Economic protectionism, as discussed across four episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, describes the use of government power to shield established producers from competitors rather than to advance any legitimate public purpose. The excerpts present it as a recurring feature of American policy, appearing in immigration restriction, occupational licensing, and the regulation of Chinese restaurants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Guests Alex Nowrasteh, Damon Root, and Gabriel Chin each supply a distinct case, while host Bob Zadek frames the underlying principle: that people are entitled to a job only if they do the best job for the lowest money, and that the phrase “my job” should be erased from one’s vocabulary.
Immigration restriction as protectionism
In the 2013 episode “Let Them All In,” Bob Zadek argues that from the founding of the country through the 1880s there were essentially no rules on immigration other than to arrive and be welcome, and that the country experienced no problems as a result. He contends that Americans who gave lip service to competition and meritocracy became unwilling to compete when someone would do their job for less money, and that cowardice and economic protectionism, not any concern with the fabric of America, drove immigration policy. He calls that policy shameful and describes it as a form of crony capitalism in which Americans run to the government and ask to be protected from somebody who will do their job for less money Let Them All In (2013).
Alex Nowrasteh, Zadek’s guest, situates these restrictions within the Progressive Era, from the 1880s to the 1920s, during which the rules grew stricter until the border was closed to almost all immigrants in the late 1920s. He groups immigration restrictions alongside the creation of the Federal Reserve system, the nationalizing of the currency, the creation of the income tax, and the prohibition of alcohol as efforts to centralize economic and social decision-making in Washington that had previously taken place at the individual level. Nowrasteh notes that many conservatives and Republicans who understand the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and prohibition to have been bad policies nonetheless cling to the notion that Progressive Era immigration restrictions were good for the United States Let Them All In (2013).
In the 2015 episode “Immigration Nation,” Nowrasteh states the principle that people have universal rights to life, liberty, and private property, including the right to use them in mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges with people anywhere in the world. He argues that the default position should be that immigrants may travel internationally to set up shop and work anywhere with a minimal number of government restrictions, and that the burden falls on the government to show that individuals or groups should be barred. He identifies national security, criminals, and health threats as legitimate reasons for barring individuals, but says that economic protectionism, cultural homogeneity, and similar reasons cannot be supported Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015).
Occupational licensing and the Louisiana casket case
In the 2014 episode with Damon Root, the discussion turns to occupational licensing as an area rife with protectionist abuse. Root explains that under the libertarian vision of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting economic rights, individuals are protected from government regulations that do not serve a legitimate health or safety purpose and that instead keep people out of an industry or act as economic protectionism Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014).
Root describes the Louisiana casket case, in which state law required that to sell a casket or coffin one had to be a fully licensed funeral director. Becoming licensed took many hours of study, thousands of dollars in course fees, and the embalming of what Root recalls as twenty-five dead bodies—a year or two of one’s life. Zadek interjects that this was all to build a wooden box, and Root agrees it applied even to merely selling one. The monks in question had been building traditional handmade wooden caskets for their own use and began selling them to fund repairs to their abbey; the state then came after them for not being licensed funeral directors. Root adds that Louisiana law permitted burial without a casket, imposed no requirements as to casket design, and contained no health or safety regulations dealing with caskets whatsoever. Zadek characterizes the regulation as protecting the income of funeral directors, and Root agrees that protecting funeral directors was the only regulation Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014).
The Institute for Justice brought the case, arguing that there was no conceivable justification for the law—the legal standard required under the deferential precedents, namely that no conceivable legitimate government purpose could be served. The court agreed, finding that the law failed the smell test on every possible level. Root notes that Louisiana fought the case all the way up to the U.S. Court of Appeals, the level below the Supreme Court, and that Tennessee and Oklahoma also had such laws on the books. Zadek closes the episode by inviting listeners who believe people ought to have the right to enter into a contract to sell their services or anything else free of government interference, so long as there is no fraud, to consider themselves libertarians Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014).
The war on Chinese restaurants
The 2017 episode with Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin examines what Zadek calls perhaps the first “war on” in American history, declared around the end of the nineteenth century—not on poverty, drugs, or terrorism, but on Chinese restaurants. Zadek describes it as one of the uglier parts of American immigration history, in which the state and federal governments and the people all declared war on Chinese restaurants. He introduces Chin as a professor of law at UC Davis who has written extensively on immigration issues and whose article in Regulation magazine, entitled “The War on Chinese Restaurants,” prompted the episode The War on Chinese Restaurants with Gabriel Chin (2017).
The excerpt breaks off as Zadek asks Chin what happened, so the episode’s account of the war itself—the violence, boycotts, discriminatory licensing, police harassment, and the parallels to modern regulatory hurdles such as certificates of need listed among the episode’s topics—is not developed in the available text. What the excerpt establishes is the framing: that labor unions and nativist groups used these means to stifle economic competition from Chinese immigrants, and that the episode draws a parallel to modern regulatory hurdles. The specific cases named among the topics, including Yick Wo v. Hopkins, are not discussed in the excerpt itself.
Across episodes
The topic recurs across the 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017 episodes, with each guest supplying a different domain: Nowrasteh on immigration restriction in 2013 and 2015, Root on occupational licensing in 2014, and Chin on the war on Chinese restaurants in 2017. The excerpts show no development or change in the argument between the earlier and later treatments; Zadek’s framing of protectionism as cowardice and crony capitalism in 2013 is consistent with the principle Nowrasteh states in 2015 and with the licensing abuse Root describes in 2014. The 2017 excerpt is too fragmentary to show whether Chin’s account modifies or extends the earlier treatments.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of the Louisiana casket case beyond the court’s agreement that the law lacked justification, nor do they identify the court by name. They do not describe the substance of the war on Chinese restaurants, the provisions of the Chinese Exclusion Act, or the holding of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, all of which appear only as topics or passing references. The excerpts also do not state the founding date or institutional affiliation of the Institute for Justice beyond its role as the lawyers who brought the casket case.