[LaineyDee]

China was nothing until we started buying their junk.

Annnnnnddd.......they know there isn't a market for their crap if we don't buy. Check and mate. Gotta luv it.....

[noiseman]

You're right. It's long past time that we realized that access to our consumer market is highly prized, and that it actually represents a product to sell. That is why I think "free traders" are wrong to criticize Trump for his plan to use tariffs to punish American companies that want to offshore their labor, yet still enjoy the benefits of selling the resulting products back into the American market.

Trump is essentially telling them that if they want to screw America by using foreign slave labor and then trying to get those of us who have been screwed to enrich them by buying their products, that they are going to have to pay a very high price in return to enjoy access to our consumer market. I see nothing wrong with that, and in fact when you consider our consumer market to be a product like any other then I fail to see how Trump's approach doesn't simply represent a free market, equitable exchange. If they feel the price of accessing our markets is too high, then they are free to go sell their crap somewhere else, like oh, Botswana.

OR....if they don't like that arrangement, they can instead bring their manufacturing back to the U.S. (once onerous regulations and taxes have been fixed) and stop this race to the bottom of searching for the poorest people on the planet to manufacture everything.