Really? How measured? Most of the justification was to protect fledgling industries during the early stage of the Industrial Revolution and I get that. However, that ship has sailed and it is now used to protect inefficient industries. Back in the 1950's when super-cheap oil was discovered in the mid-East, the domestic oil producers seduced Eisenhower with the military argument that we needed quotas and tariffs to protect against the instability of the mid-East. Ike bought into it. The result: OPEC. What if we had capped our own wells back then, sucked the mid-East dry with $1/bbl oil and when they ran out, we uncapped ours? Consumers would have benefited immensely and the oil industry would still have existed since imports could not make up total supply.
Horse and buggies worked pretty well for 180+, too, but I fail to see that as an effective substitute for air travel.
We’ve got 100 million Americans on food stamps now. And what has changed is that in the 1960’s we lowered the import tariffs. Real wages have stagnated since then.
You keep talking about inefficient industries. But all of our industries are inefficient when you consider how cheap third world labor is. The choice is not between efficient and inefficient. The choice is between America having it’s own industries and building wealth or being completely dependent on other countries and watching our wealth dissipate.
We’ve got 100 million Americans on food stamps now. And what has changed is that in the 1960’s we lowered the import tariffs. Real wages have stagnated since then.
You keep talking about inefficient industries. But all of our industries are inefficient when you consider how cheap third world labor is. The choice is not between efficient and inefficient. The choice is between America having it’s own industries and building wealth or being completely dependent on other countries and watching our wealth dissipate.