I could care less about quid pro quo. I could care less if there are asymetrical trade details that are ostensibly stacked against us. I could care less about fair trade.
I want free trade. And I don’t care how many Americans lose their jobs as a result.
Why do I say such things? Because I know that the jobs won’t be lost but they will be shifted to finance and technology. Because I know our GDP per capita will go up and we will have a stronger military.
The nationalist quest for “fair trade” ultimately leads to a weaker military.
I want free trade. And I don’t care how many Americans lose their jobs as a result.
I happen to care about America’s sinking middle class and can see that ‘free trade” is leading Western nations to the lowest common denominator of the globe. Forgitaboutit.
Your globalist economic religion failed. Many knew tying us up in trade agreements with third would nations and communist nations was going to fail. You make clear that you don’t mind it’s failure (Americans losing their jobs) and you don’t care about the loss of America’s first world status in lifestyle and existence.
Get off your high horse. That old biddy aged and we discovered it is time to put it down before we look like india.
Why do I say such things? Because I know that the jobs won’t be lost but they will be shifted to finance and technology. Because I know our GDP per capita will go up and we will have a stronger military.”
How long does it take to convert people from one industry to another? Do you consider the changeover costs properly? Also, how do you value the regulatory and tax burden differential between countries? Europe pays virtually nothing for its military, because we protect them. This is equivalent to the US creating and destroying trillions of dollars of GDP over 50+ years of NATO. We have lost that amount of realizable commerce in something for which we merely benefited other countries, with a relatively minimal benefit to ourselves.
A similar “benefit” to the US could be had by raising and educating 50 million people to be productive, then summarily killing all of them before they could be produce. Some would say that “at least we refined our educational methods” through their loss, but was this a viable investment for the cost and outcome?
As US citizens become burdens on our country when unemployed (as we are currently set up—we could kill them or force them out of the country to stop the burden), the idea that it's okay they lose productive jobs is pretty crass. If we had no welfare and a more positive business climate, more of these human resources could flow to where they were best used through the industrial changes. However, when we impose so much on our country before we are allowed to trade, we cannot expect a positive benefit from job outflows.
The burdens we have are not reciprocated elsewhere. Perhaps good for them or good for us, but inequities occur that can make most everything more profitable if made or performed in other countries over being made here. We could reduce our overhead on transactions here, try to increase it on others, or pocket some sort of difference during the exchange for the benefit of transactions back into our environment.
I vote for a combination of the first and last options.