Adam Smith believed in tariffs when trading partners refused to drop theirs.
The idea you can theoretically know what "optimal" results are, is laughable.
The “free market” seems to have morphed into “lots and lots of socialism” — and we see nothing but that all around us.
And, yeah, that stuff is failing.
And I guess the lesson they expect us to learn from this is that free markets are bad and that the solution is “lots and lots of socialism”.
There is also the border/shore foreign ownership blocking provision of the Mexican constitution.
If Canada and the US had similar provisions, the price of housing in Toronto, Vancouver, NYC, Boston, SF and LA would be much less.
Economic systems and social contracts are tied. Capitalism doesn’t work in a command economy because it’s too easy to use force to corrupt it to benefit one group or another.
Social contracts in the West are breaking badly. It’s gone from ‘each of us has a duty to play fair’ to ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’
An example. My cable provider for decades sent techs out who provided a service and also added assistance - being pleasant, hooking up a sound bar, saying ‘a tip isn’t necessary etc. The last three techs (over a period of less than three years) were ‘rough’... and each of them - as a “bid for a tip” offered a ‘free’ extra remote for my TVs. In short, they were offering what didn’t belong to them - at the company’s expense and gave minimum service. That’s a sea change. I’m seeing that in other companies too. Culture and economic system function in sync... or fail.
“Free market” is not really achieved anywhere, due to government controls and regulations
Or alternatively, the US could short circuit China’s cadre strategy by slapping big huge honkin’ tariffs on China.