People who castigate free trade advocate, by default, for managed trade. If they can’t see the failure of government to manage anything without graft and incompetence, they are fodder for democrat recruitment.
Rush treats his audience like they are stupid and can’t research the bogus on air claims.
No, not necessarily. I advocate true free trade. Any product, available to be traded in a competitive mode. But if your government restricts me from selling in your country, that isn’t free trade.
Free trade is national suicide if you can’t reduce costs here at home and, in our current environment, you can’t.
And why can’t we reduce costs: big government (Marxism).
- economy killing regulations
- forced unionization
- forced socialist programs
- high taxes
- forced minimum wages
- war on capitalism
- war on industry
- open borders
- foreign labor
- globalism
If you can’t reduce costs, you can’t compete. You lose your manufacturing base, your heavy industry, your jobs, your economy, your freedom, your nation.
We already have government (mis)managing EVERYTHING. That’s the problem. Free trade by itself is not a magical solution. Getting government out of our lives, out of commercial enterprise and out of trying to control our economy would be a far better place to start.
The modern definition of free trade is “no tariffs”. The founding fathers had a different definition of free trade. To them, free trade meant the freedom for US merchants to trade with any nation or company. At the time of the American Revolution the British government restricted colonial merchant from trading outside the British empire and forced them to deal with royally sanctioned merchants instead of going direct.
Free trade in the late 1700’s had nothing to do with tariff and tax policies. In fact the US government pursued high tariff policies into the 20th century in order to protect the developing US manufacturing industry from more efficient European producers as well as to generate enough tariff and duty revenue to fully fund the federal government. While today’s free market advocates claim tariffs are an impediment to economic growth, the US experienced the highest economic growth rates in its history during the 19th and 20th centuries when tariffs were at historically high levels. During that period US merchants extended their reach globally using their famous Yankee clipper ships to transport goods freely around the world.
During the high tariff era the US became the world’s greatest industrial power and developed a large middle class. Economic growth rates were much higher than during the modern era. Contrast with today where 25 years of no tariffs free trade policies have coincided with stalled economic growth, loss of much of the industrial infrastructure that took 150 years to develop, and declining average household incomes for the first time in US history.
Where are the economic analyses with hard data showing the modern trade agreements have benefited the average American household and the US economy? There aren’t any.
the benefits of FREE trade have been manifest on the globe for the last 3 centuries. You are correct - anyone calling for government management is calling for crony-capitalist, corrupt, insider economic rent-seeking.
We need to point out - our present US government DISCOURAGES hiring within the USA by making US labor excessively expensive. There are hundreds of examples, but just look at Obamacare as one example. Do you want to grow beyond 50 employees - well, if you do, you now need to provide expensive, Obama-crony health care to all your employees. Add on regulations of all kinds, OSHA, tort law corruption, welfare - and you encourage Americans NOT to work and American companies NOT to hire.
Free trade is only in the name of these bills. Anything that is 20,000 pages with dozens of appendix and addendums cannot possibly be FREE trade.
Environmentalists, Unions, Chamber of Commerce, Big lobbyists, Small operators with an under-secretary for a brother-in-law all have special language.
When Reagan proposed the original NAFTA it was close to real FREE trade. But it languished for many years with the lobbyists. By the time Clinton signed it the only place where FREE trade existed in NAFTA was in the name.
So FREE trade gets a bad rap for things it is not guilty of.
BTW, NAFTA had less impact on trade with Mexico than Treas Sec Rubin who destroyed the Mexican economy to benefit his Goldman Sachs. He chased the Maquiladoras from Mexico to Asia. That killws Mexicans employment and triggered the big increase in immigration in the middle of the Clinton years.