The voluntary (not forced) cooperation of the free market economy is THE major source of wealth creation in the world as Adam Smith pointed out in his 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations. The basic laws of economic do not change with the times. The freedom to supply what consumers demand without government or forced union interference will ALWAYS be the source of wealth creation and economic growth in America and around the world. Both theory and historical fact bear this out.
Freedom works. It is amazing how many on this supposed conservative site don’t believe in freedom, the very core of American values, the very source of her wealth and power, and the reason she is the envy of the world.
Your tariffs punish the American consumer with artificially higher prices. How does that possibly help our economy?
Your protectionism is exactly what dulls the competitive edge needed in the free market to make the best quality for the lowest price. In a free market, the American consumer and the economy as a whole always wins. Your protectionism allows special interests and domestic business to become fat and lazy while the rest of the world is sharpened by competitive forces. Socialism and government interference in the economy is just plain stupid.
The voters in the economy are the consumer. They vote with their dollars. In the 70’s and 80’s they voted for Japanese cars instead of stupid American cars. Why? Because Japan was hungry and had the competitive edge making products that had maximum reliability and quality for a price consumers were willing to pay. U.S car manufacturers needed to roll up their sleeves and sharpen their competitive edge but they never did and one major reason was the unions. But again, the consumers and ultimately the economy ALWAYS win in a free market whether the source is American or foreign as in this example where we, the American consumer, got to buy top quality, reliable cars for a competitive price. The free market increased our quality of life.
Meanwhile, unions and/or costly, dead-end government taxes and regulations cause American businesses to lose because their competitive edge of maximum quality for the lowest cost is dulled like the stupid, fat, and lazy American car manufacturers did and lost. But, again, the consumer won. Certain special interests, like the domestic car manufacturers, lost but consumers and the economy as a whole benefited.
Bravo on this post.
Needs to be posted multiple times on this site, as there are more and more protectionists who have no idea how the free market actually works.
I believe in Freedom, I don’t blindly regurgitate the party line that “free” trade is a good deal. I have no issue with free trade among nations, when those nations have a general baseline between them. I don’t however believe that you give open access to your markets to third world nations who are nothing more than tin pot dictators who capitalize on slave labor to enrich themselves.
“Free Trade” as its being presented to day has nothing to do with the original constructs, whereby nations can’t even tell their consumers where their products come from without being penalized for it.
The united states missed a huge chance to lead and move the entire world forward in the 80s and 90s using trade as a leveraging chip to lift all boats, but it didn’t it sold itself out and did nothing to help those stuck in the poorest nations. All because of the perverted notion that what is being sold as “free trade” is conservative and libertarian, when it is anything but.
When you have 2 year olds chained to walls all day while their parents work 10 hour shifts at factories to make a good to be sold in another nation, you haven’t improved freedom in any damned way, and its repugnant for anyone to try to present such tyranny as liberty.
How do American manufactures and those that have completely left the US and would contemplate coming back, compete with $0.17 cents an hr wages in China?
Tell us how when Unions power is curtailed and unnecessary govt regulations are removed and we have this Free Market you say will fix everything, American manufactures can compete with Chinese manufactures that pay their workers a small fraction what American workers get? Do you think Americans will and should work for less than a dollar an hr? What wage rate here in America brings back manufacturing? Numbers please.
There is not a free market economy because we allow the Chinese, India and Mexico and others to dump their cheap goods here while it is impossible to produce those same goods here unless Americans are willing to work for under a dollar an hr. Tariffs can force a fair market economy which imo is much freer than what we have now. Your theory is good but fails to address real world markets we live in.