[ScottM1968]

It is amazing, in light of how inherently unworkable free trade must be, that countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and others are able to conquer a huge part of the world's economy (and without any native resources) though minimal (if any) trade tariffs.

I guess free trade is dead. Long live protectionism--NOT!!

[investigateworld]

In 1979, when I built my first home, I paid the lead carpenter $20 per hour and helpers $10. That was about the industry (high end) average, 'cause I hate "re-work".
Now a top carpenter makes $15 to $16 per hour, but what he can buy with the wage is less that half, and the home sells for 3X's as much. I'm just a simple country boy, but what's wrong with this picture?

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Japan's distribution system makes it much more difficult for foreign companies to import goods into Japan, thus acting exactly as a tariff would.

"Free Trade" is not a practical and pragmatic part of a conservative viewpoint, but an ideology.

Carried to its logical conclusion, free trade cares not a whit about America as a going concern. Free trade would prefer it if there were a single global currency, a single global government with a common worldwide set of taxes and regulations. Then businesses would flourish or die solely on business practices and economic considerations.

It's OK for libertarians to be free trade ideologues because that's just one more pie-in-the-sky fantasy that they need to add to the oil-tanker-load of fantasies that they lull themselves to sleep with every night.

Conservatives, however, for some irrational reason actually care about the specific nation, state, and city that they happen to be born in or are currently living in. For some silly reason we humans feel comfortable around our own kind and living in our own cultural milieu, unlike the hypothetical units-of-consumption-and-production that the economic textbooks describe.

Through a highly competitive risk-and-reward system (commonly referred to as reality) all nations have developed very sophisticated ways of limiting free trade with or without the need for tariffs. Sometimes the walls to theoretically free trade are higher and sometimes lower. The demands of self-preservation seem to keep us at a reasonable balancing point, only that currently our fixation on free trade ideology seems to be working at the U.S.'s disadvantage.

A little economic tweaking in our favor will not result in a new and worse Depression. It will more likely stave off for a few more years our ultimate assimiliation into a noxious globalist goo.

[Sam the Sham]

Minimal if any trade tariffs ? Are you delusional ? Try exporting rice to Japan. Good luck because somehow, someway the worthy Japanese inspectors will find it unfit for Japanese consumption, thereby protecting their own farm lobby.

The Asian economies borrowed the sage advice of Hamilton and McKinley and grew rich behind tariff walls.

[radicalamericannationalist]

If you think that the Asian tigers are not trade restrioctionists, you are obviously not familiar with the concepts of kairetsu and chaebaeo (spellings may be off). You should read Fukuyama and Johnson for a discussion of their economic systems.

[valkyrieanne]

It is amazing, in light of how inherently unworkable free trade must be, that countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and others are able to conquer a huge part of the world's economy (and without any native resources) though minimal (if any) trade tariffs.

Huh? Japan is highly protectionist, especially of its agricultural industries.

[A. Pole]

It is amazing, in light of how inherently unworkable free trade must be, that countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and others are able to conquer a huge part of the world's economy (and without any native resources) though minimal (if any) trade tariffs.

You got it completely WRONG. The countries you mentioned were engaged in open and in disguised protectionism. Check your "facts"!

[ninenot]

You are absolutely ignorant if you think Japan has NO trade tariffs.