“Free Trade” absolutely requires the OTHER nations to participate and to adhere to our interpretation of free trade. No one has tariffs. No one has restrictions. No one has subsidies. Think they will go along? I doubt it. Trump is trying to create a more level playing field — his tariffs are a response to their tariffs. But as it stands, the platonic ideal of “free trade” is not something anyone should seriously expect to see in the real world. It’s basically stupid to even talk about the thing because it’s not going to ever exist.
Free Trade is a myth, like the Easter Bunny.
shrugs. as a young man, before i even followed politics, it was so obvious that Ross Perot was correct when he predicted the ‘giant sucking sound’ from Mexico, that i voted for him, not the globalist, uniparty gope.
when he lost, i became a conservative independent (ex democrat) and have fought and debated the so called ‘free traders’ and libertarians on this site and elsewhere ever since. not a lick of common sense in any of them.
You can’t have “free” trade with a country who pays $10 a week for labor. We can never compete. Thems the facts, as they say...
You can let them have certain cheap or low profit things we let them export it to you free, but you will LOSE every time on “free” trade for critical industries because we can never compete with $10 a week or even $10 a day labor...
So “Free Enterprise” isn’t free trade?
I thought that was why Trump wants Fair Trade.
The writer is dishonest. The reason for tariffs in the first century of the republic is that there was no national banking system and it was about the only efficient way to collect taxes. Limited number of ports, a collector of customs sitting there waiting.
The 1950-60s gave us an oligopoly in auto production - Big Three and labor unions conspired to produce shitty cars and stifle innovation. Politically, a return to that so called Golden Era will return Rust Belt to Dem control because unions depend on special exemption from anti-trust laws to exist. Without foreign competition, the rest of the country is turned into a colony.
“Left versus Right” is a FALSE DICHOTOMY because politics, especially in the modern era, is far too complex to be represented in any meaningful manner by positions on a simple line.