Tariffs, duties imposed on imported goods, have been causing global uncertainty in recent months, with President Trump employing them periodically. Courts have even recently weighed in to consider their constitutionality.
Catholics, too, have been evaluating them. Like other forms of taxation, tariffs do not present a black-and-white moral issue, but this does not mean the Church’s social teaching does not touch upon them. In an increasingly interconnected world, trade constitutes a key element of international relations and, therefore, solidarity among nations. Given our global economy, we can speak of obligations of justice between nations that touch upon trade and the role of tariffs.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church offers a brief overview of trade that provides some general parameters on tariffs.
Today more than ever, international trade — if properly oriented — promotes development and can create new employment possibilities and provide useful resources. The Church’s social doctrine has time and again called attention to aberrations in the system of international trade, which often, owing to protectionist policies, discriminates against products coming from poorer countries and hinders the growth of industrial activity in and the transfer of technology to these countries. The continuing deterioration in terms of the exchange of raw materials and the widening of the gap between rich and poor countries has prompted the social Magisterium to point out the importance of ethical criteria that should form the basis of international economic relations: the pursuit of the common good and the universal destination of goods; equity in trade relationships; and attention to the rights and needs of the poor in policies concerning trade and international cooperation. (364).
In short, human dignity forms the key interpretative tool for evaluating the morality of political and economic decisions. Most often, these decisions are prudential in nature, having to be weighed in context for their strengths and weaknesses. The benefits of tariffs, therefore, can be evaluated on the basis of whether they promote the common good and respect human dignity.
They have been quite controversial throughout American history, causing regional tension as Northern manufacturers took a protectionist stance and Southern ports sought stronger overseas trade. In more recent history, the United States has thought it could build friendships and promote democracy through trade. This has created unintended consequences with imbalances between trading partners, the theft of technology, and the use of exploitative labor in foreign factories. Jobs have gone overseas, and a decline in expertise in some sectors has followed; we have become vulnerable to disruptions in the supply chain, dependent on foreign nations for vital needs.
Catholics can take a stand for and against the use of tariffs to address these difficulties, and we can find examples of advocates on both sides of the issue. Politics and economics are meant to strengthen communion, as citizens achieve the common good together and promote peace with neighboring nations. In this pursuit, a nation may need to withdraw from economic unity with others, deciding to decrease or even cease trade with another country for a host of legitimate reasons. Others may disagree, contending the actions cause more harm than good, even deeming them unjust and immoral if they inflict harm on another nation without legitimate cause.
Let’s look at some positions Catholics have taken for and against increasing tariffs.
Gavin Asheden at The Catholic Herald has argued that “Trump’s tariffs are a beacon of Catholic social teaching,” because they address an urgent practical necessity. He argues:
Is Trump fully guided by Catholic faith or vision? No. But has he accorded it a privileged position among the ideological and ethical resources the administration may draw on? Although some Catholics express disappointment with certain ethical priorities of the administration, the answer must be ‘yes.’ Should Trump fail in his attempt to rebalance tariff barriers between the US and its trading partners, the consequences could be catastrophic. The existing global order based on globalisation is already faltering, poised for further breakdown that could trigger civilisational collapse. The poor are always the earliest and most vulnerable casualties. Trump, therefore, might represent their only genuine economic hope.
Honing in on the key issue of human dignity, Father Stephen Pitts, S.J., in an interview with America Magazine, addresses “What Catholic Social Teaching Says About Trump’s Tariffs.” He explains:
For the Catholic social teaching side, it’s hard to see how imposing tariffs on the developing world respects human dignity. Two specific encyclicals deal with tariffs directly. First, in the wake of decolonization in the 1960s, Pope Paul VI’s ‘Populorum Progressio’ emphasizes the importance of just trade relationships (Nos. 58-61). For unequal countries, the market logic of fair trade is not enough. Just as C.S.T. supports minimum wages as a way to ensure that workers are paid enough to respect their dignity, C.S.T. supports just prices in trade relationships to ensure that countries receive enough income to respect their dignity.
The apostolate Catholic Answers conveys the disputed nature of the topic simply by offering two different answers on the expediency of tariffs. First, John Clarke takes the perspective that “free trade—meaning trade unobstructed by governmental restrictions—is the natural condition of man.” He views the imposition of tariffs as sparking an unnecessary trade war and offers three arguments for why we’d be better off without them: “First, free trade prevents war. . . . Second, tariffs are taxes against the innocent.” And third, they are unnecessary, because they are “predicated on faulty numbers” and fears about American manufacturing. Clarke notes, “Last year, America produced about $2.5 trillion worth of manufactured goods — ranking it second-highest of all the countries on Earth.”
