Daily Inspiration Quote by Ludwig von Mises

Protectionism doesn’t just misprice goods; it misprices people. When Ludwig von Mises calls it “a philosophy of war,” he’s doing more than tossing off a provocative analogy. He’s naming the emotional and political machinery that tariffs and quotas quietly depend on: the idea that nations are locked in a zero-sum contest where someone must lose so “we” can win.

The line works because it strips protectionism of its usual technocratic costume. In policy talk, trade barriers are sold as prudent management - safeguarding jobs, “leveling the playing field,” defending strategic industries. Mises yanks the frame from economics to conflict. Protectionism requires an enemy, or at least a rival with suspect motives. It trains citizens to see foreign producers not as partners in mutual exchange but as threats infiltrating the homeland through cheaper steel or textiles. That posture makes political escalation feel natural: if commerce is combat, then retaliation, blocs, and eventually real conflict become easier to justify.

Context matters. Mises wrote in a Europe that watched nationalism harden into total war, and he spent his career arguing that liberal trade and open markets weren’t just efficient but civilizational safeguards. “War” here also signals what protectionism does internally: it militarizes domestic politics by inviting the state to pick winners, police borders of commerce, and convert economic life into a series of patriotic exceptions.

It’s a warning disguised as a definition: the tariff isn’t merely a tax. It’s a story about who belongs, who threatens, and how quickly “economic security” can become a permission slip for coercion.