Oldbear83 said:

---

Good post. Here are my thoughts on the matter, FWIW:

When I was earning my MBA, the big shiny thing was Globalism, or 'Everyone Will Be Pro-American When We All Trade Everything With Each Other, Plus We'll Be Richer'.

Pretty much no one was warning of any potential downside to it. Of course, not every country plays by the same rules, we already saw how Japan set up selected companies to have government protection and support while others did not, or how Russia killed off its experiment in Capitalism and instead became an Oligarchy. And then there is China, which has not been clean in any of its trade deals since I was born.

By now, it's slowly dawning on people that a robust economy needs Agriculture, Heavy Industry, Manufacturing including Tech components, and of course an Information Economy with Creators and Inventors. We need some way to address tech theft by China, India and other actors, protect against Information theft from all around the globe, and take business infrastructure seriously in terms of education, resource planning and trade agreements.

The problem is that Establishment politicians still think it's OK to sell our products and skills to other countries for the price of personal bank accounts. An honest debate about how tariffs could work might open eyes to the threat and possible solutions.

Or we can just keep outsourcing jobs and tell our kids that a degree in Social Justice will lead to a good career.

---

Really good post OB.

I used to be a bonified card carrying Free Trade proselytizer. But the truth is, while all the anti-tariff talk sounds good on the short term level, what we've actually seen is our communities slowly bled dry due to our politicians selling us out to the globalists. Now that's not the only reason but it's been a contributor. Can't expect to drain money from communities and send it overseas and to San Franscisco, and expect your state to prosper.

Funny thing is the dems used to protect the blue collar worker, but since Billary, no one has been looking out for mainstreet America. That is until Trump showed up.

Who was the poster thst was urging everyone that could should move out of America? Something about his wife wouldn't let him or he would become an expat somewhere else in the world.

Same guy that says I should be forced to buy american to protect lazy workers and incompetent companies? Free trade is bad? Unions are to be supported by a consumer that is forced to pay high wages for workers and union bosses. No thanks.

I thought conservatives stood for wages determined by market value bot created to reward poor workmanship and out dated merjods.

FLBear5630 said:

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RD2WINAGNBEAR86 said:

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Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

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Teamsters love tarrifs that try to force Americans to buy their overpriced inferior products.

---

I hate to admit it, my friend, but I agree with you. Tariffs are paid by Americans, American companies, and ultimately the U.S. consumer. They are NOT paid by the exporting countries. They should only be used selectively and sparingly. Tariffs are kinda like beating the crap out of the cat when the dog takes a dump on the living room floor.

---

Tariffs should be used to EVEN the playing field for American Companies. Places like China, Viet Nam, etc have much less labor costs and flooding our market with their products is not in our interest. So, in that case I have no problem with tariffs.

If they are being used to give US Companies a competitive advantage without having to improve quality or keep prices reasonable just because they are American, than I agree. That is not how the free market should work.

---

Great post FLBEAR. We are on the same page here.

One example that stands out to me, is there have been cases of tariffs placed on steel/ aluminum products where there aren't even any U.S. producers. What happens? The products increase in price matching the amount of the tariffs. Yes, tariffs must be used strategically and wisely.

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Who was the poster thst was urging everyone that could should move out of America? Something about his wife wouldn't let him or he would become an expat somewhere else in the world.

Same guy that says I should be forced to buy american to protect lazy workers and incompetent companies? Free trade is bad? Unions are to be supported by a consumer that is forced to pay high wages for workers and union bosses. No thanks.

I thought conservatives stood for wages determined by market value bot created to reward poor workmanship and out dated merjods.

---

Have no idea what or how who that was.

Not sure you understand what you are arguing. Wages here in the states, it's not even close to free market. Good luck passing free marker wage laws, an free market environmental protection, and free market labor laws, free market immigration. Yes, you too can look like a third world country.

The free world, civilized, countries have to practice fair trade, trade with countries with similar health, safety, environment standards. That will lift up the poorer countries because they will still have some competitive advantages in labor and/or resources, but would not be predatory.

So minimum wage raises should reflect t how much the worker need not a market value of his labor. ?? Americans owe the workers a liveable salary??. Steal from the rich and give to the poo??. That doesn't sound like capitalism to me. Who was itc hat said " from each what he can and to each what he needs"?

China practiced isolation isn't for many years. They have struggled to get over it.

Our founding fathers fought for the right to trade freely with other countries.

Freedom, market based wages, unbridled trade. It's capitalism. Manipulating pay scales based on union demands and forcing Americans to pay extra to support union bosses is not capitalism.

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

So minimum wage raises should reflect t how much the worker need not a market value of his labor. Americans owe the workers a liveable salary. Steal from the rich and give to the poor. That doesn't sound like capitalism to me. Who was itc hat said " from each what he can and to each what he needs"?

China practiced isolation isn't for many years. They have struggled to get over it.

Our founding fathers fought for the right to trade freely with other countries.

Freedom, market based wages, unbridled trade. It's capitalism. Manipulating pay scales based on union demands and forcing Americans to pay extra to support union bosses is not capitalism.

---

Sigh, again, minimum wage laws aren't part of a free market. It puts an "unfair" burden on the employer. These wage laws are an artificial mechanism levied against corporations on behalf of the individual citizens. You're proving my point by suggesting workers need pay protection and pay needs an artificial lift.

I see what i did and i corrected it. Your quote has what i originally posted. I went back and added missing punctuation.
I meant wages should be based on what the market will support. In my mind the dems are always pushing for a higher minimum wage. Instead the wage should be based on market value.

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

I must have made a mistake. I meant wages should be based on what the market will support. In my mind the dems are always pushing for a higher minimum wage. Instead the wage should be based on market value.

---

History shows that in a free market and free immigration, the employer has the stronger hand and wages are surpressed.

Imo Free market is more of a guideline than it is a hard and fast rule.

Generally civilized society's citizens vote for laws to ensure these corporations have push some of the profits down so to speak.

So the executives/owners have more power than the workers. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be.

Minimum wage is supposed to help support wage earners entering the market not a crutch for uneducated or poor workers. I guess we will disagree. I choose letting the market determine wages and prices. American industry doesnt need to survive on welfare. Forcing consumers to pay the inflated wages of unions is not right. I guess I value freedom too much.

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

nein51 said:

---

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Gaslightting?

Using tarrifs to try to force Americans to buy poorly made more expensive cars to support over paid union workers is gaslighting? OK daddio.

---

The larger problem with tariffs is that they shift the burden to the consumer and off the corporation. They drive up prices of everything, especially when they are in manufacturing, as the downstream is almost impossible to measure.

---

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is not the problem.

In today's day and age, Free Trade is not the standard for a Capitalist society founded on principles. Fair Trade is the standard. American corporations cannot use child labor here in the states, but they can procure from countries that do use child labor. American corporations have pollution standards here in the states, but yet they can buy from countries that have no standards. Currently the American worker is competing against slave labor, child labor, dirty labor, etc. By law, they have no chance to even build something at a similar cost. Nor should they. American companies can compete against anyone on a civilized basis, but it can't easily compete against child labor or dirty labor for obvious reasons.

Passing laws that promote fair trade practices is difficult. Tariffs are difficult as well because the masses have been taught that protectionary tariffs are inherently bad. This of course seems true, but it's not necessarily true in the long term. Globalism has raped (strong word) our communities by moving wealth out or up (out of the country/communities and up to the wealthy global corporations). That's been the true transfer of wealth in this country. So we've exchanged our communities and schools for cheap China goods over the long term. Had the civilized world practiced fair trade over pursuing unabated predatory trade, our communities standard of living would be much greater. But people continue to believe that we'd go broke otherwise. that's Just not true.

I know free trade is a religion, and as a conservative I'll be in the minority here preaching the virtues of fair trade. Standard of living is one measurement, but we have no way to know where we'd be today if we'd practiced moderated tariffs that protected American workers from predatory countries. But I think if we're honest, the difficult to measure "quality of life", even with all our cheap stuff, is less than what we imagined it should be or even less than what people experienced in the 80s or even 90s.

