Treat fair and reciprocal trade as the condition for free trade
What the document says“whoever is the next President in 2025 should heed this critical principle whenever the flag of free trade is waved to prevent the adoption of needed reforms.”
The principle in question is that there can be no free trade without fair, reciprocal and balanced trade. The essay presents it as a guard against free trade arguments being used to block reform, and argues elsewhere that trade deficits matter to national security because a current account deficit must be offset by foreign investment in the United States.
What the document actually says“whoever is the next President in 2025 should heed this critical principle whenever the flag of free trade is waved to prevent the adoption of needed reforms.”
Some wave the free trade flag to block change. The next president should not fall for it.
This essay says trade must be fair before it is free. It says people use the words free trade to stop changes. It warns the next president about that.
This chapter contains the opposing case. 'The Case for Free Trade', by Kent Lassman, argues the reverse: that tariffs have backfired, that trade policy is the wrong tool for industrial goals, and that the next Administration should ignore what it calls populist ideologues seeking protection. Neither essay is presented as the chapter's conclusion.
Modifying the Scope of Reciprocal Tariffs and Establishing Procedures for Implementing Trade and Security Agreements
2025-09-05 · 90 FR 43737
Executive Order 14346 of September 5, 2025 puts the reciprocity principle into operation: it treats large and persistent goods trade deficits as the emergency being addressed, makes tariff relief conditional on what a trading partner commits to in a trade and security agreement, states that the President will generally refrain from narrowing a tariff before a final agreement is concluded, and directs Commerce and the Trade Representative to keep monitoring the trade deficit, the lack of reciprocity in bilateral relationships and disparate tariff rates. The fit breaks down in what the proposal actually asks for. The chapter states a principle for the President to hold when free trade arguments are used against reform; it does not ask for an emergency declaration under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and this order neither announces the principle nor rests on the chapter, so the connection is one of direction rather than instrument.
An order of September 5, 2025 ties tariff relief to what a trade partner agrees to. It treats big, lasting trade gaps as the problem. That runs the same way as the chapter's principle. But the chapter asked only that a President hold that view, not for the emergency power this order uses.
2 agency rules
- Indefinite Suspension of the De Minimis Exemption for Mail Shipments and New Postal Informal Entry ProcessHomeland Security Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection · June 24, 2026
- Indefinite Suspension of the De Minimis Exemption for Merchandise Arriving Through All Modes Other Than the International Postal NetworkHomeland Security Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection · June 24, 2026
Each of these names the order above in its own summary, preamble or filing. That is a fact about the document, not a finding that it carries out this proposal: it is one step further away than the order is, and what it does about the proposal is a reading nobody has made here.