Reciprocal Tariffs and the Restoration of Economic Parity and Balance
The Franklintonian Framework: Franklin’s Vision of Sovereignty and Fair Exchange and Why Trump's Tariff Strategy will Work!
Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia in 1723 as a curious 17-year-old and found a colony in distress. Houses stood vacant, trade had slowed to a crawl, and people were leaving in search of better fortunes. With his keen eyes, Franklin observed the root cause: an imbalance in trade. The colony of Pennsylvania was buying so many goods from abroad that its precious gold and silver coins – the lifeblood of the local economy – were “all been shipped off to England” to pay foreign merchants. In other words, money was leaving faster than it returned, creating a scarcity of currency at home. This meant ordinary people were forced back to barter and IOUs, a makeshift economy in which local exchange became difficult and wages and employment dwindled. Franklin recorded that unless “some measures are taken to prevent the export of gold and silver coins, foreign trade could lead to temporary shortages,” stifling internal commerce. In that simple observation lies the seed of what we might call “Franklintonian Economics”– a philosophy of economic sovereignty, fair exchange, and national resilience inspired by Franklin’s insights.
Franklintonian Economics begins with the premise that a nation must control its own economic destiny. Franklin’s solution for colonial Pennsylvania was bold: issue local currency to replenish the money supply and keep commerce alive. He argued in his 1729 pamphlet that a “plentiful currency” would advance the province in “trade and riches”, and indeed Pennsylvania’s paper money experiment spurred internal trade and prosperity. This was Franklin’s way of asserting economic sovereignty – the colony took charge of its currency rather than passively bleeding wealth overseas. Under this framework, fair exchange is crucial: trade with other nations should be balanced and mutually beneficial, not a one-way flow of riches out of the country. Franklin believed in free trade, but he also believed in reality. He saw that entirely unrestricted trade, without regard for balance, could impoverish a society if it meant exporting all its gold and getting little in return. Thus, in Franklintonian thought, fair exchange means each side gives and receives comparably, maintaining equilibrium rather than enabling exploitation.
Finally, this philosophy prizes national resilience. A nation resiliently weathers economic storms by preserving its productive capacity and circulating wealth internally. In Franklin’s time, paper money buffered Pennsylvania from the external drain and unleashed pent-up productivity – farmers, blacksmiths, and cobblers could trade again, and “productivity created wealth” once currency was available. The lesson is that a country must have the tools to respond when global forces threaten its prosperity. Franklin’s colonial America lacked gold mines and was at the mercy of foreign trade for coin, but by taking action it regained stability. In modern terms, economic resilience means having a strong domestic industrial base, a self-reliant ability to produce essential goods, and policies that prevent chronic deficits. A Franklintonian economy values the dignity of labor – recognizing that broad prosperity comes from enabling its people to be productive, inventive, and secure in their work. Franklin himself celebrated industry and knowledge as the engines of wealth, insisting that “Truth is Knowledge and Knowledge is Power” and championing education to enrich society. In today’s context, honoring the dignity of labor means not discarding one’s workers in pursuit of cheap imports, but rather ensuring they have the opportunity to contribute to national wealth. It means policies that treat workers not as a cost to be minimized, but as citizens whose livelihoods and skills strengthen the nation.
With Franklin’s pragmatic wisdom as our guide, we can examine America’s current economic plight. Just as Pennsylvania once hemorrhaged its coins for European fineries, the United States for decades has hemorrhaged dollars for foreign goods. The result has been eerily similar: shuttered factories, hollowed-out towns, and a sense that the economic “fuel tank” of the nation is leaking wealth. To address this, Franklintonian Economics would urge measures ensuring economic sovereignty (control over our fate), fair exchange (balanced trade), and resilience (a robust domestic economy). One such measure – bold and logical in its corrective power – is the policy of reciprocal tariffs.
