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Okay. My view: free trade is fine to the extent that there is one, fully unified market (global government) and that humans fully lose their human nature (stop behaving irrationally). Neither is likely to happen. To most of us, life is a lot more than producing something and than exchanging some of the goods we made for other we need. This will not change.

To the extent that we continue to live in nation-states and have some attachment to our nation, history, culture, it is more important to us that our nation is prosperous than knowing that the global economic output is maximized. We would rather see our co-nationals fully employed and engaged in activities that are interesting and well-paid even if this is done at the price of delaying or preventing people of other countries or nations from achieving the same.

From time to time, we even have to make important decisions that may appear not to make economic sense. For example, we may refuse to sell weapons to our enemies, even at a good profit and even knowing that our enemy could buy the exact same weapons or better from someone else. This may be irrational but it's what our nature dictates we should do. We may also insist that certain critical goods and products that are critical for our survival are produced by our nation, even though they could be obtained at a better price from elsewhere. It makes no economic sense but it allowed Israel and South Africa survive at a time when most of the rest of the world was against them - I am talking about their synthetic oil and weapons industries.

Therefore... I do not blame George W Bush for imposing tariffs on certain goods, especially if he found that we were victims of other governments' dumping - dumping's aim is to eliminate our national industry by selling us goods at below cost prices until our own ability to make those goods is eliminated.