It is complicated. For egs, most guitars sold in US are built overseas, now in china and korea. They are brought here and sell for a heck of a lot less than most American made guitars. The quality isn’t bad. So, as a guitar player (not a good one) I prosper. But my fellow citizens, who used to have a job doing this, are SOL.
Now if they moved to an equivalent job, say manufacturing furniture or rebuilding engines, maybe nobody gets hurt. But what if they are forced into a frippery job, like selling $79 Nike shoes at the mall. then we lose a skilled job for a frippery job. (frippery is a real word. I invented the term “frippery slope” FWIW)
If this happens enough, the economics may all seem to work but something sinister is happening to our country. We are becoming a nation of frippery job holders and any stiff wind will blow us away.
Now suppose that the unemployed guitar makers, wood workers, get jobs related to guitars. Cheaper guitars should drive the demand up, so there will be more guitar stores, more truck drivers to carry the guitars from LA to say Memphis. You may not see an immediate job loss. But when times get bad, guitar sales go down so now a guy who used to be a wood worker, or worse still, if there has been enough time passed, always sold Chinese guitars and never learned how to use machinery, is out of work. And what is he good for? Selling stuff at a store, which is low skill job.
So when it comes to the economic aspect, I see how quantitatively, the numbers work on this. But I think there is a qualitative aspect that we will have a hard time measuring. We may see it, but it is going to be hard to put into numbers.
I know that as an American, my country is surrounded on three sides by water. I would rather have a 100,000 guys around who know how to build ships, then I would a 100,000 guys who know how to make a simply superb Cafe Latte’.
parsy, who wonders if this is understandable
The U.S. is culturally, geographically, etc one of the best places in the world to conduct business. Our increasing tendencies to believe more government intervention can make our lives better negates our positive attributes. We're Americans...we should embrace the ideals of enturpertership and comparative advantage and reject interventionism and collectivism. That's how we did it before.