Decades of Misguided Free-Market Ideology and Trade Imbalances
Over the past half-century, American trade policy has been guided by an almost sacred belief in free-market ideology. Beginning in the late 20th century, especially after the 1970s, leaders embraced the idea that removing barriers to international trade would naturally lead to shared prosperity. In theory, if each country specialized in what it did best, open trade would lift all boats. In practice, however, this ideology was misapplied: it assumed all players would play fair and that short-term disadvantages would correct themselves. Instead, what followed was a dramatic erosion of America’s industrial base, the accumulation of massive trade deficits, and the empowerment of foreign nations at the expense of domestic prosperity.
By the 1970s, the United States – once the world’s manufacturing powerhouse – began running persistent trade deficits as cheap goods poured in from abroad. “The U.S. has been running trade deficits since the ’70s when the free-market ideology came to dominate,” one industry observer noted, adding that “this economic philosophy has led to deindustrialization, loss of jobs, lower GDP growth, declining wages, and an increasing federal deficit.” industryweek.com All the promised benefits of unfettered trade did not materialize for American workers. Instead, factories closed as companies found it easier to outsource production to countries with lower labor costs and lax regulations. Entire industries like textiles, electronics, and appliances either shrank dramatically or vanished domestically. The “holes in the tank” of our economy grew larger, as wealth flowed out to “feeding foreign economies”, helping raise their living standards while middle-class American communities were left struggling.
A stark example is the trade relationship with China. In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization, and U.S. policymakers confidently predicted an export boom that would benefit both nations. Instead, the next two decades saw U.S. stores flooded with inexpensive Chinese imports, while China continued to restrict many U.S. goods. The result was a soaring trade deficit and millions of lost American jobs. Between 2001 and 2018, the U.S. trade deficit with China exploded from $83 billion to $419.5 billion per year – an increase so large that it cost an estimated 3.7 million U.S. jobs, including 2.8 million in manufacturing epi.org epi.org. Entire sectors, from furniture-making to consumer electronics, shifted overseas. Supporters of unbridled free trade had argued this was nothing to worry about – after all, cheaper imports mean cheaper goods for consumers. But this narrow view ignored the broader consequence: America’s productive capacity and self-sufficiency were being compromised. As one economic analysis noted, normally trade deficits should self-correct via currency shifts, but “this is not happening because we allow our trading partners to manipulate their currencies” and use other unfair practices. In other words, the U.S. played by free-market rules while some foreign players bent or broke those rules – keeping their currencies undervalued, subsidizing their industries, and erecting subtle barriers to U.S. exports.
The free-market ideal became a one-way street: the U.S. opened its gates wide, adhering to the philosophy that “no nation was ever ruined by trade,” but others capitalized on American openness without reciprocating. They protected their own industries (sometimes covertly) and seized market share. The outcome was a massive U.S. trade imbalance year after year. In 1971, the U.S. ran its first major trade deficit of the modern era; by the early 2000s, annual deficits in goods trade were in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Shockingly, the overall U.S. trade deficit hit an all-time record of $948 billion in 2022 investopedia.com, with the imbalance with China alone accounting for over $380 billion of that investopedia.com. These numbers are not just abstract ledger entries – they represent $948 billion more demand for foreign products than for American products in that year. Each billion is factories not built here, jobs not created here, and wages not paid to American workers. Instead, that money fuels factories in East Asia or Europe. As Franklin might put it, we have been exchanging our gold (now paper dollars) for foreign trinkets to such an extreme that we risk our own prosperity.
History shows that such large imbalances are unsustainable. Indeed, the United States was forced to confront this reality in 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. At that time, U.S. trade deficits (and the costs of the Vietnam War) had led foreigners to accumulate huge amounts of dollars, which they began to redeem for American gold. The outflow of gold became so severe that the U.S. could no longer “reconcile the trade imbalance” under the old rules; continuing on the same path would have drained Fort Knox and undermined national security. Nixon’s move was a drastic assertion of economic sovereignty – effectively saying the U.S. would not allow its wealth to be endlessly siphoned away. In the decades since, however, instead of permanently correcting the imbalances, the U.S. often papered them over (quite literally, by printing dollars or issuing debt). We financed consumption of imports by borrowing, selling Treasury bonds to those very nations that ran surpluses with us. This approach created an illusion of prosperity even as our industrial core decayed. As one commentator quipped, it is like a consumer living on credit: for a while you can buy anything you want, but the debt keeps growing, and one day the bills come due industryweek.com industryweek.com.
