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If they're not capable of creating wealth on their own to begin with like Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and North America have then there's little we can do for them.

You don't know much about post WWII economic history, do you?

You seem to believe, like the Mercantilists, that the purpose of foreign trade is the enrichment of the nation, and this can be only be accomplished by a trade policy encouraging exports, which brings wealth in and discouraging imports, which wealth gold out. With all the hubris that is so typical of interventionists, the mercantilists presume to know what kinds of trade are good or bad and propose to regulate people accordingly. Even the most ardent paleoconservatives, other than Buchanan, have never been in favor of economic isolationism.

Trade does not require that someone lose. With free trade, both parties benefit. If they didn't, they wouldn't trade.

You don't know much about post WWII economic history, do you?

Well I guess then with that question I'm supposed to presume you do?

Even the most ardent paleoconservatives, other than Buchanan, have never been in favor of economic isolationism.

It's not about economic isolationism, you won't find that in my posts. Although I do believe that if trade were kept to the 50 states and a few other countries with similar economic standards, which includes those related to labor we would do just fine that's not necessary.

What I argue is that the US should maintain complete control over its own trade policies. When any country starts taking advantage of us as China and others are doing then we should have the right to respond in kind, and that includes tariffs or restricted access to our markets. We're negotiating a lot of that away with these agreements and subjecting ourselves to the whims of unelected trade bodies that make all the decisions for us.

We're also giving corporations carte blanche to send American jobs overseas then ship all the products back as if they were made here. That's not good policy and I predict in ten years at the most there will be a shift away from anymore such agreements and maybe even a reversal of what we're currently practicing.