Government data released last week placed inflation at 8.5 percent over the previous 12 months—the largest such increase since December 1981—with fresh reports noting particularly pronounced price hikes for building materials and supplies. Oddly, the Biden administration decided this was an opportune time to double down on its support for protectionist “Buy American” policies that limit the federal government’s ability to purchase cheaper imported goods when spending taxpayer dollars—and thus raise prices.

During a speech last Thursday President Biden highlighted his administration’s efforts to make Buy American rules even more restrictive while a White House memo released earlier this week praised the Build America, Buy America Act that includes protectionist provisions limiting infrastructure projects funded by the law to only those that use U.S.-made manufactured products as well as iron, steel, and other construction materials produced in the United States.

Responding to the memo, the Associated General Contractors of America pointed out that restrictions and the attendant red tape point undermine efforts to improve infrastructure. The lowered competition and increased costs, meanwhile, serve to further raise prices.

This is precisely the opposite of what a White House laser-focused on inflation would do. As former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers noted in a recent interview, one way of easing inflation is to conduct public procurement as inexpensively as possible. “Unfortunately,” he added, the Biden administration has “instead indicated a desire to shift from buying cheap to buying America and buying in ways that protect certain key constituencies.”

Even some Biden administration officials are said to privately concede the unhelpful impact of Buy American mandates on inflation.

On the other hand, trade policy liberalization may offer some assistance. A recent study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics calculated that a feasible package of trade liberalization measures—including a relaxation of Buy America rules—“could deliver a one-time reduction in consumer price index (CPI) inflation of around 1.3 percentage points.”

Unfortunately, such commentary has thus far fallen on deaf ears. In fact, as evidenced by a pair of speeches last month as well as a recent tweet, President Biden appears to believe that shifting the production of goods to the United States from overseas is a means of tamping down on inflation.

But that doesn’t follow at all.

To ensure the lowest possible prices, goods must be produced as efficiently as possible. That might be in the United States, but it often isn’t. While Americans excel at the production of a good many things—the United States is after all a manufacturing superpower—it doesn’t mean that the country is the most efficient producer of every good (and even if it was, the law of comparative advantage means that it still shouldn’t make everything).

If a company has calculated that the best and most profitable means of producing a good—which is to say, assembling it using inputs sourced from around the world—is in another country, it’s a safe bet that’s the most efficient and least costly place for doing so. Replacing such market-driven decisions around sourcing with those driven by politics is a surefire formula for inefficiency, reduced competition, and higher prices.

To be clear, there are no quick or easy fixes to reducing inflation, and trade policy doesn’t offer any silver bullets. That said, policies that intentionally exert upward pressure on prices via barriers to market entry—such as Buy American protectionism—certainly aren’t helping and offer another reason for President Biden to jettison them from his economic agenda.