---

you are talking about the key point here = there is no such thing as free trade. Never has been. Never will be. Every trade agreement is negotiated between two governments. That's not "free trade" in the classical sense of the term. The entire focus of "globalism" was to build "freeER trade," to lower tariffs, to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade. that's all well & good. But there were an awful lot of non-market forces (bureaucrats and lobbyists) involved in the process of hammering out a "free trade agreement."

Free Trade is an economic concept. More of it, the theory goes, will increase wealth for both countries (meaning, in the macroeconomic sense, each COUNTRY will gain more wealth with freeER trade than with less free trade.) But below that topline increase & wealth, (the theory also goes) there are winners & losers within each country = creative destruction. Free trade will force the reallocation of resources from inefficient industries (like US steel production) to more efficient industries (financial services, tech, etc....) The nation benefits on balance by some parts of the country generating enormous wealth (like Silicon Valley) while other parts of it get crushed (like the Rust Belt).

What free trade proposes to do, in theory, is let the market determine winners & losers. The problem happens when the theory meets reality = free trade agreements are not negotiated by market forces; they are negotiated by government officials. So you have to look at free trade not as an end in & of itself but rather a dynamic that is a net macroeconomic benefit which must pass the common good standard. And the common good standard is politics, not economics.

whiterock
BBA World Trade 1982
Masters International Management 1984

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

So the executives/owners have more power than the workers. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be.

Minimum wage is supposed to help support wage earners entering the market not a crutch for uneducated or poor workers. I guess we will disagree. I choose letting the market determine wages and prices. American industry doesnt need to survive on welfare. Forcing consumers to pay the inflated wages of unions is not right. I guess I value freedom too much.

---

Thanks and I get it, we all love freedom and liberty. We'll at least the libertarians and conservatives here do. But free market extends to many economic levers, not just wages. If corporations had freedom to do whatever they want, I'm not sure you would like the results in your communities.

NEWS: Teamsters VP-at-Large, John Palmer, who has been extremely critical of current President O’Brien’s overtures towards the GOP, has just announced he’s forming an opposition slate and running for president in the 2026 Teamsters leadership election. “We are better than this.” pic.twitter.com/f8wOrojhp7

— Kim Kelly (@GrimKim) July 19, 2024

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

I prefer capitalism and free market. If you want to subsidize incompetence go ahead.

---

Neither ever existed.

FTR, I love the idea as much as you do.

whiterock said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

nein51 said:

---

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Gaslightting?

Using tarrifs to try to force Americans to buy poorly made more expensive cars to support over paid union workers is gaslighting? OK daddio.

---

The larger problem with tariffs is that they shift the burden to the consumer and off the corporation. They drive up prices of everything, especially when they are in manufacturing, as the downstream is almost impossible to measure.

---

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is not the problem.

In today's day and age, Free Trade is not the standard for a Capitalist society founded on principles. Fair Trade is the standard. American corporations cannot use child labor here in the states, but they can procure from countries that do use child labor. American corporations have pollution standards here in the states, but yet they can buy from countries that have no standards. Currently the American worker is competing against slave labor, child labor, dirty labor, etc. By law, they have no chance to even build something at a similar cost. Nor should they. American companies can compete against anyone on a civilized basis, but it can't easily compete against child labor or dirty labor for obvious reasons.

Passing laws that promote fair trade practices is difficult. Tariffs are difficult as well because the masses have been taught that protectionary tariffs are inherently bad. This of course seems true, but it's not necessarily true in the long term. Globalism has raped (strong word) our communities by moving wealth out or up (out of the country/communities and up to the wealthy global corporations). That's been the true transfer of wealth in this country. So we've exchanged our communities and schools for cheap China goods over the long term. Had the civilized world practiced fair trade over pursuing unabated predatory trade, our communities standard of living would be much greater. But people continue to believe that we'd go broke otherwise. that's Just not true.

I know free trade is a religion, and as a conservative I'll be in the minority here preaching the virtues of fair trade. Standard of living is one measurement, but we have no way to know where we'd be today if we'd practiced moderated tariffs that protected American workers from predatory countries. But I think if we're honest, the difficult to measure "quality of life", even with all our cheap stuff, is less than what we imagined it should be or even less than what people experienced in the 80s or even 90s.

---

you are talking about the key point here = there is no such thing as free trade. Never has been. Never will be. Every trade agreement is negotiated between two governments. That's not "free trade" in the classical sense of the term. The entire focus of "globalism" was to build "freeER trade," to lower tariffs, to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade. that's all well & good. But there were an awful lot of non-market forces (bureaucrats and lobbyists) involved in the process of hammering out a "free trade agreement."

Free Trade is an economic concept. More of it, the theory goes, will increase wealth for both countries (meaning, in the macroeconomic sense, each COUNTRY will gain more wealth with freeER trade than with less free trade.) But below that topline increase & wealth, (the theory also goes) there are winners & losers within each country = creative destruction. Free trade will force the reallocation of resources from inefficient industries (like US steel production) to more efficient industries (financial services, tech, etc....) The nation benefits on balance by some parts of the country generating enormous wealth (like Silicon Valley) while other parts of it get crushed (like the Rust Belt).

What free trade proposes to do, in theory, is let the market determine winners & losers. The problem happens when the theory meets reality = free trade agreements are not negotiated by market forces; they are negotiated by government officials. So you have to look at free trade not as an end in & of itself but rather a dynamic that is a net macroeconomic benefit which must pass the common good standard. And the common good standard is politics, not economics.

whiterock
BBA World Trade 1982
Masters International Management 1984

---

Well said

BBA Fin 1986
MBA Intl Finance Anderson School UCLA

OldBurlyBear86 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

nein51 said:

---

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Gaslightting?

Using tarrifs to try to force Americans to buy poorly made more expensive cars to support over paid union workers is gaslighting? OK daddio.

---

The larger problem with tariffs is that they shift the burden to the consumer and off the corporation. They drive up prices of everything, especially when they are in manufacturing, as the downstream is almost impossible to measure.

---

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is not the problem.

In today's day and age, Free Trade is not the standard for a Capitalist society founded on principles. Fair Trade is the standard. American corporations cannot use child labor here in the states, but they can procure from countries that do use child labor. American corporations have pollution standards here in the states, but yet they can buy from countries that have no standards. Currently the American worker is competing against slave labor, child labor, dirty labor, etc. By law, they have no chance to even build something at a similar cost. Nor should they. American companies can compete against anyone on a civilized basis, but it can't easily compete against child labor or dirty labor for obvious reasons.

Passing laws that promote fair trade practices is difficult. Tariffs are difficult as well because the masses have been taught that protectionary tariffs are inherently bad. This of course seems true, but it's not necessarily true in the long term. Globalism has raped (strong word) our communities by moving wealth out or up (out of the country/communities and up to the wealthy global corporations). That's been the true transfer of wealth in this country. So we've exchanged our communities and schools for cheap China goods over the long term. Had the civilized world practiced fair trade over pursuing unabated predatory trade, our communities standard of living would be much greater. But people continue to believe that we'd go broke otherwise. that's Just not true.

I know free trade is a religion, and as a conservative I'll be in the minority here preaching the virtues of fair trade. Standard of living is one measurement, but we have no way to know where we'd be today if we'd practiced moderated tariffs that protected American workers from predatory countries. But I think if we're honest, the difficult to measure "quality of life", even with all our cheap stuff, is less than what we imagined it should be or even less than what people experienced in the 80s or even 90s.

---

you are talking about the key point here = there is no such thing as free trade. Never has been. Never will be. Every trade agreement is negotiated between two governments. That's not "free trade" in the classical sense of the term. The entire focus of "globalism" was to build "freeER trade," to lower tariffs, to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade. that's all well & good. But there were an awful lot of non-market forces (bureaucrats and lobbyists) involved in the process of hammering out a "free trade agreement."

