Well, I appreciate your PHD in economics. I have taken master level courses in economics myself, but my degree is an MBA.
As a PHD you should be aware that international trade is more complex than the simple argument for trade. Especially when high unemployment is involved. Or when one trade partner, like China uses state control to gather the funds and funnel them into buying not trade goods, but the equities and debt of the target country.
Fiscal policies can have an impact, but the wage differential dwarfs what fiscal policy can do. We could eliminate every tax and every regulation and still not be competitive with China’s $2/day wages. And don’t buy the Chinese propaganda that their wages have risen. They still have a couple of million people working in the fields that would love to come into a $2/day wage.
But given that they aren’t buying our products, there is no reason we should leave our market open to their products. Only when we are at full employment should we take advantage of their cheap labor and even then we should make sure it’s low value products.
Our manufacturing sector is essential for protecting the country during times of war. We have become entirely too dependent on foreign countries for both manufactured goods and even weapons.
Given your economics expertise, I’d be interested in your take on my post #149.
A naive and specious argument. The same argument was used during the 1950's when Ike was President. The oil industry wanted protection from super cheap oil that was just discovered in the Mid-East. Their argument, however, was that the area was unstable and we needed to establish import quotas so we wouldn't become dependent on imported oil..."our military machine depends on it!" Ike went along, and the result was OPEC. If we had been smart, we would have cap our wells, sucked theirs' dry over the years and, in the event of war, then uncap ours. The consuming public would have saved billions in the interim. Your policy suggestions are equally stupid.
So, if you want to stick by your argument, go ahead, but you're asking everyone in the country to pay higher prices for everything from cell phones to medicines. BTW, you need to update your wage information. Look at Tiananmen Square during the late 1980's and count the cars and take a look at the traffic today. You think they bought that many cars on $700 per year income?
Take a few moments and read up on Comparative Advantage and see how both parties can benefit. And if you really want to lower unemployment, you need to remap fiscal policy.