I have been against free trade for 25 years. If we had an honest rational Gov’t in DC I would still be anti-free trade. But what you are not factoring in these days is the USA is breaking down along racial lines and the demagoguing of the white man.
So if an Obama type regime with his crony capitalism sets up some tariffs they be will ones that you hate and disagree with. They will be tariffs that insure more Democrat votes from the ignorant.
Tariffs.... Great if instituted by the right people but the right intelligent pro-America people will not be running DC for the foreseeable future. Just another way we are screwed since 0 got back in.
We really shouldn’t be pretending to have free trade with the poorest nations on earth. The only thing they have to trade is cheap labor for US factories and jobs, and some unique raw materials or ag products.
But the current “fiscal cliff” negotiations are a joke. Nothing they might do will make a dent in our spending and debt problems. We now spend a trillion per year on welfare programs. The only thing that can solve our fiscal problems is a huge movement of people from welfare to work, and that can only happen if there a jobs to move them to, and at present the jobs aren’t there and won’t be until we return to a sane policy of producing what we consume in this country, and trade with nations of comparable living standards, and establish tariffs when trading with nations with much lower living standards.
I don’t expect anything meaningful to be done until our fiscal problems become much worse and we are forced to change many policies.