Markets Don't Lie

Star Parker on Apr 9, 2025

As I watch the turmoil unfolding resulting from the president's new trade and tariff policy, I wonder how, as a commentator, I can avoid writing about this.

But what do I say? What side do I take? Yes, per President Donald Trump, the tariffs are the hard medicine we need to swallow to counter many years of unfair policies of our trading partners.

Or no, free trade is and always has been the best policy, even when things are not perfect and some do not play by the best rules.

I am not an economist and cannot dissect the fine points about trade deficits, trade accounts, capital accounts, etc.

But I can offer perspective from principles I adhere to, based on many years of experience building a business and working in public policy.

Much of what is happening troubles me because I see core principles that I believe to be true being violated.

For one thing, I am a capitalist and not a socialist. The defining difference between these diametrically opposed approaches to economics is that central to capitalism is the role of the free market and central to socialism is the idea that economic outcomes can be planned and controlled by government.

I like the truth, and markets don't lie. They might tell you what you don't want to hear, but they always tell you the truth. When they go down, something bad is happening. When they go up, something good is happening. It might not be possible to discern exactly what is the bad or the good. But the marketplace tells the truth.

Today the marketplace is very unhappy. At this writing, some $8 trillion in value has disappeared.

But Trump is saying ultimately this will be for the good. The president is saying he understands what the marketplace does not. This bothers me. It sounds too much like socialism.

Another principle that guides my thinking is personal responsibility. If you don't like what is going on, start by looking in the mirror and do your own personal inventory of how you can improve to make things better. Invariably, if you start by looking for who outside is causing your unhappiness, if you start looking for whom to blame, before you have done your own thorough personal inventory, you are, in all likelihood, on the wrong track.

This has been a key guiding principle for me in my many years of work on matters of race. Black Americans are living history of what injustice means. Yet my message has always been to fix what is broken by taking personal responsibility to do what is right.

It may be true that trade policies of many of our trading partners are unfair. But is this really our biggest problem?

The inventory of what is wrong in our country is enormous -- the vast increase in the size of government; the refusal to deal with our biggest and very broken government programs -- Social Security and Medicare; the widespread breakdown in traditional values that is destroying the pillars of any healthy society -- marriage and family; and the result of this breakdown, the dangerous decline of fertility rates -- we are not making children.

Our priority and obsession today should be to check and fix what is wrong with ourselves -- not our trading partners.

It is in socialist countries where the government decides what the country should be producing. In capitalist countries, the government enforces the rules that keep the marketplace free -- private property, rule of law, a just and fair system of courts. Then the marketplace will decide what will be produced.

As my friend, and CURE advisory board member, George Gilder has said, wealth is created by surprise.

It is very dangerous for markets to say no and for the government to say yes. This is what is happening today.

Along with many, I am concerned and troubled.

Star Parker is founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Her recent book, "What Is the CURE for America?" is available now. To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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