Free Trade is an economic concept. More of it, the theory goes, will increase wealth for both countries (meaning, in the macroeconomic sense, each COUNTRY will gain more wealth with freeER trade than with less free trade.) But below that topline increase & wealth, (the theory also goes) there are winners & losers within each country = creative destruction. Free trade will force the reallocation of resources from inefficient industries (like US steel production) to more efficient industries (financial services, tech, etc....) The nation benefits on balance by some parts of the country generating enormous wealth (like Silicon Valley) while other parts of it get crushed (like the Rust Belt).

What free trade proposes to do, in theory, is let the market determine winners & losers. The problem happens when the theory meets reality = free trade agreements are not negotiated by market forces; they are negotiated by government officials. So you have to look at free trade not as an end in & of itself but rather a dynamic that is a net macroeconomic benefit which must pass the common good standard. And the common good standard is politics, not economics.

whiterock
BBA World Trade 1982
Masters International Management 1984

---

Well said

BBA Fin 1986
MBA Intl Finance Anderson School UCLA

---

Indeed

Midway HS 1971
Richfield HS 1971 Fall Semester and parts of Spring 72

.@realDonaldTrump is a scab and a billionaire and that's who he represents.

We know which side we're on.

Not his.

— UAW (@UAW) July 19, 2024

Assassin said:

---

OldBurlyBear86 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

nein51 said:

---

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Gaslightting?

Using tarrifs to try to force Americans to buy poorly made more expensive cars to support over paid union workers is gaslighting? OK daddio.

---

The larger problem with tariffs is that they shift the burden to the consumer and off the corporation. They drive up prices of everything, especially when they are in manufacturing, as the downstream is almost impossible to measure.

---

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is not the problem.

In today's day and age, Free Trade is not the standard for a Capitalist society founded on principles. Fair Trade is the standard. American corporations cannot use child labor here in the states, but they can procure from countries that do use child labor. American corporations have pollution standards here in the states, but yet they can buy from countries that have no standards. Currently the American worker is competing against slave labor, child labor, dirty labor, etc. By law, they have no chance to even build something at a similar cost. Nor should they. American companies can compete against anyone on a civilized basis, but it can't easily compete against child labor or dirty labor for obvious reasons.

Passing laws that promote fair trade practices is difficult. Tariffs are difficult as well because the masses have been taught that protectionary tariffs are inherently bad. This of course seems true, but it's not necessarily true in the long term. Globalism has raped (strong word) our communities by moving wealth out or up (out of the country/communities and up to the wealthy global corporations). That's been the true transfer of wealth in this country. So we've exchanged our communities and schools for cheap China goods over the long term. Had the civilized world practiced fair trade over pursuing unabated predatory trade, our communities standard of living would be much greater. But people continue to believe that we'd go broke otherwise. that's Just not true.

I know free trade is a religion, and as a conservative I'll be in the minority here preaching the virtues of fair trade. Standard of living is one measurement, but we have no way to know where we'd be today if we'd practiced moderated tariffs that protected American workers from predatory countries. But I think if we're honest, the difficult to measure "quality of life", even with all our cheap stuff, is less than what we imagined it should be or even less than what people experienced in the 80s or even 90s.

---

you are talking about the key point here = there is no such thing as free trade. Never has been. Never will be. Every trade agreement is negotiated between two governments. That's not "free trade" in the classical sense of the term. The entire focus of "globalism" was to build "freeER trade," to lower tariffs, to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade. that's all well & good. But there were an awful lot of non-market forces (bureaucrats and lobbyists) involved in the process of hammering out a "free trade agreement."

Free Trade is an economic concept. More of it, the theory goes, will increase wealth for both countries (meaning, in the macroeconomic sense, each COUNTRY will gain more wealth with freeER trade than with less free trade.) But below that topline increase & wealth, (the theory also goes) there are winners & losers within each country = creative destruction. Free trade will force the reallocation of resources from inefficient industries (like US steel production) to more efficient industries (financial services, tech, etc....) The nation benefits on balance by some parts of the country generating enormous wealth (like Silicon Valley) while other parts of it get crushed (like the Rust Belt).

What free trade proposes to do, in theory, is let the market determine winners & losers. The problem happens when the theory meets reality = free trade agreements are not negotiated by market forces; they are negotiated by government officials. So you have to look at free trade not as an end in & of itself but rather a dynamic that is a net macroeconomic benefit which must pass the common good standard. And the common good standard is politics, not economics.

whiterock
BBA World Trade 1982
Masters International Management 1984

---

Well said

BBA Fin 1986
MBA Intl Finance Anderson School UCLA

---

Indeed

Midway HS 1971
Richfield HS 1971 Fall Semester and parts of Spring 72

---

Hard Nocks - post doc; ongoing

Assassin said:

---

OldBurlyBear86 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

nein51 said:

---

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Gaslightting?

Using tarrifs to try to force Americans to buy poorly made more expensive cars to support over paid union workers is gaslighting? OK daddio.

---

The larger problem with tariffs is that they shift the burden to the consumer and off the corporation. They drive up prices of everything, especially when they are in manufacturing, as the downstream is almost impossible to measure.

---

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is not the problem.

In today's day and age, Free Trade is not the standard for a Capitalist society founded on principles. Fair Trade is the standard. American corporations cannot use child labor here in the states, but they can procure from countries that do use child labor. American corporations have pollution standards here in the states, but yet they can buy from countries that have no standards. Currently the American worker is competing against slave labor, child labor, dirty labor, etc. By law, they have no chance to even build something at a similar cost. Nor should they. American companies can compete against anyone on a civilized basis, but it can't easily compete against child labor or dirty labor for obvious reasons.

Passing laws that promote fair trade practices is difficult. Tariffs are difficult as well because the masses have been taught that protectionary tariffs are inherently bad. This of course seems true, but it's not necessarily true in the long term. Globalism has raped (strong word) our communities by moving wealth out or up (out of the country/communities and up to the wealthy global corporations). That's been the true transfer of wealth in this country. So we've exchanged our communities and schools for cheap China goods over the long term. Had the civilized world practiced fair trade over pursuing unabated predatory trade, our communities standard of living would be much greater. But people continue to believe that we'd go broke otherwise. that's Just not true.

I know free trade is a religion, and as a conservative I'll be in the minority here preaching the virtues of fair trade. Standard of living is one measurement, but we have no way to know where we'd be today if we'd practiced moderated tariffs that protected American workers from predatory countries. But I think if we're honest, the difficult to measure "quality of life", even with all our cheap stuff, is less than what we imagined it should be or even less than what people experienced in the 80s or even 90s.

---

you are talking about the key point here = there is no such thing as free trade. Never has been. Never will be. Every trade agreement is negotiated between two governments. That's not "free trade" in the classical sense of the term. The entire focus of "globalism" was to build "freeER trade," to lower tariffs, to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade. that's all well & good. But there were an awful lot of non-market forces (bureaucrats and lobbyists) involved in the process of hammering out a "free trade agreement."

Free Trade is an economic concept. More of it, the theory goes, will increase wealth for both countries (meaning, in the macroeconomic sense, each COUNTRY will gain more wealth with freeER trade than with less free trade.) But below that topline increase & wealth, (the theory also goes) there are winners & losers within each country = creative destruction. Free trade will force the reallocation of resources from inefficient industries (like US steel production) to more efficient industries (financial services, tech, etc....) The nation benefits on balance by some parts of the country generating enormous wealth (like Silicon Valley) while other parts of it get crushed (like the Rust Belt).

