One of the common slogans during times of economic crises is “Buy American” and, for good measure, we ought to lobby government to slap a protective tariff or two onto foreign goods and products.

We are told it’s the patriotic thing to do; that by paying a higher price for American-made goods, we are strengthening the country by keeping jobs here and not sending them overseas.

Among all the economic fallacies that infest the public discourse, this may be the worst, as not only do the usual economic illiterates on the Left adhere to it, but a few on the Right as well.

The peculiar aspect of this phenomenon is that actual economists from nearly all schools of persuasion are in agreement on the benefits of free trade. I suspect those in power who cave into protectionism are either completely incompetent or are paying off their political allies. The latter is probably case.

Two such recent examples were the “Buy American” provisions in the utterly wasteful 2009 stimulus package, which mandated use of American manufactured steel on infrastructure projects. Later that same year, President Barack Obama imposed a 35 percent tariff on low-end, Chinese-made tires.

Now the argument for pushing such policies is that the American steel and tire industries need public subsidies in order to survive – and that may be the case – but at what cost?

It may be true that if the tariff were to be lifted, that the few whose livelihood depends on the health of the American steel industry will lose their jobs. However, like most of these fallacies, you must look further than what is in front of your nose.

With the availability of cheaper steel, there will be money left over to promote other industries, and create more wealth and jobs than could have ever been salvaged by saving an inefficient business.

With the existence of the tariff, perhaps less than one percent benefit, while ninety-nine percent of our fellow Americans suffer by increasing the cost of living.

Additionally, a theme that seems so common in shortsighted policies such as these is that they hurt exactly the people they aim to help, in particular, the poor.

It is not the rich who are directly affected by the tariff on the low-end Chinese tires, but the very poorest. Rather than having money left over to buy essentials, they are left to pay a steeper price, all because Obama felt the need to appease the United Steelworkers, which is the union that represents American tire workers.

The last and perhaps most dangerous aspect of protectionist policies is the potential for a tariff war or even a complete close off of trade.

During the early years of the Great Depression under President Hoover, the U.S. passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act using similar phony arguments about protecting American jobs so common today. The result was a tariff war and a disastrous rejection of American goods by key trading partners such as Canada, France and Britain, which illustrates perfectly how tariffs in the end are not only bad for consumers and nearly all producers, but can actually backfire on the very particular producers they seek to protect.

The next time you hear a politician using the phony populist appeals about protecting American jobs and keeping out all those scary foreign products, do them a favor and buy them a copy of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” or perhaps Henry Hazlitt’s classic “Economics in One Lesson.”

Due to the current power of the state over economic affairs, as citizens, it is important we all become educated so that we may banish this sort of sophistry forever.