US President Donald Trump announced he is tearing up part of the EU tariff deal and raising import duties on cars and lorries to 25%.

There is a gate across this road. The modern man says, “I see no reason for it; let us remove it.” The wiser man says, “If you see no reason for it, I will not let you remove it. Go away and think. When you can tell me why it is here, I may let you destroy it.”

We find ourselves currently observing a most vigorous attempt to dismantle a gate of significant proportions. This gate, constructed of tariffs, trade agreements, and the tedious, interlocking gears of transatlantic diplomacy, was designed to regulate the flow of heavy machinery and automobiles between the United States and the European Union. It is a gate that many find cumbersome, many find expensive, and many find profoundly irritating to the smooth, frictionless movement of global commerce. The recent announcement by President Trump to tear up parts of this deal and raise duties on cars and lorries to a staggering twenty-five percent is, in the language of the modern economist, a “disruption.” In the language of the man who lives near the gate, it is the sound of a sledgehammer hitting a hinge.

The argument for the sledgehammer is a simple one, and it possesses a certain raw, muscular appeal. The reformer claims that the gate is not actually a gate at all, but a wall of inefficiency. He argues that the existing deal is non-compliant, that it allows for unfair advantages, and that the very existence of these duties serves only to protect the stagnant and penalize the vigorous. He looks at the complex web of trade regulations and sees not a protective structure, but a spiderweb of bureaucracy designed to trip the feet of the industrious. To the reformer, the removal of the tariff is the liberation of the engine.

Yet, there is a profound danger in the reformer’s confidence. The tragedy of the modern intellectual is that he is often so enamoured with the idea of liberation that he forgets what is being liberated from. He sees the removal of a barrier as an unalloyed good, without pausing to consider that a barrier is often the only thing preventing a flood.

The tariff, for all its perceived clumsiness, was not built merely to be a nuisance to the merchant of automobiles. It was built as a way of defining the boundaries of a community of interest. It was a way of saying that a nation’s industrial life is not merely a mathematical equation of supply and demand, but a social reality that requires a certain degree of stability. When we tear up a trade deal because we find the terms “non-compliant,” we are acting with the assumption that the only thing that matters is the perfection of the rule. But the rule was built to serve the reality of the people, not the other way around.

The paradox of this particular demolition is that in seeking to protect the American industry from the perceived unfairness of the European Union, the reformer may well be destroying the very stability that allows such an industry to exist. By raising the duties to such a height, he is not merely adjusting a price; he is altering the climate. He is turning a regulated road into a battlefield.

The clever man believes that by increasing the cost of the import, he is strengthening the domestic producer. He thinks that by making the foreign car more expensive, he is making the domestic car more certain. But he fails to see that the prosperity of the domestic producer depends not on the weakness of the foreigner, but on the health of the entire system of exchange. If you burn down the bridge to stop the enemy from crossing, you may find that you have also made it impossible for your own supplies to arrive.

We are witnessing a movement that seeks to replace the complex, often frustrating, but ultimately functional architecture of international agreement with the blunt force of unilateral action. It is a movement that assumes that because a fence is difficult to maintain, it is therefore unnecessary. But the difficulty of maintaining a fence is precisely why it is valuable. A fence that requires no effort to keep is no fence at all; it is merely a suggestion. The true test of a statesman is not whether he can tear down a broken gate, but whether he can understand why the gate was built in the first place, and whether he can repair the hinge without destroying the road.