What free trade proposes to do, in theory, is let the market determine winners & losers. The problem happens when the theory meets reality = free trade agreements are not negotiated by market forces; they are negotiated by government officials. So you have to look at free trade not as an end in & of itself but rather a dynamic that is a net macroeconomic benefit which must pass the common good standard. And the common good standard is politics, not economics.

whiterock
BBA World Trade 1982
Masters International Management 1984

---

Well said

BBA Fin 1986
MBA Intl Finance Anderson School UCLA

---

Indeed

Midway HS 1971
Richfield HS 1971 Fall Semester and parts of Spring 72

---

Indeed to your indeed to his well done to his insightful comment on my insightful comment replying to someone else's emotional yet less insightful comment.

High School, last century
Economics BBA, last century
Finance Masters, last century
Common Sense, lifetime, learned and earned

Assassin said:

---

OldBurlyBear86 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

nein51 said:

---

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Gaslightting?

Using tarrifs to try to force Americans to buy poorly made more expensive cars to support over paid union workers is gaslighting? OK daddio.

---

The larger problem with tariffs is that they shift the burden to the consumer and off the corporation. They drive up prices of everything, especially when they are in manufacturing, as the downstream is almost impossible to measure.

---

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is not the problem.

In today's day and age, Free Trade is not the standard for a Capitalist society founded on principles. Fair Trade is the standard. American corporations cannot use child labor here in the states, but they can procure from countries that do use child labor. American corporations have pollution standards here in the states, but yet they can buy from countries that have no standards. Currently the American worker is competing against slave labor, child labor, dirty labor, etc. By law, they have no chance to even build something at a similar cost. Nor should they. American companies can compete against anyone on a civilized basis, but it can't easily compete against child labor or dirty labor for obvious reasons.

Passing laws that promote fair trade practices is difficult. Tariffs are difficult as well because the masses have been taught that protectionary tariffs are inherently bad. This of course seems true, but it's not necessarily true in the long term. Globalism has raped (strong word) our communities by moving wealth out or up (out of the country/communities and up to the wealthy global corporations). That's been the true transfer of wealth in this country. So we've exchanged our communities and schools for cheap China goods over the long term. Had the civilized world practiced fair trade over pursuing unabated predatory trade, our communities standard of living would be much greater. But people continue to believe that we'd go broke otherwise. that's Just not true.

I know free trade is a religion, and as a conservative I'll be in the minority here preaching the virtues of fair trade. Standard of living is one measurement, but we have no way to know where we'd be today if we'd practiced moderated tariffs that protected American workers from predatory countries. But I think if we're honest, the difficult to measure "quality of life", even with all our cheap stuff, is less than what we imagined it should be or even less than what people experienced in the 80s or even 90s.

---

you are talking about the key point here = there is no such thing as free trade. Never has been. Never will be. Every trade agreement is negotiated between two governments. That's not "free trade" in the classical sense of the term. The entire focus of "globalism" was to build "freeER trade," to lower tariffs, to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade. that's all well & good. But there were an awful lot of non-market forces (bureaucrats and lobbyists) involved in the process of hammering out a "free trade agreement."

Free Trade is an economic concept. More of it, the theory goes, will increase wealth for both countries (meaning, in the macroeconomic sense, each COUNTRY will gain more wealth with freeER trade than with less free trade.) But below that topline increase & wealth, (the theory also goes) there are winners & losers within each country = creative destruction. Free trade will force the reallocation of resources from inefficient industries (like US steel production) to more efficient industries (financial services, tech, etc....) The nation benefits on balance by some parts of the country generating enormous wealth (like Silicon Valley) while other parts of it get crushed (like the Rust Belt).

What free trade proposes to do, in theory, is let the market determine winners & losers. The problem happens when the theory meets reality = free trade agreements are not negotiated by market forces; they are negotiated by government officials. So you have to look at free trade not as an end in & of itself but rather a dynamic that is a net macroeconomic benefit which must pass the common good standard. And the common good standard is politics, not economics.

whiterock
BBA World Trade 1982
Masters International Management 1984

---

Well said

BBA Fin 1986
MBA Intl Finance Anderson School UCLA

---

Indeed

Midway HS 1971
Richfield HS 1971 Fall Semester and parts of Spring 72

---

71?

They just don't teach abacus like they used to.

LIB,MR BEARS said:

---

Assassin said:

---

OldBurlyBear86 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

nein51 said:

---

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Gaslightting?

Using tarrifs to try to force Americans to buy poorly made more expensive cars to support over paid union workers is gaslighting? OK daddio.

---

The larger problem with tariffs is that they shift the burden to the consumer and off the corporation. They drive up prices of everything, especially when they are in manufacturing, as the downstream is almost impossible to measure.

---

That's certainly part of the problem, but it is not the problem.

In today's day and age, Free Trade is not the standard for a Capitalist society founded on principles. Fair Trade is the standard. American corporations cannot use child labor here in the states, but they can procure from countries that do use child labor. American corporations have pollution standards here in the states, but yet they can buy from countries that have no standards. Currently the American worker is competing against slave labor, child labor, dirty labor, etc. By law, they have no chance to even build something at a similar cost. Nor should they. American companies can compete against anyone on a civilized basis, but it can't easily compete against child labor or dirty labor for obvious reasons.

Passing laws that promote fair trade practices is difficult. Tariffs are difficult as well because the masses have been taught that protectionary tariffs are inherently bad. This of course seems true, but it's not necessarily true in the long term. Globalism has raped (strong word) our communities by moving wealth out or up (out of the country/communities and up to the wealthy global corporations). That's been the true transfer of wealth in this country. So we've exchanged our communities and schools for cheap China goods over the long term. Had the civilized world practiced fair trade over pursuing unabated predatory trade, our communities standard of living would be much greater. But people continue to believe that we'd go broke otherwise. that's Just not true.

I know free trade is a religion, and as a conservative I'll be in the minority here preaching the virtues of fair trade. Standard of living is one measurement, but we have no way to know where we'd be today if we'd practiced moderated tariffs that protected American workers from predatory countries. But I think if we're honest, the difficult to measure "quality of life", even with all our cheap stuff, is less than what we imagined it should be or even less than what people experienced in the 80s or even 90s.

---

you are talking about the key point here = there is no such thing as free trade. Never has been. Never will be. Every trade agreement is negotiated between two governments. That's not "free trade" in the classical sense of the term. The entire focus of "globalism" was to build "freeER trade," to lower tariffs, to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade. that's all well & good. But there were an awful lot of non-market forces (bureaucrats and lobbyists) involved in the process of hammering out a "free trade agreement."

Free Trade is an economic concept. More of it, the theory goes, will increase wealth for both countries (meaning, in the macroeconomic sense, each COUNTRY will gain more wealth with freeER trade than with less free trade.) But below that topline increase & wealth, (the theory also goes) there are winners & losers within each country = creative destruction. Free trade will force the reallocation of resources from inefficient industries (like US steel production) to more efficient industries (financial services, tech, etc....) The nation benefits on balance by some parts of the country generating enormous wealth (like Silicon Valley) while other parts of it get crushed (like the Rust Belt).

What free trade proposes to do, in theory, is let the market determine winners & losers. The problem happens when the theory meets reality = free trade agreements are not negotiated by market forces; they are negotiated by government officials. So you have to look at free trade not as an end in & of itself but rather a dynamic that is a net macroeconomic benefit which must pass the common good standard. And the common good standard is politics, not economics.

whiterock
BBA World Trade 1982
Masters International Management 1984

---

Well said

BBA Fin 1986
MBA Intl Finance Anderson School UCLA

---

Indeed

Midway HS 1971
Richfield HS 1971 Fall Semester and parts of Spring 72

---

71?

They just don't teach abacus like they used to.

---

No, but the stone tablets that we used were rocking!

KaiBear said:

---

Tariffs protected American jobs, companies and our standard of living for many decades.

Only after the end of WW2 did we lose our common sense in this regard.

Hope Trump gets elected and restores most tariffs.

The price increases are worth it.

---

Actually they nearly crushed our country and it took a world war with its immense manufacturing requirement to pull us out.

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

ATL Bear said:

---

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

---

I'm not disagreeing with you exactly. I believe protectionism can be harmful and needs to be carefully managed, whether it's quotas or tariffs.