The “bills” have arrived in the form of social and political strains. America’s working class saw well-paying manufacturing jobs replaced by lower-paying service jobs or nothing at all. Entire communities – from the steel towns of the Midwest to the furniture towns of North Carolina – saw their dignity of labor eroded, as skilled workers were told their industries were obsolete or too expensive. Meanwhile, rival nations grew stronger economically and even militarily, empowered in part by the wealth gained from trade surpluses. This is not to say trade is inherently bad – indeed, exchange can enrich all parties when it’s fair. But decades of lopsided trade under a misapplied free-market dogma have shown that imbalanced trade can hollow out a great nation. America’s experiment of unconditional free trade has had the unintended consequence of eroding internal productivity, swelling trade deficits, and weakening our economic sovereignty. It’s a classic case of idealism clashing with reality: the ideology assumed a perfect world of equal rules and reciprocal openness, but the world we live in is far from that ideal.
Reciprocal Tariffs: Restoring Balance and Economic Sovereignty
How can the United States correct these imbalances and reclaim the economic sovereignty and resilience envisioned in the Franklintonian framework? One powerful tool is the implementation of reciprocal tariffs. As President Trump succinctly put it, “Reciprocal. That means they do it to us, and we do it to them.” cbsnews.com In essence, reciprocal tariffs ensure that for any tariff or barrier a foreign country imposes on American goods, the United States will impose a tariff on that country’s goods. It is a straightforward demand for fairness: if, for example, Country X charges a 50% tax on imported American cars, the U.S. will likewise charge a 50% tax on cars imported from Country X cbsnews.com. True reciprocity means mirroring the trade terms of our partners so that no one nation enjoys one-sided access.
Under the current system, such imbalances are common. To illustrate: the U.S. might levy only a 2.5% tariff on imported cars, while another nation charges 10% on American cars cbsnews.com. This disparity encourages cars to flow into the U.S. (low tax, large market) but discourages U.S. car exports (high tax, foreign consumers see our cars as expensive). Over time, U.S. auto factories downsize or move abroad to skirt the foreign tariff, and American auto workers lose jobs. Reciprocal tariff policy says no more of this one-way street. If our trading partners want access to sell in America, they must give American-made products the same welcome. By establishing equal treatment, reciprocal tariffs aim to level the playing field that has been tilted against American producers.
The immediate effect of reciprocal tariffs is to correct national trade imbalances – which is our primary focus. If a trading partner refuses to lower its barriers, then the U.S. tariff rises to match, which reduces the flood of underpriced imports and thus reduces our trade deficit with that nation. On the other hand, if the partner truly wants to avoid losing the American market, it has an incentive to negotiate away its high tariffs and restrictions so that neither side has to impose extra duties. In either scenario, the outcome is more balanced trade. We either import less (retaining more wealth at home and spurring domestic buyers to seek American-made alternatives), or we export more (as foreign markets open up to our goods). Ideally, a bit of pressure yields a mutual lowering of trade barriers toward a parity that Franklin would recognize as “fair exchange.” Each nation retains the sovereign right to protect itself, but the goal is a form of enlightened reciprocity – everyone abides by the same rules.
