Senator Floats Garlic As Newest National Security Threat

The U.S. faces rapidly changing and increasingly precarious geopolitical conditions. Americans worry that communist China could become the new global polestar, that a revanchist Russia’s ambitions could stretch Ukraine into NATO, and that unrest in the Middle East could once again entangle the U.S. forces. Now, policymakers have identified a new looming threat: imported garlic.

Last week, Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott asked the Commerce Department to investigate the national security risks posed by “Communist Chinese garlic.” Scott demands thoroughness; he wants an inquiry into “all grades of garlic, whole or separated into constituent cloves, whether or not peeled, chilled, fresh, frozen, provisionally preserved or packed in water or other neutral substance.” Should the department rule against China, the agency would likely impose new tariffs to protect “national security.”

Scott’s profoundly goofy request serves as a reminder that too many politicians, keen to serve some constituent industry, happily will invoke the specter of foreign threats to justify their preferred domestic economic interventions. Convincing bureaucrats to institute tariffs unilaterally avoids the procedural and political difficulties of passing legislation or otherwise operating the ordinary machinery of democratic policymaking.

Scott’s argument is that China has reportedly grown garlic in dangerously unsanitary conditions; garlic is a popular food among Americans, including members of the military; ergo, Chinese garlic threatens U.S. national security and ought likely to be subjected to new tariffs.

“If our food is not safe to eat, we cannot expect our men and women in uniform to be equipped and able to do their jobs to defend our nation and her interests,” Scott writes — ergo, protectionism.

Tellingly, the senator identifies no instance where CHICOM cloves have compromised a single service member or national security per se. His reasoning justifies increased tariffs which history has shown inflates American consumer prices, kills American jobs, and lowers GDP. If tortured logic can fit garlic into the definition of “national security threat,” nothing can be excluded from the category.

To address the discrete public-health risks insufficiently sanitary agricultural imports present, regulators should update safety guidelines or tighten enforcement — not initiate new tariffs. To end an insect infestation, one sets bug traps; one doesn’t burn down the house.

The dangers of bogus protectionism extend far beyond garlic. Scott’s letter appealed to the Commerce Department’s so-called Section 232 authority, under which the president has special authority to impose tariffs to preserve national security. Section 232 garnered national attention in 2017 when President Donald Trump employed it to levy duties on steel and aluminum.

Like Scott’s letter, Trump’s Section 232 metal tariffs had more to do with economic protectionism than national security — as evidenced by the administration’s own words and policies. Then-Defense Secretary James Mattis said they were an inapt means to advance national security, and the Trump administration imposed them on friendly (e.g., Canada) and unfriendly (e.g., China) nations alike.

Moreover, Trump offered exemptions from these tariffs to countries that entered ancillary trade agreements with the U.S. When he needed negotiatory leverage, the invented national security threats vanished. For example, his administration conditioned exemptions for Canada and Mexico on a “fair” renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. As the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome and Inu Manak write, “the ‘fairness’ of NAFTA has nothing to do with protecting domestic steel and aluminum producers from imports (and thus, per the administration, national security).”

As Lincicome and Manak lay out at length, myriad analyses have concluded that Trump’s metal tariffs (and other nation’s retaliatory tariffs) primarily hurt Americans, sapped U.S. GDP (0.2% annually), and even harmed the very steel companies they purported to help. For example, the duo report that “U.S. Steel … registered losses of $642 million in 2019 and from November 2019 to February 2020 laid off more than 1,650 workers as it scaled back production and idled facilities in Michigan and northwest Indiana.” Although metal prices initially rose, “demand was weak and tariff-exempt foreign steel continued to arrive to the United States, leading to oversupply and depressed prices through 2019.” Protectionism, like other forms of central planning, rarely produces the results its advocates predict.

James Madison warned in Federalist No. 48 that “parchment barriers[’s]” often prove too frail to thwart tyranny. Concepts of good governance — such as the notion that “national security” means “national security,” not whatever senators find momentarily convenient — can survive only when voters and politicians defend them robustly.

Fear not; Red Chinese garlic will not topple this fair nation. But bad economic policy (justified by disingenuous invocations of national security) can certainly prevent Americans from prospering.

David B. McGarry is a policy analyst at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.