No, we don’t. We did the protective tariff thing with steel and aluminum back in the 50’s and 60’s and all it did was prevent domestic producers from implementing new technology. Another problem is that, once you put a tariff in place, politics makes it almost impossible to remove it. If you own a company that can’t compete on an international scale, you need to reexamine what your doing differently than your competitors. Tariffs prevent that type of introspection.
Yes we do.
Adam Smith never envisioned multi national corporations closing factories in England and moving production to the third world to exploit cheap labor and then re importing the same product back into England duty free! Smith would have been hung for that. That is not Free Trade. That is f--k trade.
The rest of the world practices protectionism. The rest of the world charges really high import duties on our exports, the rest of the world operates with a trade surplus. So there must be something good about import tariffs. So you point out the possible negative aspects of raising our import tariff to be more in line with the rest of the worlds tariff rates but can you name ONE thing good about raising tariffs? Intellectual honesty would be appreciated.