I absolutely agree.
Free Trade does not exist, lake. Self interest does. Those other countries operate on self-interest and we operate on pie-in-the-sky.
There are some semantics here to be cleared up. The freedom to trade our time for a better life is extremely important concept. It's NOT BS. When I hire someone to do a job for a price, or I do a job for a price, it's a free exchange, a free will trade.
I understand there are some poorly run governmental forced trades, currency manipulation, and just plain bad management, but dumping the baby out with the bath water is not a good thing.
My business is in the wild world of construction, it is overly regulated, but it's plenty free, a great example of free trade. People freely pay me to do a job. I trade my time for their hard earned money and have to earn their approval by doing a good job.
And you have a contract or handshake that you have looked at ahead of time and that guarantees you a profit at the end of the job. That’s called ‘self interest’.
America has the kind of “free trade” that has us hundreds of billions in the RED each year. That’s called ignorance.
If you used that kind of “free trade” you’d be living on food stamps and Obama phones.
There is very little we can do about the currency manipulation. Nor should we worry about it. In the long run, a strong dollar relatively helps - even as it might hurt a certain segment in the short run.
China’s weak currency has tanked their economy, their markets are down 80%, their malls and apartments are empty. We can’t do a damned thing about it, nor should we. We are doing much better than China now, even as we have massive problems. And again, our President is NOT the President of China, nor can he do much about the China central bank.