Maggie's Farm

The cure for cheap imports that we think damage ourselves or our neighbors is the similar to the cure for price-gouging. Re imports: Buy local at a higher price, and cheerfully shoulder the burden of the higher price yourself, because you want to help your neighbor more than you want either to help a distant stranger or your own pocketbook. Re price-gouging: acquire the goods yourself, and sell them locally at a lower price (by stashing them providentially ahead of time, or importing them after the disaster strikes), because you want to help your neighbor at your own expense. That also puts competitive price pressure on the so-called gouger.

As in most matters where economic theory intersects with a duty of charity, it's all a lot simpler if we own our own charitable impulses and resolutely satisfy them out of our own pockets.

A charity you want someone else to perform isn't charity. It's meddling.