To me, a tariff is a risk well worth taking.
“From Lincoln to William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, and from Warren Harding through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party erected the most awesome manufacturing machine the world had ever seen. “
Oh, I see Pat is just giving the Obama version of “you didn’t build that”. Sorry to tell you Pat but the Republican Party didn’t build anything. These were the predecessor to the Country Club Republicans.
The US is still the world’s manufacturing powerhouse:
Only China exceeds the US total output but only then at 1/3 the per capita output.
Low taxes, cheap energy, and minimal regulation are the only things US manufacturers need. Republicans do not need to build or protect. They just need to get out of the way.
Why Is the GOP Terrified of Tariffs?
Because of the 1929 and onward depression. Mostly caused by FDR in the later years but it did not help there was the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act
From the link below: The consensus view among economists and economic historians is that the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff exacerbated the Great Depression,[16] although there is disagreement as to how much. In the popular view, the Smoot–Hawley Tariff was a leading cause of the depression
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act
Because it’s a tax increase on most consumers and will probably cost more jobs than it saves or creates. That’s why the GOP is afraid of tariffs.
A trade war is not to be feared, bought fought to win.
Tariffs are instruments of economic warfare. Like their conventional warfare counterparts, in an ideal world you’d like to not use them at all. But realities being what it is, you have to selectively use them or threaten to use them.
I can’t take free trade absolutists seriously because they are like the peaceniks who wanted the US to unilaterally disarm.
But trade between nations are in general a good thing, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go full protectionist either, removing too much foreign competition will inevitably cause the domestic companies to get lazy and have less incentive to innovate.
Good discussion!
Those who complain are either in the “Globalist Welfare by the USA is a good thing” camp or they have found a way to leverage huge trade deficits to their own personal advantage....
Why? Because they LOVE communist China and ILLEGAL aliens and “cheap labor” more than they love America and American CITIZENS! It’s as simple as that.
Because mercantilism is the tool of tyrants? Are you not denying the right for free citizens to purchase their wares abroad if they are so inclined? Why should the government put restrictions on economic freedom? And if government interference is a good thing, where are the limits? Who decides what a fare rate of tariff is? Sounds like collectivism to me.
So if protectionism was the fare of Republicans, it doesn’t mean it is the choice of free loving of men.
What a fantastic job of summing up the truth about trade and manufacturing! Notice that very word looks like it came from Free Republic threads on trade and tariffs! Obviously Pat is Freeper.