No one was suggesting that child labor and slave wages internationally would kill the American economy. Our economy is massive. Only that those predatory practices have a negative impact, and that American blue-collar workers should not have to compete against them.

Tariffs do go to the government, but they also protect industries. That money can be used to reduce taxes elsewhere (wishful thinking).

There is a cost to killing off industries to our communities. We have no way to measure are we better off without them because we only know that the American economy is huge and continues on.

Just no good way to draw any real conclusions that we're better off today than we would have been if the free world refused to buy into the notion that free trade with predatory nations is a win-win.

The fact is the US is one of the most resource rich nations in the history of the planet, yet our citizens are living in debt, have low savings, can't "afford" college educations, and the population continues to expand into communities y that can't actually absorb the burden. Wages have been suppressed through planned and unplanned inflation. All this works well for the educated establishment but doesn't work well for Mainstreet America. Money always flowing up and out doesn't fully trickle back down to the middle class.

Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

So the executives/owners have more power than the workers. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be.

Minimum wage is supposed to help support wage earners entering the market not a crutch for uneducated or poor workers. I guess we will disagree. I choose letting the market determine wages and prices. American industry doesnt need to survive on welfare. Forcing consumers to pay the inflated wages of unions is not right. I guess I value freedom too much.

---

good post

boognish_bear said:

---

.@realDonaldTrump is a scab and a billionaire and that's who he represents.

We know which side we're on.

Not his.

— UAW (@UAW) July 19, 2024

---

And if Dems keep power good paying jobs will continue to be lost overseas.

We are an amusing species.

KaiBear said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

.@realDonaldTrump is a scab and a billionaire and that's who he represents.

We know which side we're on.

Not his.

— UAW (@UAW) July 19, 2024

---

And if Dems keep power good paying jobs will continue to be lost overseas.

We are an amusing species.

---

Yep, they choose Dems selling out blue collar workers to billionaire globalist over a proven Mainstreet advocate and populist. Democrat voters are laughable.

ATL Bear said:

---

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

---

China has 12x the steel production capacity we do. That's at problem. It's not entirely because of market forces, but the parsing of reasons is only useful in determining how to remedy the problem. We are no longer the arsenal of democracy. In a major world war, the template for which is already in view, we will be at a decided disadvantage. Our technological edge has been eroded, and one of the overriding lessons of the Russo-Ukraine War is that the smart-stuff is going to run out pretty quickly and more common ordnance items are going to dominate the battlefield on most days. We are not where we need to be to win that kind of conflict.

I sit on a church pew with my old economics professor (now retired). He's still a die-hard old free trader. I understand the argument, and as noted above agree with it IN THEORY. It does maximize wealth. And at least as far as economic models go, where the wealth comes from doesn't matter. Wealth is wealth. But the free-trader arguments are not the entirety of the arguments. Other things matter, too. What good does it do to maximize wealth if you cannot defend it? The pure free traders, particularly the academics, are more correctly viewed extremists. They reflexively ignore all other factors to defend free trade as a moral imperative. Reality is, we've got to treat certain industries as national assets and ensure they not just exist, but thrive in scale large enough to themselves pose a deterrent.

All China has to do is survive the initial maneuver phase of the war and let it turn conventional. Then the tectonic forces are mostly in their favor. But if we had steel production parity (for example), they could not count on the long game. a national policy of quadrupling US steel production would provide as much deterrence than dozens of divisions in uniform, or an additional 100 ships in the Navy, or an additional thousand fighter/bomber aircraft.

It wasn't that the Spanish Armada ended up on the bottom of the English Channel that doomed the Spanish Empire to terminal decline. It was that Spain did not have the ability to recreate the Armada that ended Spain's glory. They accumulated that fleet over a long period of time. And then could afford to replace it. Russia is facing that fate in Ukraine with their enormous stores of arty and armor. And we are facing it in the Pacific vis-a-vis China. The difference between us and Spain & Russia is......we have the time and the wealth to do what we need to do. We just have to get serious and make the necessary commitments. And that will involve quite a bit more protectionism than we employed in the Cold War.

Globalism in its time and place made sense. It allowed us to quickly rebuild Western nations and build a big enough stable of 2nd & 3rd world allies to win the Cold War. But it came at a cost. It withered our industrial base in favor of service industries. That cost was worth paying to win the Cold War. Now we face different circumstances. We have to be open minded about the requirements for the future, foremost of which is returning manufacturing to the United States of America.

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

---

I'm not disagreeing with you exactly. I believe protectionism can be harmful and needs to be carefully managed, whether it's quotas or tariffs.

No one was suggesting that child labor and slave wages internationally would kill the American economy. Our economy is massive. Only that those predatory practices have a negative impact, and that American blue-collar workers should not have to compete against them.

Tariffs do go to the government, but they also protect industries. That money can be used to reduce taxes elsewhere (wishful thinking).

There is a cost to killing off industries to our communities. We have no way to measure are we better off without them because we only know that the American economy is huge and continues on.

Just no good way to draw any real conclusions that we're better off today than we would have been if the free world refused to buy into the notion that free trade with predatory nations is a win-win.

The fact is the US is one of the most resource rich nations in the history of the planet, yet our citizens are living in debt, have low savings, can't "afford" college educations, and the population continues to expand into communities y that can't actually absorb the burden. Wages have been suppressed through planned and unplanned inflation. All this works well for the educated establishment but doesn't work well for Mainstreet America. Money always flowing up and out doesn't fully trickle back down to the middle class.

---

There's a very good way to draw conclusions about free trade, even with "predatory nations". Economic growth, standards of living, technology, lower cost goods, access to capital and markets, logistics, and employment are monumentally better domestically and globally thanks to free trade.

We've killed off local industries under difficult regulatory environments, poor investment decisions, and a multi tiered human resource problem. So when you add tariffs to the equation you aren't protecting industry, you're subsidizing the inefficiencies and bad behaviors that keep them overpriced and non competitive while compounding the cost to the Americans. There's an economic cascade of this type of protectionism that harms more Americans than the objective of helping a job type or industry. For example if you say you're protecting 300,000 auto worker jobs with a tariff, you raise the costs to 10's of millions of Americans. That's a poor trade off.

One thing you did hit on that's important is natural resources. You are correct about that, but going back to the regulatory issues, we as a country have decided national parks and protecting furry and feathered animals are more important than maximizing our natural resource outputs. That kills jobs and creates foreign dependence.

As far as Americans in debt, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We decided that social economics will revolve around consumerism, and as we've had the privilege of being at the fore front of "the latest and greatest" of everything brought to market, and unrivaled access to credit and capital, we've built our standards of living around the pursuits thereof, and not financial prudence. We've taken our privilege and turned it into an entitled expectation and not a sacrificial pursuit.

There are a number of real solutions to these problems, but I'm not sure we have the collective fortitude to address them. And so the politicians play to our emotions by touting lazy, simplistic and ineffective answers like tariffs while pointing the fingers away from the real culprits, us.

ATL Bear said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

---

I'm not disagreeing with you exactly. I believe protectionism can be harmful and needs to be carefully managed, whether it's quotas or tariffs.

No one was suggesting that child labor and slave wages internationally would kill the American economy. Our economy is massive. Only that those predatory practices have a negative impact, and that American blue-collar workers should not have to compete against them.

Tariffs do go to the government, but they also protect industries. That money can be used to reduce taxes elsewhere (wishful thinking).

There is a cost to killing off industries to our communities. We have no way to measure are we better off without them because we only know that the American economy is huge and continues on.

Just no good way to draw any real conclusions that we're better off today than we would have been if the free world refused to buy into the notion that free trade with predatory nations is a win-win.

The fact is the US is one of the most resource rich nations in the history of the planet, yet our citizens are living in debt, have low savings, can't "afford" college educations, and the population continues to expand into communities y that can't actually absorb the burden. Wages have been suppressed through planned and unplanned inflation. All this works well for the educated establishment but doesn't work well for Mainstreet America. Money always flowing up and out doesn't fully trickle back down to the middle class.