Critics often raise the specter of “trade wars” in response to tariff strategies. They worry that if we tax imports, other countries will retaliate with more taxes on our exports, and a spiral of protectionism will ensue. But the reciprocal tariff approach is not about indiscriminate protectionism; it’s about enforcing fairness and balance. In truth, America has been in an economic conflict for decades – a silent trade war that we chose not to fight, even as we kept losing ground. To paraphrase a steelworker from Granite City, Illinois: “People say tariffs could start a trade war, but we’ve been in a trade war for 15 years – and we’ve been losing.” reuters.com Reciprocal tariffs represent a long-overdue defensive move in this uneven battle. Rather than a reckless provocation, they are a rational response to an existing problem. They say to our trade partners: we value free trade, but it must actually be free and fair for both of us. If you tax, we tax equally – so perhaps neither of us should tax. If you subsidize and dump products in our market, we will counteract that advantage – so perhaps it’s better if you stop the dumping. This pressure realigns incentives. It rewards countries who engage in genuine open trade and penalizes those who seek unilateral advantage.
From a Franklintonian perspective, reciprocal tariffs are an assertion of economic sovereignty. Just as Franklin’s Pennsylvania took charge of its money supply to prevent economic collapse, America today must take charge of its trade terms to prevent further industrial decline. It is an exercise of national self-determination to declare: We will not passively accept permanent deficits and the gutting of our industries. Instead, we will use our leverage as one of the world’s largest markets to insist on equitable terms. This policy also resonates with the principle of national resilience. By reducing the trade deficit, reciprocal tariffs help keep more production and investment at home. When domestic factories know that they won’t be perpetually undercut by a flood of artificially cheap imports, they are more likely to invest in new capacity and hire workers. In the long run, rebuilding our manufacturing base makes the economy more self-sufficient and less vulnerable to external shocks. We saw a vivid example during the COVID-19 pandemic: global supply chain disruptions left the U.S. scrambling for medical supplies and semiconductors that were mostly made overseas. A more balanced trade portfolio – achieved by encouraging some production to return via tariffs or other means – increases our ability to withstand crises. This is resilience in practice.
Furthermore, reciprocal tariffs uphold the dignity of labor by ensuring that American workers do not compete on wholly unequal footing. For years, free trade dogma treated labor as an abstract factor – if an American lost a job making widgets, it was assumed they’d find another job and the economy as a whole would still benefit from cheaper imported widgets. The human reality proved far harsher. The widget factory closed; the new jobs promised often never came to town, or paid a fraction of the old wage. Communities suffered as livelihoods evaporated. Reciprocal tariffs directly address this by valuing reciprocity in labor conditions. They essentially say: if our workers must operate under strict labor laws, environmental rules, and decent wages, we will not let them be hopelessly undercut by imports from places that don’t follow the same standards unless those nations at least allow us equal access. It’s a way of demanding that trade partners respect not only our products but also the people who produce them. In sum, this approach aligns with a belief that trade should serve the people, not just profit margins. A balanced trade regime gives American workers a fair shot to do what they do best – whether it’s building machinery, crafting furniture, or writing software – without being sacrificed in a race to the bottom.
Strengthening Industries, Goods, and Services through Fair Trade
While the primary goal of reciprocal tariffs is to fix broad trade imbalances, the ripple effects on specific industries, goods, and services are significant – and largely positive. American history offers numerous examples of industries flourishing when given a “fair” chance, and struggling when exposed to unequal competition. The application of reciprocal tariffs can be the difference between decline and revival for certain sectors of the economy.
Take the steel industry as a case in point. Steel is a foundational industry, vital for construction, infrastructure, and defense, yet by the 2010s it was reeling from a glut of imported steel, much of it subsidized or sold at artificially low prices by countries like China. U.S. steel mills shut down blast furnaces and laid off thousands of workers. In 2018, when a 25% tariff was placed on steel imports to counter this imbalance, something remarkable happened in Granite City, Illinois – a proud steel town that had seen its mill go partially idle. U.S. Steel announced it would restart an idled blast furnace and call back 500 workers, citing the tariff as the key reason that domestic demand would rise for American steel reuters.com. For the first time in years, the night skies of Granite City glowed again with the orange light of molten iron, and hundreds of families regained livelihoods. This is the concrete impact of asserting reciprocity: an industry critical to national strength got a new lease on life. As the local steelworkers’ union president put it, the tariffs didn’t start a new conflict – they helped America finally fight back in an existing trade war reuters.com, leading to jobs “you can raise a family on” returning to the community reuters.comreuters.com.
