> There’s already a trade war going on, and we’re losing.
I think your meaning of “trade war” is not the one commonly utilized. Further, I think your meaning of “losing” can be fairly described as Orwellian - we have benefited disproportionately from globalization.
> Cheap technical assistance is beamed in via satellite and high speed lines from Indian call centers.
> The Chinese ignore our copyrights and flood the market with overly cheap stuff.
> And clothing is made everywhere, but here.
We already established that US unemployment rate was less than 5% with all these imports (that by the way also raise the living standard of the American people). Why are you repeating a failed argument?
You’re right on that — I did not use the standard definition of “trade war.” What’s been happening has been more subtle.
I don’t know that we’ve benefited. If we trade good paying jobs for cheap goods, that’s not a benefit. Neither is it a benefit to trade very high end exports for manufacturing infrastructure.
I never believed the less than 5% unemployment. During the Clinton administration they started playing around with how unemployment is measured. Things like the birth/death model did not do anything to help the accuracy. The U-6 number seems to be more accurate.