From a Capitalism standpoint it means that foreign governments subsidize their products to give them an unfair advantage in the global market. For example, the Chinese are dumping their cheap steel and aluminum on to the US market below production costs thus killing our domestic industries, which can't compete. And to compound matters, the Chinese protect their own markets thru their own tariffs. The US is the least protectionist country in the world, which is why almost every country in the world runs a trade surplus with the US.
What happens when the US loses good paying jobs in the steel and aluminum industries? American workers are paying the price. The relative small price the consumer pays is more than offset by the benefits that accrue to our workers and to our national security.
The globalist have sold us a bill of goods that is destroying the manufacturing and tax base of the country. In January 1914, Henry Ford started paying his auto workers a remarkable $5 a day. Doubling the average wage helped ensure a stable workforce and likely boosted sales since the workers could now afford to buy the cars they were making.
For most of our history, the US has used tariffs to protect our industries and workers. The globalists have created the myth that protectionism is an unalloyed disaster.
Between the Civil War and World War I, under Republicans, the U.S. became the world’s greatest industrial power and a wholly self-sufficient nation. How? We taxed foreign goods entering the United States, but did not tax the profits of U.S. companies or the incomes of U.S. workers.
The difference between economic patriots and globalists who inhabit corporate-funded think tanks and public policy institutes is that the latter think of what is best for their corporate benefactors and the global economy. The former put America and Americans first.
Academics revere Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Richard Cobden.
But none of them ever built a great nation. Patriots look to Alexander Hamilton and those post-Civil War Republicans who built the greatest national industrial powerhouse the world had ever seen.
Indeed, what great nation did free trade ever build?
As father of a united Germany, Chancellor Bismarck said, when he decided to build Germany on the American and not the British model, “I see that those countries which possess protection are prospering, and that those countries which possess free trade are decaying.”
So it is true today. Unfortunately, it is America, now wedded to the fatal dogma of free trade, that is decaying.
So if the Koreans are subsidizing their steel industry 25% and we charge a 25% tariff then we are in affect getting their subsidy to the Treasury.
Shame that your brilliant post #244 came so late on the thread. I wish that your wisdom could be shared by a multitude of fellow Americans. Thank you for taking your time for my and others benefit.