Consider also the automotive and machinery sectors. American auto workers are among the most productive in the world, yet they saw factories close when companies moved production to Mexico or Asia to take advantage of lower costs. Part of the imbalance was that foreign-made cars and equipment faced very low barriers into the U.S., while U.S. exports often faced higher tariffs or quotas abroad. A reciprocal approach pushes trading partners to drop practices like steep auto tariffs, import quotas, or local-content rules that lock out American products. If, for instance, Japan or the European Union imposes technical standards or fees that make it hard for U.S. farm equipment or cars to be sold there, a reciprocal policy gives the U.S. leverage to demand those be removed – or else apply equivalent hurdles to their exports. The likely outcome in many cases is negotiated agreements that open up markets, because major trading partners generally want to avoid losing the American market altogether. When those foreign barriers come down, it directly benefits specific industries: U.S. automakers can sell more abroad, U.S. farmers can export more dairy or grain, and U.S. service providers (from tech companies to financial firms) can compete more fairly overseas. In short, reciprocity can pry open closed markets. And where foreign nations choose not to cooperate, the U.S. tariffs in those areas will make American-made goods comparatively more attractive at home, boosting local production. Either result helps preserve internal productivity – our factories stay busy, our farms and firms stay competitive.
Another area affected is advanced technology and critical goods. Over the years, America’s edge in high-tech manufacturing (like electronics and solar panels) was eroded as other countries targeted these sectors with heavy state support. By insisting on reciprocal terms, the U.S. can address practices such as forced technology transfer or blatant subsidies that have made it difficult for American tech products to compete. For example, if Country Y heavily subsidizes its semiconductor industry and then sells chips cheaply in the U.S. while barring American chipmakers from its own market, a reciprocal policy would impose tariffs to offset those subsidies or demand equal access for U.S. chips. The result could be rejuvenation for domestic tech manufacturing, as companies see a more level field and invest in capacity at home. This ties into national security as well – ensuring we can produce items like microchips, pharmaceuticals, or energy equipment domestically protects us from being overly dependent on foreign suppliers in times of crisis. Tariffs are not the only tool for this, but as part of a reciprocity framework, they signal to industries that the government will support rebuilding critical supply chains on American soil.
Even the services sector stands to gain from the philosophy of reciprocity. The U.S. often runs a surplus in services (such as software, banking, engineering, entertainment), but many countries have subtle barriers – regulations or state-linked firms – that disadvantage foreign service providers. By emphasizing reciprocal treatment, the U.S. can push for fair rules in e-commerce, intellectual property, and other service areas. If an ally country expects to sell, say, their shipping services or state-subsidized construction services in the U.S., then American logistics and construction firms should get the same opportunity there. Reciprocity thus isn’t just about old smokestack industries; it’s equally about 21st-century digital trade and intellectual labor being conducted on equitable terms.
Crucially, reciprocal tariffs embody a respect for the dignity of work across all these industries. They implicitly recognize that each product on a shelf – be it a tonne of steel, a car, or a smartphone – represents the work of people. When trade is balanced, the exchange of goods is also an exchange of work and talent between nations. But when trade is grossly imbalanced, one nation’s workers are essentially told their work is of lesser value.
America’s experience has been that our workers were often left competing with underpaid or exploited labor elsewhere, and when they couldn’t compete (through no fault of their own, but because the game was rigged), their work was simply offshored. A system of reciprocal tariffs says: we will trade with you, but not at the cost of nullifying our own people’s work. Each nation can uplift its workers and still trade – by trading in roughly equal measure, respecting what each side brings to the table. In philosophical terms, this approach reasserts a balance between capital and labor in globalization. It refuses to treat labor merely as a cost; instead, it treats labor as an equal partner in the gains from trade. When trade is balanced, workers in both trading nations can benefit – their jobs are more secure and their contribution respected – rather than one set of workers being constantly sacrificed for another.
