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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.

“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.”

Nonsense. China restricts trade - our imports do not freely traverse into their markets - they are doing fine. Same with Japan as a couple of examples. Look at Mexico.

You can’t just focus on “tariffs” any interference with the free flow of goods is a tariff of sorts. China says “yes but” to our imports. You also have to look at structural regulatory costs in the US. I think it’s entirely fair to levy a tariff on goods that are more costly as a result of government regulation and interference.

I think you and I would agree that getting rid of government regulation and interference is a good idea - but if we’re not going to get rid of it (and we haven’t, and probably won’t) then we are making an irrefutable argument in favor of tariffs to equalize all the “good things” that government does for our industry and manufacturing so that they can be competitive with countries that don’t have the benefit of our governments help.

On IT - actually outsourcing IT to India is so last decade! Now we bring Indian IT folks here in droves, while still outsourcing those things that we can.

The only thing that is beyond debate is that your solution will decimate the middle class. The argument that “both sides prosper” does not reflect all costs to society when you close a plant and thousands of unemployed must be carried.

Therein lies the simplicity of economic arguments (even made by Nobel Prize winning economists) - simply declaring that both sides prosper with a wave of the hand and a tweaking of the ledger - ignoring long-term costs to society and culture that accrue to America as a result of losing the middle class because we force them to compete with the third world.

It’s a much bigger picture than any economist claims. They make broad assumptions because to do anything else interferes with tidy conclusions.

Economics are as simple as the economist. Nobody but an economist can believe that an average worker in Ohio should compete on price with a worker in India or China because the data drives them to that conclusion.

“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.”

I think that it’s easy to fall into the trap that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing on trade. That’s all you hear everywhere - and you’ve fallen for it too, I think.

As I’ve said in previous replies - anything that restricts trade is a defacto tariff. Trump is 100% correct in that tools including currency manipulation, non-tariff restrictions, and protectionist regulations cause US exports to be limited (just like a tariff would do) in many countries when there are no such non-tariff restrictions in the US.

He is right to assert the threat - even the necessity for tariffs against some goods from some countries.

It is ultimately to the benefit of free trade to do so. Just because our trading partners aren’t used to fair play and are screaming doesn’t mean Trump doesn’t know what he is doing. I think he is right.