Writing about free and fair trade recently in the Wall Street Journal, President Trump’s director of trade and manufacturing policy Peter Navarro took issue with some World Trade Organization rules. He especially dislikes those requiring member nations to avoid applying discriminatory tariff policies when trading with other WTO members. Navarro, like his boss, favors the use of tariffs as a big stick for battering other countries when their policies are unacceptable to him. Recall that the president refers to himself as a “Tariff Man.”

But while Navarro’s analysis of the relative merits of WTO rules opens what could be a useful policy debate, a related statement (that higher imports always lead to lower GDP and therefore less employment) is just plain wrong.