This is the Kato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 21st,

2022. I'm Caleb Brown. The National Security Rationale is regularly

invoked as a reason for all manner of protectionism.

Some of that may be justified.

Colin Grabo has looked at some of the less defensible protectionist policies executed under

the banner of national security.

President Trump used national security as a guise, as a cover,

as a patina of legitimacy for a lot of the trade restrictions that he unilaterally

imposed delegated to him by Congress or delegated to the president by Congress.

How frequent is the invocation of some sort of national security rationale

when it comes to trade issues? It seems pretty common and it also seems like

people just accept it. Like it's not, it's not regularly challenged.

Yes, I think you're correct about that.

We've seen all manner of protectionist actions justified in the name of national security.

In fact, it's to the point that a few years ago, I believe Senator Rubio of Florida justified

the U.S. sugar program on national security grounds

claiming that if not for a sugar program that we wouldn't grow any more sugar

all the sugar fields would be plowed over and turned into paved over and turned into shopping malls and we wouldn't be able to feed ourselves.

And this is kind of logic that evidently some people subscribe to because I think if you can try to claim

that something is for national security then people take a much more hands-off

approach towards trying to peel back that, repeal that protectionism.

All right, so what are some of the specific elements that we've seen recent, since the

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