Two thousand foreign companies have been penalized since 1980 for selling their products to Americans at prices lower than those approved by the U.S. government. When politicians call for fair trade with foreigners, they routinely use a concept of fairness that is diametrically opposed to the word's normal meaning. When modern politicians speak of unfair trade, they do not mean that buyers and sellers did not voluntarily agree but that federal officials disapprove of the bargains American citizens chose to make. Fair trade, as the term is now used, usually means government intervention to direct, control, or restrict trade. Fair trade means government officials decide what Americans should be allowed to buy and what prices they should be forced to pay.
Fair trade is paternalism in international commerce.
Fair trade often means that some politician or bureaucrat picks a number out of thin air and imposes it on foreign businesses and American consumers. Fair trade means that Jamaica is allowed to sell the United States only 970 gallons of ice cream a year, that Mexico is allowed to sell Americans only 35,292 bras a year, that Poland is allowed to ship us only 350 tons of alloy tool steel, that Haiti is allowed to sell the United States only 8,030 tons of sugar. Fair trade means permitting each American citizen to consume the equivalent of only one teaspoon of foreign ice cream, two foreign peanuts, and one pound of imported cheese per year. Fair trade means the U.S. government imposes import quotas on tampons, typing ribbons, tents, twine, table linen, tapestries, and ties. Fair trade means that the U.S. Congress can impose more than 8,000 different taxes on imports, with tariffs as high as 458 percent.