How about the United States until 2008? Sorry, it doesn't fit the narrative. My bad.
That’s incorrect.
The USA has never been a free-trade country. We still maintain high tariffs on some foreign products. Sugar is a big one. Others would be oranges, textiles, footware, although I believe tariffs on these have been decreasing as per WTO schedules (it’s been a couple years since I’ve kept up on these).
Just go to the WTO and check out the tariff schedules. The USA does not have zero tariffs across the board.
>>There is not a single example of a “free trade” state building up a impressive manufacturing sector . . . .
>How about the United States until 2008? Sorry, it doesn’t fit the narrative. My bad.
The US didn’t go full unbalanced free trade until the 80s. Before that we always raised tariffs if any nations exports to us became greater than their imports from us. But even before that trade was hurting US industry.
One of the primary reasons that US cars where crap compared Japanese cars in the late 70s-80s was the following: 1. US auto manufactures suddenly had to build small cars thanks to Carter and it took a few years to design and perfect high quality small engines. 2. The Japanese government was under cutting the price of steel by 50% of what US companies had to pay. We couldn’t compete on quality because Japanese steel was massive subsidized thus making their cars much cheaper. So to keep the price about the same, US car companies cut the quality of their cars to get the same price point.