History does not show that tariffs will restore economic activity. You are looking for scapegoats and easy solutions. Tariffs will exacerbate problems of non competitiveness, increase prices, and make US industry non competitive. In addition, the hair-brained scheme that you suggest will cause a global trade war leading to reduced economic activity across nations. The world is very interconnected in commercial dealings. You are proposing to return to a bygone, idyllic world dominated by high tariffs. This bygone world does not exist anymore.
“You are proposing to return to a bygone, idyllic world dominated by high tariffs. This bygone world does not exist anymore.”
You’re correct in your assertions.
The only problem with this reality is the [modern] “world” (at least within the borders of this country) that has been created as a _result_ of “free trade” has resulted in a system that may be socially and economically unsustainable and one that will inevitably collapse around us.
Total “free trade” dictates that the essential underpinnings of an economy — that being, it’s ability to manufacture the things with which to sustain itself — will be “offshored” to those places were it is cheapest to do so. An example: steel production.
Remember the explosion within the gun turret on the USS Iowa years ago? I recall reading back then that the technology to repair the ship no longer existed in America, and that they might actually have to send it to Japan to rebuild it. (Aside: I don’t think this was ever done; the damaged gun turret was simply ‘retired from service” afterwards.)
To me, that incident speaks volumes as to where we are headed.
Sorry, I have no solutions to offer. I’m a working-class stiff, not a professor.
But the paradigm of “free trade” ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Indeed, too late we may find that, rightly or wrongly, it became a major step in our undoing....