Are you out of your mind? Import tariffs are what caused the Great Depression. See: Smoot-Hawley Tariff
We should always encourage free trade. As far as manufacturing jobs going overseas, those jobs are lost either way unless you intend to subsidize those union jobs. When was the last time you bought an American-made tire or an American-made pair of tennis shoes? The consumer will always look for the best utility for each dollar spent. Always. If you put a 40% tariff on Brazilian tires, then the consumer has that much less money to purchase something else. So the money that was going to go towards creating another job instead goes either to the government or to some corrupt inefficient union shop that makes substandard tires.
The one thing missing from our current economic situation is certainty. The current climate is too unpredictable. With talk of cap and trade, health care mandates, pending tax increases, banking takeovers, and other fascist proddings of the factors of production, no business in its right mind would risk precious capital for future expansion. If one wanted the economy to improve (which this Administration does not), one would set policy for the next five years and not change it. This policy would include elimination of corporate taxes, decrease in capital gains tax, elimination of government borrowing, and implementation of a flat tax. Allow people to invest their social security taxes into one of several government-approved private investments instead of handing that money over to the Treasury to cover current expenditures. All these things would help. Starting a trade war with the rest of the world - a world which happens to already be recovering - would not.
“Are you out of your mind? Import tariffs are what caused the Great Depression. See: Smoot-Hawley Tariff”
I don’t claim to be an economist, I am an old manufacturing engineer that came up through the ranks from a start sanding boiler tubes in Jacksonville Shipyards in the 1960s for $2.19/hour, working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, then facing layoffs for as much as six months until the next ship came in. I have worked in the boom years from Florida to New York to Texas, and lost everything I’ve owned several times in those same places. When I started learning my trade skills that later served to build my engineering reputation, there were very little choices about whether you joined the local unions or not; Union activity in those days usually meant better working conditions and at least a dime more an hour in my pocket. And, while I am not now a union supporter, at various times I was a member of Firemen and Oilers, UAW, CWA, Iron Ship Builders, Teamsters, United Iron Workers, and United Steel Workers.I am also proud of the fact that in more than forty five years, I have only drawn three months of unemployment compensation and no welfare.
I have not only witnessed the decline of our manufacturing capabilities in the country for years, but I experienced personally the results of what we have allowed to happen in the name of “Free Trade”. Two years ago, a lack of manufacturing forced me to close my consulting business, which has provided an income for my family since 1997, and I took up contract project management. Guess where the projects went.
So you good people can lecture me about economics, but I would point out that the system that we have now has broken the backbone of a once rich and powerful nation, and until some measures are in place to protect small business owners from the corruption of our government and also from unfair competition from abroad, we will continue our descent into oblivion.
“Are you out of your mind? Import tariffs are what caused the Great Depression. See: Smoot-Hawley Tariff”
Read it. Totally unconvinced that the Smoot Hawley was the cause. One of the big myths about the Depression. Also, the writer’s assertion that “Keynesians” are the ones who challenge that exporters’ myth was straw man stupid.