Recycling gains from tariffs offers lesson for other industries

The first law of economics is Murphy’s Law. The second, right behind Murphy, is the Law of Unintended Consequences, which says: “Any outside input into the free market tends to disrupt its normal flow.”

The free market can be visualized as an intricate web of connections, kind of like a spider’s web. The spider can feel a fly at the very extreme edge of the web and reacts to secure a meal. The market also feels the slightest outside influence and reacts in ways that can only be predicted in hindsight. More often than not, the reaction has a negative result. On rare occasion, however, the react...