The logic seems simple at first glance: if you want to protect your industry, raise tariffs.
Make foreign products more expensive and the domestic market will strengthen.
But that's the protectionist trap that so many governments fall — or choose to fall, driven by populism disguised as patriotism.
Tariffs are imposed as a shield, but they act as a barrier.
Instead of protecting the economy, they isolate the country from competition, innovation and efficiency.
Tariffs do not create competitiveness.
They hide inefficiency.
They punish the consumer to reward the sponsored producer.
They weaken exchanges and, therefore, impoverish everyone.
“Where there are trade barriers, there are high prices, bad products and privileged monopolies.”
Brazil knows this. We pay more for clothes, electronics, tools, food — all in the name of protectionism that protects groups, not the people.
And now, with the new wave of tariffs driven by Trump and echoed by other leaders, the world is returning to a model where trade stops being a bridge and becomes a wall.
Tariffs are not development policies.
They are power strategies.
And like every instrument of state power, are costly to those who have no way of escaping: the people.
📣 Final Call (CTA):
Globalization has not made us weak.
Protectionism is what keeps us dependent on the brute force of the State.
Keep following the Power & Market and understand why defending free trade is defending freedom.
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