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“We are the economical supplier of beef to China and they are the economical supplier of cement to us.”

I’m not advocating for insider sweetheart crony deals in congress.

But I’m also not advocating for a piece-wise wipeout of our industrial base either. That WOULD happen in a pristine “free trade” environment.

“I am not calling for us to become or even to remain the trade punching bag we have become, but I am calling for a data based approach,”

The data says all steel mill jobs and all cement manufacturing jobs will disappear. Auto assembly jobs would follow soon after in a complete “free trade” environment, repeat with every manufacturing industry one by one.

The data also says we could import all our labor from Mexico and China for those jobs that require labor in-country. All IT jobs could be done cheaper with imported labor from India. repeat with every service industry job one by one.

I don’t think you or you or Milton completely understand what you are advocating on this topic. It sounds good on paper. It’s batshit crazy when you even think about implementing it in any widespread fashion.

Just because the data says “buy it cheaper from China” doesn’t make that the right decision.

You claim that the data tells us that we will lose all our manufacturing piece by piece and all our IT work piece by piece to India.

But is that true? So far, while we have in fact lost manufacturing and while we are in fact sending IT work wholesale across the Internet to India and elsewhere, we are also expanding our exports. The argument goes on, whether we are better off or worse off as a nation as a result. The debate also goes on about the lag time between trade losses and new markets created by trade just as the question of the lag between jobs lost to automation and jobs created by automation.

But there is no debate about your solution if it goes awry. If you interdict trade with China, for example, you will have to withdraw into economic fortress America and we will simply spin off into a massive depression. Of that there can be no doubt.

I am advocating for a balanced, data-driven, special interest-free approach recognizing that there is always a trade-off which we are duty bound to admit not only to ourselves but to our consumers and to adversely affected American industries. Above all we must not seal ourselves off from world trade and yet we must fight our corner.

In a representative democracy the consumer has as much right to be represented in trade negotiations as the machine shop worker. Yet we are dealing with mercantilist competitors and we have historically gone into the fray defenseless. Among the weapons which should be brandished are tariffs but only as a last resort knowing the downside risks to particular industries, to consumers, and to the economy as a whole if we miscalculate.

Pray that Trump in brandishing tariffs is actually aware of the downside risks and is only using tariffs as a negotiating ploy and has no intention of using them at all except as a last resort.