I wonder where FR’s super capitalists are these days? There are a few that would argue that what is happening actually is good for Americans.
Well, I’ve been pretty much won over.
Theory says free trade works, but the notion of what is truly free trade has to be explored in a historical sense.
Britain succeeded with free trade from 1830-1900 because the Royal Navy could open any port and any nationality to British goods, and they sent in the army if you tried to get tricky.
We had free trade from 1946-1965 or so when Europe was still rebuilding and American goods could go anywhere. But that’s clearly not the case today.
They lull us to a sleep state and hurt us ever so little that it only feels like a quick pain that disappears as fast as it came and doesnt comeback until you have forgotten about it and its just like the first time all over again.
The issue isn't so much whether it's good for the USA or not. The laws of economics are unforgiving and inexorable and it doesn't really matter if we like them or not.
Communications and transportation advances have changed the world, and it isn't going back. We can rail against our fate and pretend that some politician will make the earth spin backwards like Superman and cause the smokestacks to reappear, but they won't. And they shouldn't if there's a cheaper, more efficient place to produce those industrial goods.
We need to do what America has always done - accept the circumstances we find ourselves, fight and innovate our way out of it. We can offer our young people a better alternative than laboring in some factory where they will always be competing with the lowest cost labor out there - Mexico, China, Bangladesh, etc., etc.
What we can't do is reverse the arc of history over the last four decades. Much of the third-world is out of the economic barn and they aren't going back in.