“Truly free trade would benefit the US greatly.”
Yup.
And countries that erect trade barriers mainly (but not exclusively) harm their own people. They protect industries that need not improve, and foist higher non-competitive prices on their people. The winners are the few, the protected, the politically capable. Everyone else loses.
So what’s annoying is the folks here at FR who think trade barriers are going to generally help. They are going to generally hurt widely in a way that is hard to spot. But they will help a few for a little while in a political spoils system.
How that’s different than welfare for the left’s chosen poor people eludes me.
It’s not a trade barrier. China, Japan, Mexico have tariffs that are trade barriers because they keep us out. If China doesn’t want to lose a dime and charges us more we can shop with the competition. We don’t have to do it their way or the highway.
We are facing tariffs and taxes across the globe. Imbalanced access to the global marketplace does nothing to help Americans in the long run. We buy from marketplaces in which we cannot sell.
Add to that factor currency manipulation, and you have a recipe for a nation enslaved financially to external interests.
Where I agree with Trump is that he is actually addressing it. Anyone that pays attention to the macro-economy knows that there are major problems that have resulted in an enormous loss of our industrial manufacturing base (regulations, tax, unbalanced trade deals, currency devaluation, etc) but the establishment of neither party has articulated a coherent plan to deal with it. The middle class has been crushed and Trump, with all his warts, recognizes it and has become a voice for the silent majority. If you aren’t ‘poor’, a minority, or wealthy, the government has been against you for a long time. I would never advocate the government instituting more welfare for the middle class but instead just stop it’s assault on them.
The problem is that there already are trade barriers in the form of restrictions, prohibitions on American products, etc. So what you CAN do with tariffs is force open other markets. That’s how tariffs were used for years.
It’s only welfare if it’s used to bolster the income of American workers-—but it may have that effect, the same way that a trade EMBARGO, such a that Jefferson imposed, increases the prices on American consumers.
The goal is true free trade-—although Washington and Hamilton maintained (and I agree) that some industries simply must be protected because we need them for defense. For Washington and Jefferson, that was iron and textiles. I would argue today that would be steel, aircraft to some degree, and shipbuilding.