---

There's a very good way to draw conclusions about free trade, even with "predatory nations". Economic growth, standards of living, technology, lower cost goods, access to capital and markets, logistics, and employment are monumentally better domestically and globally thanks to free trade.

We've killed off local industries under difficult regulatory environments, poor investment decisions, and a multi tiered human resource problem. So when you add tariffs to the equation you aren't protecting industry, you're subsidizing the inefficiencies and bad behaviors that keep them overpriced and non competitive while compounding the cost to the Americans. There's an economic cascade of this type of protectionism that harms more Americans than the objective of helping a job type or industry. For example if you say you're protecting 300,000 auto worker jobs with a tariff, you raise the costs to 10's of millions of Americans. That's a poor trade off.

One thing you did hit on that's important is natural resources. You are correct about that, but going back to the regulatory issues, we as a country have decided national parks and protecting furry and feathered animals are more important than maximizing our natural resource outputs. That kills jobs and creates foreign dependence.

As far as Americans in debt, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We decided that social economics will revolve around consumerism, and as we've had the privilege of being at the fore front of "the latest and greatest" of everything brought to market, and unrivaled access to credit and capital, we've built our standards of living around the pursuits thereof, and not financial prudence. We've taken our privilege and turned it into an entitled expectation and not a sacrificial pursuit.

There are a number of real solutions to these problems, but I'm not sure we have the collective fortitude to address them. And so the politicians play to our emotions by touting lazy, simplistic and ineffective answers like tariffs while pointing the fingers away from the real culprits, us.

---

So, all this is 47's fault?

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

---

China has 12x the steel production capacity we do. That's at problem. It's not entirely because of market forces, but the parsing of reasons is only useful in determining how to remedy the problem. We are no longer the arsenal of democracy. In a major world war, the template for which is already in view, we will be at a decided disadvantage. Our technological edge has been eroded, and one of the overriding lessons of the Russo-Ukraine War is that the smart-stuff is going to run out pretty quickly and more common ordnance items are going to dominate the battlefield on most days. We are not where we need to be to win that kind of conflict.

I sit on a church pew with my old economics professor (now retired). He's still a die-hard old free trader. I understand the argument, and as noted above agree with it IN THEORY. It does maximize wealth. And at least as far as economic models go, where the wealth comes from doesn't matter. Wealth is wealth. But the free-trader arguments are not the entirety of the arguments. Other things matter, too. What good does it do to maximize wealth if you cannot defend it? The pure free traders, particularly the academics, are more correctly viewed extremists. They reflexively ignore all other factors to defend free trade as a moral imperative. Reality is, we've got to treat certain industries as national assets and ensure they not just exist, but thrive in scale large enough to themselves pose a deterrent.

All China has to do is survive the initial maneuver phase of the war and let it turn conventional. Then the tectonic forces are mostly in their favor. But if we had steel production parity (for example), they could not count on the long game. a national policy of quadrupling US steel production would provide as much deterrence than dozens of divisions in uniform, or an additional 100 ships in the Navy, or an additional thousand fighter/bomber aircraft.

It wasn't that the Spanish Armada ended up on the bottom of the English Channel that doomed the Spanish Empire to terminal decline. It was that Spain did not have the ability to recreate the Armada that ended Spain's glory. They accumulated that fleet over a long period of time. And then could afford to replace it. Russia is facing that fate in Ukraine with their enormous stores of arty and armor. And we are facing it in the Pacific vis-a-vis China. The difference between us and Spain & Russia is......we have the time and the wealth to do what we need to do. We just have to get serious and make the necessary commitments. And that will involve quite a bit more protectionism than we employed in the Cold War.

Globalism in its time and place made sense. It allowed us to quickly rebuild Western nations and build a big enough stable of 2nd & 3rd world allies to win the Cold War. But it came at a cost. It withered our industrial base in favor of service industries. That cost was worth paying to win the Cold War. Now we face different circumstances. We have to be open minded about the requirements for the future, foremost of which is returning manufacturing to the United States of America.

---

I'm all for bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., just not on *******ized terms of unnecessary higher prices and our historical inefficiencies. This isn't some theoretical academic discussion, but an actual real world practicality. I've said many times how we can't do, or better yet are unwilling to do, what they do in China (and other countries) from a mass production stand point. As an example, pre COVID, the Foxconn facility that produces iPhones had more workers in the one plant (iPhone city as they called it) than GM or Tesla has in their entire companies. These are massively integrated production facilities with all phases and a mobile workforce that enables it. Even a quadrupling of labor costs there per unit wouldn't change the production dynamics that this type of scale enables.

Globalism from an economic perspective was as much a response to needed capacity at a reasonable expense that couldn't be met domestically. And in reality our biggest "globalist" partners outside of China are Canada and Mexico so it's not like everything went far away. Unfortunately, we've hard coded untenable regulatory and labor expectations that unless we address will continue to impede us.

For example you mention steel. We have hamstrung both iron ore and coal industries so much even if we tariffed our way to force certain products to be manufactured here, we would still have to look outside (mainly Canada I'd guess) for raw material and steel.

Furthermore, due to a matrix of various regulatory environments divided amongst federal and state agencies our ability to integrate manufacturing in the manner that is done in places like China and elsewhere is beholden to this corporate-political negotiating game where "special breaks" are provided to lure a 1500 job plant to make engines for one line of GM cars. Why are companies regularly having to leave certain locales due to cost and regulatory constraints? Is that because China has cheaper labor, or do we continue to be our own worst economic enemy? And don't get me started on labor unions (example in prior post) and work force skills and mobility.

But we don't want to do the hard work to be competitive as that requires tough decisions. So we take the easy route and slap a tariff on something which perpetuates and protects our issues, instead of opening up broad access to our resources, incentivizing grand industrial projects, changing the perception of work expectations, and aligning academics with usable skills. So until we do that we will have to push further with our knowledge and capital economy and tolerate the continuing decline in the manufacturing one. Free trade becomes even more critical as we'll need to align with and encourage countries with friendly relations to fill those needs. You of all people should understand this is why economic and defense treaties typically go hand in hand.

My hope is that technology will continue to expand and our current capital strength will allow us to take advantage of it and expand our production base. But I'm still very bearish on our regulatory and labor market, and those are the real challenges we should be addressing, instead of raising prices for Americans.

Assassin said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

---

I'm not disagreeing with you exactly. I believe protectionism can be harmful and needs to be carefully managed, whether it's quotas or tariffs.

No one was suggesting that child labor and slave wages internationally would kill the American economy. Our economy is massive. Only that those predatory practices have a negative impact, and that American blue-collar workers should not have to compete against them.

Tariffs do go to the government, but they also protect industries. That money can be used to reduce taxes elsewhere (wishful thinking).

There is a cost to killing off industries to our communities. We have no way to measure are we better off without them because we only know that the American economy is huge and continues on.

Just no good way to draw any real conclusions that we're better off today than we would have been if the free world refused to buy into the notion that free trade with predatory nations is a win-win.

The fact is the US is one of the most resource rich nations in the history of the planet, yet our citizens are living in debt, have low savings, can't "afford" college educations, and the population continues to expand into communities y that can't actually absorb the burden. Wages have been suppressed through planned and unplanned inflation. All this works well for the educated establishment but doesn't work well for Mainstreet America. Money always flowing up and out doesn't fully trickle back down to the middle class.

---

There's a very good way to draw conclusions about free trade, even with "predatory nations". Economic growth, standards of living, technology, lower cost goods, access to capital and markets, logistics, and employment are monumentally better domestically and globally thanks to free trade.

