I was VERY accurate in describing “Free-Trade”.
Is the US stronger or weaker since outsourcing much of our manufacturing base to China? Can we make our own medicine? computer chips? Were we better off outsourcing our energy production to the ME until recently?
Not to mention the devastation these policies caused working people who traded good jobs for low paying service jobs. (If they can even find those).
It’s the governments job to look out for the interests of both Capital and Labor. Free Trade is really just cheap labor.
Those policies are dead at the ballot box.
No, you got it wrong. We trade because we hvae something they need and they have somethign we need. That raises the standard of living in both countries.
It’s not free trade that has caused the problem. The requirements and obligations our stupid government has put on manufacturers and other businesses, plus the way unions hold htem hostage, have made making things in America unsustainable.
Protectionism just makes that worse. It makes the raw materials (like Taiwanese minerals for silicon chips) more expensive, whcih drives up the price of the good manufactured with those goods. All that happens whan you make those more expensive is that the domestic goods increase too (though perhaps not as much.) Instead of protecting jobs, it makes goods less affordable.
This is what has happened through out history.
You hve been soled a bill of goods by power hungry politicians, bureaucrats, and corportaists who think they can run your life and your business better than you can.