Tariff reciprocity was always a terrible idea. India, home to 607 million workers making around $550 per month in mid-level manufacturing jobs, would happily replace American steel workers and high-paid pharmaceutical lab workers in a zero-for-zero trade deal. A top paid laboratory technician in India makes about $35,000 a year. That’s a small fortune in India.

Tariff reciprocity was meant to get countries to lower non-tariff barriers, and perhaps, open markets to some goods like our agriculture—a favorite export item for U.S. Senators and House Representatives. This never meant that if a country lowered their tariffs, we would in turn lower ours. That would amount to a de facto free trade deal, or at least close to it. The Congress would want to participate in that negotiation process, as is the norm for any such free trade agreements.

Read the article.