We've killed off local industries under difficult regulatory environments, poor investment decisions, and a multi tiered human resource problem. So when you add tariffs to the equation you aren't protecting industry, you're subsidizing the inefficiencies and bad behaviors that keep them overpriced and non competitive while compounding the cost to the Americans. There's an economic cascade of this type of protectionism that harms more Americans than the objective of helping a job type or industry. For example if you say you're protecting 300,000 auto worker jobs with a tariff, you raise the costs to 10's of millions of Americans. That's a poor trade off.

One thing you did hit on that's important is natural resources. You are correct about that, but going back to the regulatory issues, we as a country have decided national parks and protecting furry and feathered animals are more important than maximizing our natural resource outputs. That kills jobs and creates foreign dependence.

As far as Americans in debt, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We decided that social economics will revolve around consumerism, and as we've had the privilege of being at the fore front of "the latest and greatest" of everything brought to market, and unrivaled access to credit and capital, we've built our standards of living around the pursuits thereof, and not financial prudence. We've taken our privilege and turned it into an entitled expectation and not a sacrificial pursuit.

There are a number of real solutions to these problems, but I'm not sure we have the collective fortitude to address them. And so the politicians play to our emotions by touting lazy, simplistic and ineffective answers like tariffs while pointing the fingers away from the real culprits, us.

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So, all this is 47's fault?

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I hope that's not the message I sent. I certainly disagree with the tariff and trade war stuff Trump advocates, but he's merely the latest iteration of that which goes back a long time and has manifested in a whole litany of protectionist components through our current economy.

Yet here we sit today with all of those prior efforts in place still lamenting over what obviously hasn't and doesn't work. If that's not the most obvious criticism I'm not sure what else could be.

ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

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China has 12x the steel production capacity we do. That's at problem. It's not entirely because of market forces, but the parsing of reasons is only useful in determining how to remedy the problem. We are no longer the arsenal of democracy. In a major world war, the template for which is already in view, we will be at a decided disadvantage. Our technological edge has been eroded, and one of the overriding lessons of the Russo-Ukraine War is that the smart-stuff is going to run out pretty quickly and more common ordnance items are going to dominate the battlefield on most days. We are not where we need to be to win that kind of conflict.

I sit on a church pew with my old economics professor (now retired). He's still a die-hard old free trader. I understand the argument, and as noted above agree with it IN THEORY. It does maximize wealth. And at least as far as economic models go, where the wealth comes from doesn't matter. Wealth is wealth. But the free-trader arguments are not the entirety of the arguments. Other things matter, too. What good does it do to maximize wealth if you cannot defend it? The pure free traders, particularly the academics, are more correctly viewed extremists. They reflexively ignore all other factors to defend free trade as a moral imperative. Reality is, we've got to treat certain industries as national assets and ensure they not just exist, but thrive in scale large enough to themselves pose a deterrent.

All China has to do is survive the initial maneuver phase of the war and let it turn conventional. Then the tectonic forces are mostly in their favor. But if we had steel production parity (for example), they could not count on the long game. a national policy of quadrupling US steel production would provide as much deterrence than dozens of divisions in uniform, or an additional 100 ships in the Navy, or an additional thousand fighter/bomber aircraft.

It wasn't that the Spanish Armada ended up on the bottom of the English Channel that doomed the Spanish Empire to terminal decline. It was that Spain did not have the ability to recreate the Armada that ended Spain's glory. They accumulated that fleet over a long period of time. And then could afford to replace it. Russia is facing that fate in Ukraine with their enormous stores of arty and armor. And we are facing it in the Pacific vis-a-vis China. The difference between us and Spain & Russia is......we have the time and the wealth to do what we need to do. We just have to get serious and make the necessary commitments. And that will involve quite a bit more protectionism than we employed in the Cold War.

Globalism in its time and place made sense. It allowed us to quickly rebuild Western nations and build a big enough stable of 2nd & 3rd world allies to win the Cold War. But it came at a cost. It withered our industrial base in favor of service industries. That cost was worth paying to win the Cold War. Now we face different circumstances. We have to be open minded about the requirements for the future, foremost of which is returning manufacturing to the United States of America.

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I'm all for bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., just not on *******ized terms of unnecessary higher prices and our historical inefficiencies. This isn't some theoretical academic discussion, but an actual real world practicality. I've said many times how we can't do, or better yet are unwilling to do, what they do in China (and other countries) from a mass production stand point. As an example, pre COVID, the Foxconn facility that produces iPhones had more workers in the one plant (iPhone city as they called it) than GM or Tesla has in their entire companies. These are massively integrated production facilities with all phases and a mobile workforce that enables it. Even a quadrupling of labor costs there per unit wouldn't change the production dynamics that this type of scale enables.

Globalism from an economic perspective was as much a response to needed capacity at a reasonable expense that couldn't be met domestically. And in reality our biggest "globalist" partners outside of China are Canada and Mexico so it's not like everything went far away. Unfortunately, we've hard coded untenable regulatory and labor expectations that unless we address will continue to impede us.

For example you mention steel. We have hamstrung both iron ore and coal industries so much even if we tariffed our way to force certain products to be manufactured here, we would still have to look outside (mainly Canada I'd guess) for raw material and steel.

Furthermore, due to a matrix of various regulatory environments divided amongst federal and state agencies our ability to integrate manufacturing in the manner that is done in places like China and elsewhere is beholden to this corporate-political negotiating game where "special breaks" are provided to lure a 1500 job plant to make engines for one line of GM cars. Why are companies regularly having to leave certain locales due to cost and regulatory constraints? Is that because China has cheaper labor, or do we continue to be our own worst economic enemy? And don't get me started on labor unions (example in prior post) and work force skills and mobility.

But we don't want to do the hard work to be competitive as that requires tough decisions. So we take the easy route and slap a tariff on something which perpetuates and protects our issues, instead of opening up broad access to our resources, incentivizing grand industrial projects, changing the perception of work expectations, and aligning academics with usable skills. So until we do that we will have to push further with our knowledge and capital economy and tolerate the continuing decline in the manufacturing one. Free trade becomes even more critical as we'll need to align with and encourage countries with friendly relations to fill those needs. You of all people should understand this is why economic and defense treaties typically go hand in hand.

My hope is that technology will continue to expand and our current capital strength will allow us to take advantage of it and expand our production base. But I'm still very bearish on our regulatory and labor market, and those are the real challenges we should be addressing, instead of raising prices for Americans.

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Well, sure, I don't want everybody paying 2x market cost for things just so we can be proud it was done here. But that's not the situation we are in. To paraphrase TinFoilHat, no other nation on earth is quite so well endowed with resources and geo-positioning. We have everything we need to be self-sufficient, unique internal transportation efficiencies, beaches on three separate oceans, etc.... The premiums we will have to pay on the things we have to have are not going to be onerous.

Today, we cannot rebuild the fleet we have in a meaningful timeframe. We do not have the steel production or the shipyards to do it. But we do have everything we need to do so - resources, labor, technology, etc....- If it costs us 10-20% more, fine. We pay it. Because we have to. It's the difference between being able to defend ourselves and not.

Nations which depend upon imports to fight wars are at very high risk. We are not Britain. No reason to willingly put ourself in position to be blockaded. We will need a new energy policy and a new environmental policy. Trump is clearly moving in that direction, and I think we'll get there.

Globalism was about winning the Cold War.. We literally created it to do so. It continued beyond the Cold War. Vested interests tend to hold onto things. What we are witnessing with the rise of Trump, the party realignments, etc.... is the death knell of the globalist model. We will still have trade. But we will now look to protect our own strategic industries. Because it is logical to do so. Japan and the EU pander significantly to their highly inefficient ag industries because no nation wants to be held hostage for food. Sure, everyone in all countries could eat more cheaply if we had a global free market in food products. But when war or pandemic break out, nations are going to start picking sides and/oir closing borders. Those which have not looked after their own interests are going to be dominated by those which did.

whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

---

Child labor and slave wages haven't killed the American economy. Technology and privilege are and have for a couple of decades now.

