[Recourse]

Technology constantly changes the nature of employment. There is nothing that will change the immutable law. And protectionism and tariffs only make our economy suffer.

Suppose the United States placed a tariff on imported textiles that were less expensive than domestic textiles. There would be four basic costs to the economy:

1. Textile buyers will have to pay more for their protected U.S.-made textiles than they would have for the imported textiles.

2. Jobs will be lost at retail and shipping companies that import foreign-made textiles.

3. Jobs will be lost in any domestic industries that suffer from retaliatory tariffs. The point most anti-free traders seem to forget is we don't operate in a vacuum. We hurt them, they hurt us.

4. The extra cost of the textiles gets passed on to the consumers. That means you and I pay more for products when we don't have to. That's money out of our pockets.

[Tokhtamish]

Your folly is to see this as an example of "creative destruction". It isn't. It is destruction pure and simple.

The buggywhip industry was replaced by the automobile industry. Well, what if the automobile industry had been in India ? Then those out of work buggywhip makers would simply have had nowhere to go, now wouldn't they ? When whole industries are shipped overseas as they are now, you are not simply shipping the present. You are shipping the future. You are guaranteeing that when nanotechnology becomes viable, when someone comes up with a cheap way to turn coal into oil, when flat panel 48 inch tv's cost less than $500 it will be Chinese industry that is in a position to benefit (just as the typewriter and adding machine industry became the computer industry, just as the bicycle industry became the aircraft industry).

And as for retaliatory tariffs, China already does impose heavy tariffs on American imports. China only imports what it cannot produce domestically.

What is the cost to America of a permanent and growing underclass ?