On the other hand, John Martignoni defends Trump’s tariffs as a means toward “freer and more equitable trade conditions for all countries involved. … I believe that the United States has, for the last several decades, been in a downward spiral morally, spiritually, culturally, militarily and (particularly pertinent to this article) economically. And I believe that one of the major factors contributing to the economic decline has been our international trade deficit.”
Let’s hope that healthy, civil debate will continue as the United States finds ways to address problems concerning international trade without damaging solidarity with other nations, all while creating better economic conditions that strengthen human dignity for those most in need.
(Dr. Staudt’s column is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver. )
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Since when do tariffs become a Cathokic issue? Have we lost all common sense about what it means to be Church? Maybe we should have some scriptural passages to bolster our position on tariffs. Maybe Christ provided us with a teaching on tariffs. Yikes!
Just maybe we ought to think more about how we can better cooperate with God’s grace so as to become divinized.
I hadn’t thought about tariffs from a Catholic perspective before but from a personal one I’ll be happy to see Red Rose tea back on the shelves at Walmart again.
☕️
Wasn’t Red Rose an A&P brand? For my taste, it’s Twinnings Earl Grey (loose tea in a cannister)
Public economic matters have been around the church for 2000 years. Are you forgetting what occurred in the Temple just before the Church was started? Also, He said to “Give unto Ceaser..”
Some of the current tariffs are a lingering result from the war when other countries like Japan were given preferential status on steel production, for example, to rebuild their country. Then, diplomats repeated a lot of give aways the last 70 years, after nice dinners and such. (Feel free to correct this if is anyone reading has better knowledge).
I’m not sure what the right answer is on tariffs but they are skewed too far against the USA in most cases. Ross Perot was right about the jobs and economy leaving the country and we are now printing money supply to keep the benefits flowing. I remember Pat Buchanan was going to point the ships back to Japan until they opened their ports to our goods (like blue jeans) without the ridiculous tariffs.
But the Church is concerned about society’s economic well being, as a general rule, for people’s welfare.
“Courts have even recently weighed in to consider their constitutionality.”
Courts don’t have the constitutional authority to consider whether such policies are constitutional. Not that it stops them.
“Courts don’t have the constitutional authority to consider whether such policies are constitutional. Not that it stops them.”
Apparently, you need a refresher in basic Civics, Ed.
You have been apparently spending too much time reading about leftists who have tried every means possible to get in the way of a Trump agenda. Including weaponizing the courts and making up charges which do not exist in the law. Not that it has stopped them from trying, even if it only results in a temporary delay while an ill-educated and partisan judges rules the way he feels politically.
I think Edward was trying to imply that our courts do not make legislation or laws here in the US. That is for the Congress and our President..
We should try to encourage manufacturing in the US, but that manufacturing often consists of assembling finished goods made up of parts from foreign countries. For example,BMW assembles SUV’s in South Carolina,providing good jobs for thousands of Americans. Those parts from Germany and elsewhere should not be hit with tariffs because of the American jobs generated.
Also, we cannot how coffee beans here in the US very well. Taxing coffee from say Kenya, hurts Kenyan farmers and US consumers.
Tariffs have a place but they should make sense and not be based on emotion like with Brazil.
William – This just an FYI and not intended as criticism. Look up the definition of “transfer pricing”. In simple terms, foreign companies setting the prices of imported parts, especially high price items like auto engines, from their own foreign affiliates, and this practice can affect where profits are taxed. There is an incentive to set higher prices for imported parts so the U.S. subsidiary shows less taxable profit. Simply, jack up the price of imported parts so the final assembled product shows little to no profit and no tax. Not to mention the somewhat fake “good will” of saying their products are made in the US.
Having said this, with the lowered US corporate tax rate from a few years ago this is less of a practice
The problem with Catholic Social Teaching, or at least the usual interpretations of it, is that it focusses almost entirely on distribution rather than production. Wealth is just presumed to exist and the only problem considered is how it should be shared out. Thus the suggestions mentioned above that workers should be paid more than their labor is worth and poor countries more than their goods are worth. The problem with this is that is messes with the price mechanism of the market, which causes people to behave in ways that are less productive, which makes the situation worse, not better.
The same is true of tariffs, of course. They artificially alter the price of goods and cause companies to behave differently than if they were operating in a competitive market.
The price mechanism tells people in real time what their economic activity is worth, without any need to roll up statistics to the government level or for the government to issues decrees in production or trade. Without the real-time information provided by market prices, people are less economically efficient and wealth declines.
