Stop with the “Free Traitor” shit. I’m for free trade, but ONLY if it is truly free in both directions. If not (and it usually isn’t) - well, that’s what tariffs are for. I’m very much like Trump, in that I’d prefer free trade, but I’m not so naive as to fall for mere academic theories as a means of determining policy.
As for the auto industry, they did have union problems. So why didn’t they MASSIVELY shut down factories and build new ones in non-union states? IMHO, the reason is that they didn’t really care, they were fine with the status quo (which included paying huge dividends to shareholders, rather than plowing a bunch of that money back into R&D and quality control. Had they done that, the Germans and Japanese would never have made a dent in our market...we’d have been a constantly moving target.
The auto industry is NOT the entire manufacturing sector. Stop it.