Free trade IS negotiated trade as mentioned above, and we've had purchase quotas and American product subsidies for a long time. We protect our own industries almost as much as Europe does. Look at agriculture, lumber, steel, autos, etc. The last thing we need is more, especially in an inflationary environment.

Has everyone forgotten where tariffs go?? It's not to businesses or workers. It's government. Does anyone remember what happened to Solyndra and several other solar panel companies? Hugely subsidized to be competitive with China and they failed miserably.

Tariff economics is lazy and inefficient. It doesn't create jobs, it only raises costs and attempts to protect what's already there. What we need is a reset on the American work ethic, how manufacturing should actually operate, and an overhaul of our job skills approach.

EDIT: If you don't know what I'm talking about, we have the UAW asking for a massive pay increase, a reduced workweek, and a limitation on automation. And it's happening within other unions also as they exhaust efforts protecting wage increases and avoiding technological realities, including the Teamsters.

---

China has 12x the steel production capacity we do. That's at problem. It's not entirely because of market forces, but the parsing of reasons is only useful in determining how to remedy the problem. We are no longer the arsenal of democracy. In a major world war, the template for which is already in view, we will be at a decided disadvantage. Our technological edge has been eroded, and one of the overriding lessons of the Russo-Ukraine War is that the smart-stuff is going to run out pretty quickly and more common ordnance items are going to dominate the battlefield on most days. We are not where we need to be to win that kind of conflict.

I sit on a church pew with my old economics professor (now retired). He's still a die-hard old free trader. I understand the argument, and as noted above agree with it IN THEORY. It does maximize wealth. And at least as far as economic models go, where the wealth comes from doesn't matter. Wealth is wealth. But the free-trader arguments are not the entirety of the arguments. Other things matter, too. What good does it do to maximize wealth if you cannot defend it? The pure free traders, particularly the academics, are more correctly viewed extremists. They reflexively ignore all other factors to defend free trade as a moral imperative. Reality is, we've got to treat certain industries as national assets and ensure they not just exist, but thrive in scale large enough to themselves pose a deterrent.

All China has to do is survive the initial maneuver phase of the war and let it turn conventional. Then the tectonic forces are mostly in their favor. But if we had steel production parity (for example), they could not count on the long game. a national policy of quadrupling US steel production would provide as much deterrence than dozens of divisions in uniform, or an additional 100 ships in the Navy, or an additional thousand fighter/bomber aircraft.

It wasn't that the Spanish Armada ended up on the bottom of the English Channel that doomed the Spanish Empire to terminal decline. It was that Spain did not have the ability to recreate the Armada that ended Spain's glory. They accumulated that fleet over a long period of time. And then could afford to replace it. Russia is facing that fate in Ukraine with their enormous stores of arty and armor. And we are facing it in the Pacific vis-a-vis China. The difference between us and Spain & Russia is......we have the time and the wealth to do what we need to do. We just have to get serious and make the necessary commitments. And that will involve quite a bit more protectionism than we employed in the Cold War.

Globalism in its time and place made sense. It allowed us to quickly rebuild Western nations and build a big enough stable of 2nd & 3rd world allies to win the Cold War. But it came at a cost. It withered our industrial base in favor of service industries. That cost was worth paying to win the Cold War. Now we face different circumstances. We have to be open minded about the requirements for the future, foremost of which is returning manufacturing to the United States of America.

---

I'm all for bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., just not on *******ized terms of unnecessary higher prices and our historical inefficiencies. This isn't some theoretical academic discussion, but an actual real world practicality. I've said many times how we can't do, or better yet are unwilling to do, what they do in China (and other countries) from a mass production stand point. As an example, pre COVID, the Foxconn facility that produces iPhones had more workers in the one plant (iPhone city as they called it) than GM or Tesla has in their entire companies. These are massively integrated production facilities with all phases and a mobile workforce that enables it. Even a quadrupling of labor costs there per unit wouldn't change the production dynamics that this type of scale enables.

Globalism from an economic perspective was as much a response to needed capacity at a reasonable expense that couldn't be met domestically. And in reality our biggest "globalist" partners outside of China are Canada and Mexico so it's not like everything went far away. Unfortunately, we've hard coded untenable regulatory and labor expectations that unless we address will continue to impede us.

For example you mention steel. We have hamstrung both iron ore and coal industries so much even if we tariffed our way to force certain products to be manufactured here, we would still have to look outside (mainly Canada I'd guess) for raw material and steel.

Furthermore, due to a matrix of various regulatory environments divided amongst federal and state agencies our ability to integrate manufacturing in the manner that is done in places like China and elsewhere is beholden to this corporate-political negotiating game where "special breaks" are provided to lure a 1500 job plant to make engines for one line of GM cars. Why are companies regularly having to leave certain locales due to cost and regulatory constraints? Is that because China has cheaper labor, or do we continue to be our own worst economic enemy? And don't get me started on labor unions (example in prior post) and work force skills and mobility.

But we don't want to do the hard work to be competitive as that requires tough decisions. So we take the easy route and slap a tariff on something which perpetuates and protects our issues, instead of opening up broad access to our resources, incentivizing grand industrial projects, changing the perception of work expectations, and aligning academics with usable skills. So until we do that we will have to push further with our knowledge and capital economy and tolerate the continuing decline in the manufacturing one. Free trade becomes even more critical as we'll need to align with and encourage countries with friendly relations to fill those needs. You of all people should understand this is why economic and defense treaties typically go hand in hand.

My hope is that technology will continue to expand and our current capital strength will allow us to take advantage of it and expand our production base. But I'm still very bearish on our regulatory and labor market, and those are the real challenges we should be addressing, instead of raising prices for Americans.

---

Well, sure, I don't want everybody paying 2x market cost for things just so we can be proud it was done here. But that's not the situation we are in. To paraphrase TinFoilHat, no other nation on earth is quite so well endowed with resources and geo-positioning. We have everything we need to be self-sufficient, unique internal transportation efficiencies, beaches on three separate oceans, etc.... The premiums we will have to pay on the things we have to have are not going to be onerous.

Today, we cannot rebuild the fleet we have in a meaningful timeframe. We do not have the steel production or the shipyards to do it. But we do have everything we need to do so - resources, labor, technology, etc....- If it costs us 10-20% more, fine. We pay it. Because we have to. It's the difference between being able to defend ourselves and not.

Nations which depend upon imports to fight wars are at very high risk. We are not Britain. No reason to willingly put ourself in position to be blockaded. We will need a new energy policy and a new environmental policy. Trump is clearly moving in that direction, and I think we'll get there.

Globalism was about winning the Cold War.. We literally created it to do so. It continued beyond the Cold War. Vested interests tend to hold onto things. What we are witnessing with the rise of Trump, the party realignments, etc.... is the death knell of the globalist model. We will still have trade. But we will now look to protect our own strategic industries. Because it is logical to do so. Japan and the EU pander significantly to their highly inefficient ag industries because no nation wants to be held hostage for food. Sure, everyone in all countries could eat more cheaply if we had a global free market in food products. But when war or pandemic break out, nations are going to start picking sides and/oir closing borders. Those which have not looked after their own interests are going to be dominated by those which did.

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Repeating the platitudes and ignoring the practicalities doesn't get you where you want to go. You can have all the resources in the world and if you lack the will, environment, and capabilities to extract them it doesn't matter. Did you ignore what I said about steel?

This isn't a new problem, it's an old problem and administrations from both parties have played to it for decades. Trump is an advocate of globalism as much as anyone, but at least he understands that in order to be competitive we have to lower the regulatory hurdles. He won't get trade deals done if we can't deliver. I mean I hope you guys understand that nearly half of all sales of US companies comes from outside the U.S.

If you want to argue that "Trump globalism" is different than "Obama globalism", okay I can see that. But globalism is a permanent fixture of everything from trade, defense, treaties, technology, finance, energy, logistics and transportation, science, etc. And I'm happy with it being a unipolar world with us at the top of it.