulting to have Elon Musk on this same spectrum as someone who isn’t verbal. And even among people who aren’t verbal there’s a range of disability. And sometimes diagnoses are wrong. Sometimes they’re complex. Sometimes people have bits of many things that cause dysfunction. I’m definitely in the neurodiversity is part of nature camp but I think that everyone has to assess dysfunction when it reaches a certain level. Sometimes the environment or the teaching methods are implicated a lot in dysfunction. What works for most doesn’t work for all. It’s absurd imo to say there’s an epidemic of something where quantifying dysfunction is often very subjective and the net cast is ridiculously wide. There’s a saying that’s meant to be kind but it’s instructive- “if you’ve met one person with autism you’ve met one person with autism.” But if that’s the case what does it mean at its core? I know people who are socially awkward with poor communication skills in certain domains that would get diagnosed as adults very likely as kids and it’s not hard to add in sensory issues and ocd-ish behavior which are quite common. A lot of people want a diagnosis because they feel it explains their deficits or behaviors they have difficulty with or want to overcome and can’t. As far as maternal age, it’s a risk factor for so many things and guys aren’t immune either. It’s not speaking to individual pregnancies but an on average. I think vaccines worry people and it’s legitimate to worry about safety and necessity. You can’t lie to people and act like there’s no drawback ever. Everything is risk reward. For many vaccines I think it’s heavily leaning towards reward. It’s easy to downplay the reward when you’re a free rider. But I don’t appreciate how doctors aim to educate people about the miracle of vaccines because it’s very often not honest and is quite heavy handedly paternal in a bad way. I think vaccines were an obvious candidate for stoking fear. At this point so much research has been done with the childhood vaccines it’s not that I think we can close the book I’m just not sure what more could be done. Sometimes I wonder (this is just me wondering in the absence of any evidence) if a generation of pregnant smokers affected the next but that would require a pretty extensive study. I guess that impulse to look for sources of harm is very human.