I don’t anticipate a lot of friendly comments to your post. The Freepers, at least the vocal ones, are (along with Trump) in a very protectionist mood these days.
Not me. I’m with you on trade. It will be never be “Free” but tariffs and such will make things much worse, raise the prices and cost us business and jobs.
Hmm, like prices haven't been going up with all this "free trade" we have nowadays? Been to the grocery store lately? Bought a new car lately? Bought a house lately? Bought new clothes lately? Bought shoes lately? But wait - there's those "Dollar stores" everywhere. Yeah, sure. Then there's your medical bills, utility bills etc. And of course the estimated 94 million Americans out of work don't matter. They're supposed to be life's losers, right? And all of those folks forced to train their replacements where they work at before they are laid off. Free trade is working just wonderful for them. No one expected their jobs to be the product that was traded.
Face it. Americans have been sold a lie by the American elitists who are getting rich off the engineered impoverishment of Americans and the destruction of American industry.
Hey, while we're thinking about this, let's just outsource the entire American economy so nobody will have to work. We'll live off of Bernie's welfare state. Sounds like a plan to me. And maybe we should just outsource the entire American government while we're at it. Let's let foreigners do the work of ruling the nation so somebody somewhere can make some money at America's expense.
And a last thought: Why anybody would want to fight and die for America to preserve this state of affairs is inexplicable to me.
Your mind swings on a hinge - you start with a false premise, argue a false dichotomy, and put words in the mouths of your opponents to beat them over the head with.
It is like Yogi Berra's famous quote, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
In fact we are all for free trade, I would imagine, but free trade is they one thing we don't actually have and are not going to get so long as the other side practices blatant merchanilism and protectionism, and so long as our side does as well, for things that matter to the well-connected cronys, while hyprocritically claiming to be for free trade. No one argues for American protectionism, but you are arguing in a world where the other side gets away with practicing blatant protectionism.
You further seem to take the attitude that those of us opposed to the status quo or those of us supporting Trump are low information voters and do not get free trade theory. But we are high information individuals, those on this forum anyone, who recognize the clear distinction between simplistic theories and the complexities of realities.
The problem is that you think it is about trade, when the rest of the world understands it is about wealth. The Chinese, Japanese, and French are very concerned with wealth - ensuring that the means of production exist on domestic soil, not foreign soil. Because indigenous economic strength is the source of wealth and power and well-being for the people.
So don't peddle your cheap low-information propaganda around a bunch of folks who know better or we are going to take you to be another DC crony insider.