More on the Trade Dependence Meme

Lynne Kiesling

In the Chicago Tribune, economist Allen Sanderson riffs on the same faulty “dependence” logic that I mentioned briefly last week:

I speak, of course, of our complete dependence on coffee that we are importing mainly from Brazil and Colombia. It’s time to wean ourselves from this harmful addiction. My “Coffee Independence” proposal is the key first step.

We may constitute only 5 percent of the world’s population, but we consume fully a third of the planet’s coffee. This nation runs off coffee, most all of it from a sketchy continent. Should we be cut off by one of these sources, for our caffeine fix we’d be forced to drink Coca-Cola for breakfast as well as 10 other times a day.

Read the whole thing to see just how absurd and illogical the trade “dependence” argument truly is.