Pat Buchanan and his ilk do not like free trade.
In fact, Buchanan even wrote a piece on how "Reaganism and Thatcherism" exploits workers.
Somehow, I don't see how America would be better off in the long run if we paid $200 for a $65 pair of shoes because they are made in America or if a new "American made" computer costs $1800 at Best Buy instead of a foreign made one at $499.
People would be getting their shoes re-soled and keeping their existing computers longer.
Anti-free traders seem to think that Americans could continue their present consupmption even when the price of their goods quadruples.
I don't buy it.
Quote: Somehow, I don't see how America would be better off in the long run if we paid $200 for a $65 pair of shoes because they are made in America or if a new "American made" computer costs $1800 at Best Buy instead of a foreign made one at $499.
I really don't believe American made products are that much more. When a plant shuts down in America and moves to China I don't see the price of that item significantly dropping. Did Nike shoes lower their price from $85 for a pair of shoes to $35 when they shut down the memphis TN plant and move to Mexico??
Besides when the unemployeed factory worker gets laid off and has to take a lower paying job he has less money to spend. He may not even buy the product or service your company offers-putting your own livlyhood at risk. He may also be placed upon various gov't programs (job training, medical benefits) that cost more in taxes so the savings you benefited from buying offdshore is replaced with higher taxes and social cost.
why can't we establish a tariff schedule which factors the implications of onerous US laws/enforcement on US competitiveness.
I.E. OSHA, EPA, etc compliance costs D industry $x/unit. That becomes an equalization tariff for imported D items.
What say you ?
Brain damaged idjits are paying $120 for Nike shoes here.
From Book 1, Chapter 9 of The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith:
"In reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages. If in the lininen manufacture, for example, the wages of the different working people...be advanced two pence a day; it would be necessary to heighten the price of a pice of linen only by a number of two pences equal to the number of people that had been employed about it...that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into wages would...rise only in arithmetical proportion to this rise of wages. But if the profits...should be raised five per cent that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into profit would...rise in geometrical proportion to this rise of profit.
"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the prices, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods...They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
"Somehow, I don't see how America would be better off in the long run if we paid $200 for a $65 pair of shoes because they are made in America or if a new "American made" computer costs $1800 at Best Buy instead of a foreign made one at $499."
Your point is ridiculous because no one here is advocating Zero Trade with other countries. The alternative to Free Trade is not Zero Trade, it's reasonable Tarriffs (as envisioned by the Founding Fathers) so that domestic manufacturers still have to compete, it's just that they get a small edge over foreign competition.
"Free trade" will never be viable unless it also fair. For it to be fair it must be governed by a common set of rules and regulations (aka "World Government").
With World Government come all the disadvantages associated wtih any monopoly.
That's reality.
Most people just look at the cost of free trade, but not at the incredible advantages it offers. Economics 101: Free Trade benefits all nations who engage in it. Each nation enjoys a comparable advantage in a certain area. Free Trade increases the amount of goods a nation produces and sell since their efforts will go to what they do best.
It is obvious to people that without free trade China would not be able to sell all that is manufactured there. What people don't realize is that without free trade the US, which has an advantage in terms of education, know-how and freedom would not be able to sell everything it produces. A small business in the US is much more likely when its potential market is the world, than just the US. Movies, software, financial services, managerial talent would otherwise be chasing too little demand.
The difficulty with the transition to free trade is that workers who are in the industries that are not the advantage of a certain nation, will be hurt. Instead of decreasing the entire pie for everybody to protect these workers (which protectionism does), it behooves a nation to give the opportunity to these workers to get trained to get jobs in the industries that are the advantage of a nation.
Free trade works every time it's tried, just like freedom and capitalism work while communism and socialism have been failures everywhere they were tried.
If you don't have a job, you can't afford to buy shoes of any kind-quite simple really.