Posted on 04/08/2016 5:51:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
For years, supporters of free trade have been trying to reach a bipartisan consensus on the issue. They've finally succeeded. Free trade is now unpopular in both parties.
Perhaps because I am a conservative, I can at least understand where most conservatives are coming from in their opposition to free trade. Overt displays of nationalism and patriotism (which are not the same thing, by the way) are not merely tolerated on the right, they're often celebrated. Conservative intellectuals openly extol American exceptionalism while liberal intellectuals tend to deride the notion. Virtually no Republican politician agonizes over wearing a U.S. flag pin.
Meanwhile, the left adores cosmopolitanism, the United Nations and what some people call "transnational progressivism," or "one-worldism." Conservatives tend to scoff at all of the above, preferring national sovereignty and the American Way.
Of course, this stuff can go too far. That "freedom fries" business was silly.
Beyond a sincere misunderstanding about how trade works, the emotional case against free trade on the right boils down to "America first."
That phrase -- a favorite of pointedly nationalistic Donald Trump -- has complicated historical connotations, but let's leave all that aside. According to the protectionists, free trade is bad for American workers and some American businesses. America should come first. So we should do whatever is necessary to prevent bad things from happening to Americans. If doing so is bad for non-Americans, that's not our problem.
I think the math on all this is wrong. Free trade is good for most American workers and all American consumers, not just the "one percent." Indeed, it is largely thanks to trade that the average American worker is in the top 1 percent of earners in the world.
The protectionists are also wrong philosophically. Countries don't trade with others countries; businesses and consumers transact with other businesses and consumers. Protectionism is corporate welfare by other means.
But the point is, I get where conservatives are coming from.
I'm more perplexed about where liberals -- and in Bernie Sanders' case, socialists -- are coming from. Last I checked, liberals considered themselves "citizens of the world." Barack Obama's famous campaign speech in Berlin (which was better in the original Esperanto) was all about the need to tear down the walls between nations. For the last decade, liberals in the Democratic Party and the media have invested enormous amounts of time and energy arguing that American citizenship is almost a technicality. The very term "illegal immigrant" is forbidden by most newspaper style guides.
Sanders says that he believes in "fair trade." What he means is that we can't be expected to do business with countries that pay their workers a lot less than we pay our workers. He suggested to the New York Daily News this week that we should have free trade only with countries that have the same wages and environmental policies as us, which is another way of saying we shouldn't trade with poor countries.
In practical terms, Sanders wants to keep billions of (non-white) people poor -- very poor. If America were a flea market, his policy would be akin to saying, "Poor people of color cannot sell their wares here, even if customers want to buy them."
International trade, led by the United States, has resulted in the largest, fastest decrease in extreme poverty in human history. Roughly 700 million Chinese people alone have escaped extreme poverty since 1980, and most of that is attributable to China's decision to embrace the market economy and international trade. Want to keep Africa as poor as possible? Throw up as many trade barriers as you can
Money manipulation (devaluation), strictly forbidden by our trade deals, doesn’t create wealth, rather it creates an uneven playing field by making foreign imports into a country more expensive.
If you are a government bureaucrat or a opinion columnist, your main economic interest in free trade is the continuation of the gravy train of cheap consumer goods.
I'll take the opinion of someone who actually makes something of value over the above.
He didn’t study slave trade as far as I know. But he could have .He studied trade and economics. He is THE expert on the subject from conservative/libertarian point of view.
Marx would not have been a fan.
But, my opinion: Every single country we trade with is going to have practices that we hate, that we despise, religions we find unacceptable, leaders who are corrupt. Our job us to make life better for Americans not Malaysians or any of our trading partners. That’s up to the people of Malaysia and the rest.
Protectionism helps politically connected industries be more competitive. The unions favor it and so does Bernie, Hillary and Donald. But the net result is that it lowers the standard of living of every American.
Doubt that if you like, but it is nevertheless true. And it is your standard of living I’m talking about.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before the Free Traitor™ trash showed up on this thread.
LOL. So you would sell Nazi Germany more cattle cars for the Holocaust. How about if a country starts selling the organs taken from executed political prisoners? Should we buy those, too?
How many pieces of silver would you sell out for?
As for the American standard of living, each “fake free trade” agreement signed leads to where we are now.
As for the TPP, if that gets signed into law, then perhaps it is time for to withdraw consent to be governed and fall back on the cartridge box.
That imbalances in trade create debt is one of the biggest economic fallacies in existence.
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Of course it is. But it is near gospel here at FR.
Teaching Freepers economics is very much like beating your head against the wall. Like Trump, they “Know So Much” but often have no clue as to what they don’t know. Trade policy falls in the latter group. It’s all seat of the pants. It’s all Follow the Pied Piper.
Or, in my case, the likelihood of Donald Trump placing a 35% tariff on Ford F-150's. But hey, that's just specifics.
As for the American standard of living, each “fake free trade” agreement signed leads to where we are now.
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Free Trade Agreement take about 1 page. I’ve never seen one and don’t expect to. I’m not arguing for TPP or anything like it. I’m arguing against adding taxes to an over-taxed American population with tariffs of any sort.
I assume “Free Trade Agreements” are mostly just agreements on tariffs and quotas with some Save the Earth From Global Warming stuff thrown in. I’m against them all. They all hurt us.
“Free trade” is just another scam of the big-government/big-legal criminal complex.
So how long have you been a partner in your law firm?
Again, monetary devaluation doesn’t create wealth, rather it makes US exports more expensive. It’s practiced by most of our trading partners, making them protectionist, and us saps. As to why America doesn’t devalue the $USD, ask Janet Yellen.
You mean, how long have I been a machine operator in an auto parts factory just outside of Detroit? Piss off.
On the last, we agree upon!
“Free trade” is used all the time by politicians, so I assume they use the term to deceive people.
Free trade is one of those things, that I would content exists only be degree. Like any theory, even if the theory is correct, the benefits will decrease the more you deviate from the perfect implementation of the theory.
Free trade within the 50 states is good, but mainly because the gap between states is not as big as the gap between the US and the countries that employ slaves, such as Malaysia. There is some wiggle room between the states; e.g. unions or no unions, so there is room for some experimentation.
The term has gone through so many permutations since that it is almost meaningless.
Yup.
“you tell me whether we have to add or subtract a zero to manipulate the dollar into massive wealth”
Still waiting for your most excellent answer.
Simple enough - while conservatives want a private American capitalist economic sandbox, liberals don't believe in capitalism at all, much less individuals and companies from different countries actually trading with each other and making (horrors) a profit.
“How are you going to do that? “
I don’t know. That’s the major problem with my idea.
Regarding the trade deficit, suppose we bought from China and China never bought from us. The only thing China would be getting from us would be money. It doesn’t matter whether the money was borrowed by the Americans to do the buying. The Chinese end up with a pile of money. That money gives them power. They could spend the money buying our products and services, or they could spend it in other countries, or they could use it to buy properties in America. Overall, not good.
You've got to stop typing and drinking at the same time. Nobody knows what you are talking about.
I sense your frustration. Much like how I feel about low-information Trump supporters.
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