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Watch what they do, not what they say.

Government officials frequently tell us that global warming is an existential threat. And yet when it comes to public policy, the issue is treated almost as an afterthought. For example, the US currently blocks the importation of Chinese electric cars. If BYD’s excellent and very inexpensive EVs were allowed to be sold here, they would rapidly gain market share. It seems that a few union jobs are more important than global warming.

We are frequently told that China is the greatest threat to US national security and that we need to work with our “allies” to counter that threat. So what are we to make of the following story?

President Joe Biden has blocked the $14.1 billion sale of United States Steel Corp. to Nippon Steel Corp., killing a high-profile deal that sparked a political firestorm and tensions between the US and Japan. . . .

“We need major US companies representing the major share of US steelmaking capacity to keep leading the fight on behalf of America’s national interests,” Biden said in a written statement, adding that the deal “would place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains.”

We claim that Japan is one of our closest allies. We demand that they sacrifice economic growth by refraining from the export of high-tech products to China. They accommodate our wishes. And then when a few union jobs are threatened, we turn around and treat them like an enemy nation.

This is not about where the steel gets produced. Nippon Steel would not be offering $14 billion for US Steel if they planned to shut the firm down. Rather the fear is that Nippon would make US Steel more efficient and that this might cost a few jobs. In the long run, however, inefficiency leads to unemployment. Thus it’s not even clear that US steelworkers will benefit from the president’s decision:

Biden’s announcement was a massive victory for United Steelworkers President David McCall and his union’s leadership, who have been vocally opposed to the deal, even as some rank-and-file labor members spoke out in favor of it.

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