What does Hong Kong produce? It doesn't have any natural resources to sell yet it is a rich domain, because the market and trade is free of government interference and wealth pours in.
Free trade is always beneficial to both side whether you are a buyer or a seller.
I disagree.
America has 17.5 trillion now in debt, and that is constantly increasing.
We need to make things right here.
a financial relationship where one party lends unsecured money to an other in order to enable the second party to buy the goods produced solely by the first, is not “free trade” by any stretch of the imagination.
in fact, that’s like unto the same scheme the robber barrons enforced over their “employees” via the company store.
no, i call that relationship by another name.
“Free trade is always beneficial to both side whether you are a buyer or a seller.”
We have pursued one sided “free trade” for the past 25 years. During that time the average US household has experienced a decline in standard of living for the first time in our history, entire industries have been exported, the greater industrial infrastructure on the planet has been decimate, and the middle class is declining rapidly. The only people who have benefited from the “free trade” are academics, Wall Street investment firms, and the executives of multinational corporations. The average American citizens, and the nation’s economy, have been big losers.
During the 35 years from 1865 to 1900 the US experienced the highest economic growth rates in world history and went from a country decimated by a civil war to the greatest economic power on the planet. Throughout this period of unprecedented economic growth the nation ran high tariffs on almost all imported goods. Tariffs and duties completely funded the federal government.
If free trade were as beneficial as its advocates suggest, the United States should be enjoying a period of great prosperity and economic growth today. At one time I believed in free trade. No longer. I believe what I’ve seen and the history of the US economy. Time to end the experiment and slap a 30% tariff on imported goods. Watch manufacturing, jobs, and economic growth return to this country.
There’s nothing wrong with having a supposed “trade deficit.”
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Yeah this has been the mantra of a lot of b school graduates for a couple generations.
The trouble is it only works if you have a reserve currency like the USA and even then over time it necessarily decapalitalizes your country—even the USA.
The USA —especially the dollar and US federal debt instruments— would have fallen down a terrible terrible rat hole on account of fed QE’s if not for the fantastic and miraculous and ongoing rise in US oil production.