A report by GNO Inc.’s Michael Hecht about business opportunities discussed during the New Orleans Saints’ recent shows that people who sloganeer against economic “globalism” are woefully misguided.
International trade is not a bad thing; it’s a very, very good endeavor.
Granted, the kind of “globalism” that involves obeisance to foreign rules and regulations can indeed be a violation of American sovereignty – meaning it tramples on the bedrock principle of abiding by the “consent of the governed” – but that is a different thing entirely than the wise, farsighted embrace of a free flow of goods and services across international borders.
Hecht’s weekly Sunday night newsletter showed, for New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole, just how beneficial free trade and international investment can be.
Hecht’s self-proclaimed “partial list” of who GNO, Inc. and their “partners at Louisiana Economic Development” met with in Paris and London included the names of 19 different companies.
For example, CMA CGM is a Marseille-based ocean carrier that “currently calls on the Port of New Orleans and is investing $20 billion in the U.S. over four years.” Venture Global and Cheniere are “the leading Louisiana-based LNG exporters to France and Europe.” Core Power is “a modular maritime nuclear company, highly interested in working and developing in Louisiana.”
They were joined on the list by more familiar companies such as Shell, BP and British Airways, along with other companies in technology, energy, shipping, and shipbuilding.
The previous week, Hecht had celebrated news that the tech firm Copado, founded in Spain, is moving its global headquarters from Chicago to downtown New Orleans, with 70 jobs retained and 59 new direct jobs with an average salary of $103,808.
Hecht rightly noted that Louisiana, which is accustomed to low rankings in many categories, ranks at the pinnacle – yes, first in the whole United States – in foreign direct investment per capita.
With that status as an attractive place for foreign companies to invest in and hire local workers, combined with Louisiana boasting five of the top 15 ports in the nation (measured by tonnage), the Bayou State particularly benefits from international commerce.
For Louisiana, in terms of jobs and economic health, globalism is an enhanced form of localism.
Even taking a broader view beyond Louisiana, though, free trade makes far more sense than protectionism.
Admittedly, there once were decent reasons for thoughtful people to support tariffs. Generally, high tariffs in the 1800s sometimes may have made sense, but they don’t anymore. Before the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowed income tax collection, tariffs were the major source of funding for the national government. Moreover, under 19th Century conditions before steamships allowed far more rapid transportation of foreign goods, a developing nation arguably could have used tariff protections to bolster its move to industrialization.
Nonetheless, the alleged or real advantages of high import duties ended long ago. Tariffs today amount to a tax on American consumers while actually doing very little to enhance domestic manufacturing. Indeed, U.S. manufacturing employment is slightly down, from 12,673,000 to 12,652,000, since President Donald Trump ushered in a high tariff regime in January 2025. Plenty of other factors may affect those statistics, of course, but the numbers certainly mean that trade protectionism isn’t a big net plus.
For every domestic industry supposedly “protected,” other industries suffer because materials they need from abroad become more expensive or well-nigh unattainable. High tariff regimes are just not helpful to the overall economy: All they do is let government pick which companies or economic sectors will be winners and which will be losers.
There’s no good reason to expect otherwise. The commonsense realities were explained 250 years ago by Scotland’s Adam Smith – who was a professor of “moral philosophy,” not at the service of wealthy investors, but analyzing how more people could escape the ravages of poverty.
“In every country,” Smith wrote, “it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want from those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest, that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it.”
Smith did take pains, though – indeed, volumes – to prove it, most famously in his book “Wealth of Nations,” and time and economic experience repeatedly have proved him right. Widespread standards of living almost always rise rapidly where free trade reigns, while high tariff regimes, such as with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, can precipitate economic recessions and depressions.
Louisiana still faces plenty of challenges. But trade with, and investment by, allied foreign entities is a tremendous blessing that can help those challenges be met.