On the other hand, the hard truth that market pricing reveals is that some people are incapable, for one reason or another, of being sufficiently productive to meet their basic needs. Some of that is solvable by family support, some by charity, and some by education, improved regulation, and the elimination of corruption, all of which would be good things to focus effort on.
But the notion that you can produce a more just and equitable world by manipulating prices and focusing on distribution at the expense of production is simply a pipe dream, and a destructive pipe dream at that.
The problem with Catholic social teaching is that too many Popes and Bishops confuse it with Communism. It is not. The few billionaires who exist often got there by coming up with a fantastic idea and selling it. When did that become a criminal thing to do? The rick work too, more often than not. Look at Elon Musk. Minimally, guys like this generate an awful lot of JOBS for others. I grew up lower middle class at best. I dont owe anyone anything for where I am now, nor do I apologize for it. I think the church should focus more on God and a lot less on economics.
Let’s face some facts. 1) Most countries have taken the US for patsies. They put tariffs or tariff measures on our products for years not to say decades. As an example try to buy an American car in Japan. China steals our patents, the list goes on. In the past we i.e. the US has done essentially nothing. 2) In producing our products we have a slew of environmental laws that raise cost. China has essentially none. So in essence we i.e. the US buy goods produced in other countries to pay the cost of pollution. 3) The transfer of production from US to everywhere else has almost destroyed our industrial base. With that we lost good paying jobs, which include jobs for men. Men needs jobs to raise families. Part of the reason for low US birth rates is that men do not have the income to get married and raise families. So the price of buying cheap stuff from China Mart is lost US Jobs, Families and Children. The other secondary impact is that we US has provided the funds to arm China, who is increasingly is become an evil presence throughout the world.
Now I get the free trade is important, I know the economics of trade. But there is something called looking beyond Stage 1. The deforesting our industrial base has had severe consequences that few in the Intellectual Class will even consider, few will go against the grain. Its is interesting that Pres, Trump, a billionaire, gets it. The Bushes never did nor the upper crust Republican or Dem. party class. Now Trump is changing the game, while the upper crust will wail and cry how bad this is, the lowly working class will see their incomes increase as the industrial base returns. Along with it more marriages, families and children, the benefits of thinking beyond Stage 1.
The pre-Trump Tarriff table setting was a giant wealth transfer from US blue collar workers to the leftist bourgeois political establishment of the EU, and their planned economies built on energy-commodity deal-making with the tyrant regimes of Xi in homicidal Communist China and Puitin in homicidal Crime-State-Russia.
Or as the indifferent politicians of the uni-party often scolded, in the same mantra intoned by the late John McCain (R) and Barack Obama and Joe Biden: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”
Tariffs do indicate “protectionism.” The only difference btw the tariff policy of Obama-Biden-Bush-McCain, and that of Trump is “who they choose to protect.”
The former chose to protect themselves and their geopolitical economic arrangements with the EU and the world outside the USA, which was their primary concern.
Trump’s tariffs are protecting blue collar people in our own country.
That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.
As they say: “Who Benefits?”
“Trump’s tariffs are protecting blue collar people in our own country.”
By raising the costs of goods for them, Chris? Or are you sipping the nonsensical MAGA Kool-Aid that claims foreign countries actually pay the tariffs? Live in the truth, dude.
Oh stop “Vince-Truth-Dude.”
Young people need jobs in manufacturing industries etc in order to buy be able to buy things “VTD.”
Selling jobs overseas so the “global-corporation-parasites in the US can cut labor cost deals with China and Canada and EU socialist states and take the savings as profits is “vulture capitalism” by the corporate establishment.
Keep digging…
Add to the uni-party tariff allies of course: Canada and Mexico, subsidizing an infantalized socialist state to the north, and a criminal terror cartel regime to the south.
In summary, the point is that EVERYONE is in favor of tariffs.
The only difference is who you are trying to support with your political tariff posture.
Who should benefit?
Both Stephen Pitts SJ and John Clark base their trade ethics on a conceptual set of conditions rather than reality. Both presume trade as trade freely exercised with Pitts I deference of the poor [third world nations].
In reality China was initially accommodated by the US post WWII as it did with other nations. Today conditions have changed, China now the world’s greatest manufacturer and exporter of goods. The US suffers from the imbalance in respect to manufacture, employment, protection of strategic products now largely produced in China. India has moved forward economically. The US has a legitimate claim for lower tariffs on their own goods and higher on imported goods from certain nations.
Ethics is always determined by conditions on the ground rather than universal conceptual principles.