So, Team Trump wants to fight China with government-mandated price floors. Let that sink in for a second. Scott Bessent, the man apparently whispering these brilliant ideas into the ear of the former and potentially future president, is out there talking about setting minimum prices on a "range of industries" to stick it to Beijing.
This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of an economic policy pulled straight from a dusty, discredited textbook from the 1970s. We're talking about a level of government intervention that would make a Soviet central planner blush. And we're supposed to believe this is the secret sauce to making America great again? Give me a break.
The whole thing is being sold with this chest-thumping rhetoric from Bessent, with one headline declaring the Trade standoff with China deepens as Bessent insists the U.S. will 'neither be commanded nor controlled'. It’s a great soundbite, I’ll give him that. It probably kills on the stump speech circuit. But what does it actually mean when you apply it to the global economy? It means we’re going to command and control our own markets into oblivion.
The Ghost of Economics Past
Let's get one thing straight: a "price floor" is just a fancy term for price-fixing. It's the government stepping in and saying, "You are not allowed to sell this thing—whether it's a steel beam, a semiconductor, or a rubber chicken—for less than X dollars." The stated goal, offcourse, is to stop China from "dumping" cheap goods and undercutting American companies. It sounds patriotic. It sounds tough.
In reality, it's economic malpractice. Who gets to decide these magical price floors? Is it Scott Bessent himself, sitting in a leather chair in the Treasury building, poring over spreadsheets? A committee of political appointees? Think about the sheer arrogance of it. The idea that a handful of people in Washington D.C. can accurately set the minimum price for thousands of products across a complex, interconnected global supply chain is laughable. It's like trying to perform brain surgery with a spatula.
What happens when they set the price too high? You get massive surpluses of goods that nobody can afford to buy, and producers go bankrupt. What happens when they set it too low? It becomes meaningless and has no effect. And what happens when the market shifts, as it does every single second of every day? Is this committee going to meet daily to adjust the price of widgets? This ain't a game of SimCity; these are real businesses and real people's jobs on the line.
The entire premise is a fantasy. It ignores the fundamental reality of supply and demand and pretends you can just bend the global economy to your will with a strongly worded executive order. It’s a policy built on anger, not arithmetic.
"Neither Commanded Nor Controlled"… Except by Stupidity
That defiant quote from Bessent is the real tell. "Neither be commanded nor controlled." It’s a statement of pure, unadulterated ego. It frames global trade not as a complex system of mutual exchange, but as a bar fight where the loudest guy wins. The problem is, when you start throwing punches at the global economy, you often end up breaking your own hand.
Let’s play this out. The government decrees that a certain type of microchip can’t be sold for less than $5. China, or any other country for that matter, can produce it for $2. American companies that need that chip to build their products—cars, phones, washing machines—now have two choices: pay the artificially inflated $5 price, making their final product more expensive and less competitive, or find a way around the rule.
And trust me, they will find a way. This is how you create black markets. This is how you incentivize companies to move their manufacturing out of the United States entirely, just so they can buy the components they need at the global market rate. The policy designed to "protect" American industry ends up gutting it from the inside out. It's the economic equivalent of saving a drowning man by throwing him an anvil.
I can just picture the press conference now. Some grim-faced official standing at a podium, blaming "unpatriotic corporations" for the shortages and price spikes that their own boneheaded policy created. It's a classic move: create the problem, then campaign against the consequences. And we're just supposed to nod along...
Who Actually Pays for This Trade War Theater?
Here’s the part that gets conveniently left out of the tough-guy speeches: You pay. I pay. Every single American consumer pays for this nonsense. A price floor isn’t a tax on China; it’s a tax on Americans. When the cost of basic components and materials goes up by government decree, the cost of everything made with those components goes up, too. Your next car, your next phone, the cost of repairing your refrigerator—it all gets more expensive.
This isn’t some abstract theory. We saw a smaller version of this with the steel tariffs. The intention was to boost U.S. steel producers, but the result was that every American company that uses steel, from automakers to construction firms, got hammered with higher costs. Did it cripple China? No. Did it make life more expensive for Americans? Absolutely.
So the fundamental question is, are we willing to make ourselves poorer just to make a political point? Are we going to cheer for a policy that actively harms American consumers and businesses under the guise of "fighting" a geopolitical rival? It feels less like a coherent strategy and more like setting your own house on fire to keep your neighbor from getting warm. Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe paying double for a toaster is the ultimate act of patriotism.
This whole idea is a dangerous fantasy. It’s a retreat from the complexities of the modern world into a simplistic, nationalist cocoon. It assumes you can bully the laws of economics into submission. But the market is a force of nature. You can’t command the tide not to come in, and you can’t control the price of everything on earth without creating a colossal mess.
It's Not a Plan, It's a Tantrum
Let's be brutally honest. This isn't a serious economic proposal. It's a performance. It's a way for politicians to look tough, to pound the table and give their base the red meat they crave. It's an economic tantrum masquerading as policy, a desperate attempt to turn back the clock to a world that no longer exists. The problem with tantrums is that someone always has to clean up the mess afterward, and it’s never the one who made it.
Tags: scott bessent
