Posted on 04/10/2025 4:02:53 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
President Trump, Treasury secretary Bessent, and Commerce secretary Lutnick are effectively teaching a course right now on the fundamentals of international trade. How many Americans previously understood that nations around the world use tariffs and other economic tools to keep American-made products from reaching their markets? Hasn’t the United States been spreading the gospel of “free trade” for centuries? Doesn’t commitment to “free markets” separate the civilizational West from more authoritarian countries with “closed” economies? Shouldn’t a “rules-based international order” ensure that the rules are the same for all participating countries?
Or asked another way: How “free” can international trade be if its proponents depend upon a labyrinthine system of rules that requires thousand-page treaties and guidance from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, central banks galore, the Bank for International Settlements, international standards organizations, law firms specializing in commercial and maritime law, more law firms specializing in the administrative law of specific nations, even more law firms specializing in the labor and environmental laws of each nation, and an ever-increasing number of national and international regulatory bodies to tell producers what they can and cannot produce, how and when to produce what they are permitted to produce, and whom to pay for the “privilege” of producing it — all while restricting which domestic consumers around the world are permitted to purchase what the aforementioned producers end up producing?
That long question only scratches the surface of the sheer complexity of international trade, yet even in its oversimplification, it smacks of coercion, extortion, overbearing micromanagement, government corruption, and blatant racketeering. It oozes the “command and control” odor we associate with a Soviet-type, socialist, or similarly centrally planned economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
An original take on the situation>>>>>>>>>
There is a strange — and perhaps quite dangerous — disconnect between the way most Americans see their country and the way the U.S. government actually operates. A reasonable, patriotic American believes that the United States is a great and powerful country with unique influence on the world stage. Yet citizens still see it as a nation with distinct borders, a distinct culture, distinct interests, and a distinct Constitution that limits federal powers while ensuring that the American people are ably represented in their government. The U.S. government, on the other hand, sees itself as the international headquarters of a global empire that has no borders; includes all cultures; pursues competing interests; acts without constitutional constraint; and represents international banks, corporations, and institutions with no allegiance to the political culture, historical inheritance, or territorial sovereignty of the United States.
I have said since the days of NAFTA and Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” that “free trade” agreements are nothing but thousands of pages of exceptions to free trade.
ping
Okay.
Free Trade, with exceptions.
Pretty much everything comes with exceptions. (or thievery)
I’m noticing a disturbing trend to blur the line between the current tariff negotiations and ‘free trade’ (re zero tariffs).
Some nations will always be tariffed by the US due to incompatible economies. Free trade is not possible with the likes of chyna and other countries both with cheap labor and policies to ensure their exports over imports from us.
There is no global template: This battle will be negotiated on a country-by-country basis and the ‘free traders’ be damned.
chyna, too.
Be skeptical about the self-serving fairness arguments against trade — because businesses are never going to admit that their competitors are fair. Their hidden message to their customers: what’s fair to me is fair to thee.
“Free trade” which never was, and “making the world safe for democracies”, which never were..... was all “Imperial DC” speak/spin for crushing the Old World empires only to replace them with our own dollar dominated One World!
But the Soviets screwed it all up for us for awhile....but they made profitable enemies for a time......and now China & Russia fills that vacuum....all just beasts of our own birthing.
1-Sided Trade is not Free Trade.
We can see by that second paragraph that the Earth has way too many layers of bureaucrats of some kind or another putting themselves up as turnstiles against REAL free trade until the proper tokens or currency is applied.
President Trump, with his tariff agenda toward readjusting world commerce, is effectively applying DOGE to the whole planet.
Rock on, President Trump. Maybe those millions of glad-handers can ‘learn to code’ or ask if we want fries with that.
Clearly the globalist mafia has set its sights on fleecing the world.
IMHO “DTT” applies better to the world scenario (“damn the torpedos”).
Fitting as well.
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