Renewing National Prosperity through Fair Trade
Standing at this crossroads of economic history, one can almost imagine the sage figure of Benjamin Franklin nodding in agreement with the need for a course correction. The principles of Franklintonian Economics – economic sovereignty, fair exchange, and national resilience – resonate now more than ever. The United States, after a long period of complacency under a misinterpreted free-market creed, has learned hard lessons about the perils of imbalance. Reciprocal tariffs emerge as a compelling mechanism to apply those lessons. They do not reject global trade; rather, they insist that global trade be conducted on terms that are mutually respectful and sustainable. In enforcing reciprocity, America is not turning inward in fear, but standing upright in strength, declaring that it will engage with the world on fair terms that uplift its citizens.
Philosophically, this is a return to common sense. It is a recognition that true free trade must be fair trade – an exchange among equals, not a siphoning of wealth from one to another. It also reaffirms the notion of the nation-state as the guardian of the welfare of its people and providing for the domestic tranquility. For too long, policymakers have assumed that markets alone would sort everything out across borders, and that the nation need not interfere. But as trade deficits piled up and factories closed, it became clear that the nation must take a hand in guiding outcomes to preserve the common good. Reciprocal tariffs are a tool of such guidance. They allow the U.S. to negotiate from a position of strength, to say no when deals are grossly one-sided, and to reward trading partners that are truly open and fair. In doing so, they help reconstruct a global trading system that respects both national sovereignty and the dignity of labor – not just American labor, but all labor, since a balanced system benefits workers everywhere by preventing exploitative dynamics.
The merits of reciprocal tariffs can thus be seen on multiple levels. Economically, they target the correction of trade imbalances that have long stifled U.S. growth. A more balanced trade account means higher GDP and potentially a revitalization of industries, as money spent on goods returns to be spent again in our own economy industryweek.com. Strategically, they prevent the scenario of the United States becoming dangerously dependent on foreign powers for essential goods – an insurance policy for our national security and independence. Socially, they rekindle opportunities for American communities: from steel towns and auto manufacturing hubs to high-tech corridors, more balanced trade translates into new investments, job creation, and renewed pride in craftsmanship. And morally, reciprocal tariffs underscore a commitment to fairness – the idea that no nation should prosper by impoverishing another, and no worker should be left behind by policies that only favor abstract consumers or multinational capital.
In closing, reciprocal tariffs represent not an archaic mercantilism, but a pragmatic humanism in economic policy – a bold, logical, and persuasive response to the failings of the status quo. They hearken back to Benjamin Franklin’s legacy of level-headed problem-solving. Franklin knew that prosperity depended on facing reality: when gold was draining from his colony, he didn’t hesitate to support a new solution (paper money) to keep the economy alive philadelphiafed.org. Today, the reality is that wealth and industry have been draining from the United States. The solution, in Franklin’s spirit, is to innovatively recalibrate our policies – and reciprocal tariffs are a key part of that recalibration. By promoting balanced trade, we ensure that exchange once again enriches both sides rather than hollowing one out. By preserving internal productivity, we secure the means to innovate and grow for generations to come. And by respecting sovereignty and labor, we honor the fundamental truth that economies exist to serve people, not the other way around.
America’s economic story is far from over. By embracing the principles of fair exchange and resilience, and by implementing measures like reciprocal tariffs to put those principles into action, the nation can write a new chapter – one of restored balance, renewed industry, and broadly shared prosperity. This is the promise of reciprocal tariffs: that through reciprocity we find our way back to an equilibrium that Franklin would recognize – a nation trading with the world, confident and free, with its wealth circulating at home even as it flows outward, truly “a rising tide that lifts all ships.”
Spot on, Jon. Our beloved Rust Belt stands as a monument to the insipid policies of the past half-century. As you have noted, the Covid fiasco should have alerted our political and economic leaders.