Free Trade...especially Free Trade with Communist China...doesn’t work
Eventually you run out of your own wealth
The only way you can counter Communist China moving away from our dollars is to put tariffs on their goods....that is a much better move than whining like a Liberal Statist Free Trader reciting failed economic theory like a Chairman Mao disciple.
Time to dump stupid Free Trade nonsense
“Time to dump stupid Free Trade nonsense”
A 30% tariff, applied to all Chinese imports, plus a container processing fee on all incoming containers, would bring the Chinese economy to its knees. Add to that a 0% tax rate on profits derived from manufacturing in the USA. Implications:
1) Importers would immediately begin shifting sourcing from China to other countries until domestic capacity increased to fulfill demand.
2) The Chinese government would have to respond by increasing subsidies (yes free traders the Chicom government does subsidize exports) which makes fewer resources available to support the military buildup.
3) The economics of producing in the US would shift enough to result in capital flowing into the construction of state of the art factories at home. Chinese factories are aging (built 10-20 years ago) and are highly inefficient with respect to labor productivity. New, highly automated, domestic factories would be cost competitive with aging Chinese factories, particularly with a tariff in place.
4) Millions of jobs would be created in the US over a 10 year period as new US factories came on stream. Even if the new US factories would much more efficient than the Chinese factories (employing say 25% of the labor force of a Chinese plant) millions of jobs would be produced.
5) Thousands of new businesses would start up to serve the new domestic factories. These new businesses would employ additional millions.
6) Tax revenue would flow to state an local governments from the new tariffs as well as the income taxes collected from newly employed workers.
7) The middle class would grow again.
8) Our cultural mindset would shift again to an opportunity society from the current redistributionist society.
Let’s get on with it.
Agree. I think Trump was right when he said even the threat of a 25% tarrif would make China stop manipulating their currency. The other thing Trump said which we all need to keep in mind is that we only owe China just under a trillion dollars. Not really that much. We owe Japan more.