JUST IN: 🇨🇦 New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says "my government will keep tariffs on until the Americans show us some respect." pic.twitter.com/U9nRSLYueO

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 9, 2025

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Friday that Pres. Trump "intends" to sign an executive order to dissolve the Department of Education — but it's still unclear when. https://t.co/UOy7ca56HZ

— ABC News (@ABC) March 9, 2025

Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

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Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

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Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

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What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

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LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

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For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

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Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument…

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Great point

The same is true of immigration…there is a time for it…and a reasonable number.

But it's become like a religious commandment for some people. It must go on endlessly and with no restrictions

Canada for example was bringing in 500,000 immigrants a year….into a country that only has 39 million people.

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians is a recent immigrant

[As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was made up of immigrants, which was the highest percentage in 150 years]

Talk about warping the labor market and sending home prices through the roof.

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He's been saying this since the 80s. His point is simple: it is expensive to run a modern military and many countries functionally do not have to because they can rely on us for protection, which allows them to allocate GDP to other things. https://t.co/ZblQi3yvkX

— Just Loki (@LokiJulianus) March 7, 2025

RD2WINAGNBEAR86 said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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"Trump has made his positions on these issues pretty clear."

Actually, Trump has made a lot of statements designed to move mood and attention, and for the most part it works.

I continue to be impressed by how many people pretend we don't have a first term for Trump to check his comments vs actions.

I get it, when you hate Trump, you will use anything to attack him.

But never go full Schumer.

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I hate Trump? Interesting. I voted for him three times. I have merely pointed out my disagreement with him on four issues.

It is not necessary for you defend every single action of Trump's. Not necessary to justify every action or statement he makes. Like the rest of us, he is far from perfect. On some things, it is my opinion Donald Trump is leading us down the wrong path. That does not make me Chuck Schumer.

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

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Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

---

Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

---

What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

---

LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

---

For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

---

Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument…

---

Great point

The same is true of immigration…there is a time for it…and a reasonable number.

But it's become like a religious commandment for some people. It must go on endlessly and with no restrictions

Canada for example was bringing in 500,000 immigrants a year….into a country that only has 39 million people.

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians is a recent immigrant

[As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was made up of immigrants, which was the highest percentage in 150 years]

Talk about warping the labor market and sending home prices through the roof.

---

Never. Not in undergrad....not in grad school....and not abroad.....did I ever LIKE the reasons we were obligated to accept unbalanced tariff structures and pervasive non-tariff barriers just because we were America and we had to do it to keep the merry band together. Always I hoped for the day the Cold War would end and we could poke our trade partners as hard as they poked us. But if the last 30 years have taught us nothing else, it's that established government policy structures will endure until the are destroyed. It took Donald Trump to do it, someone who did not care how hard those structures fought to resist, to the point of his personal destruction.

Globalism makes no sense whatsoever in a post-Cold War world. We built dozens of economies into developed countries or nearly so. We grew the the number of viable trading partners. Now, it's time to go compete with them. Balls to the wall. Throw one high & tight fastball after the other until they start respecting the strike zone.

---

Bartiromo: You said you wanted to do the golden dome. But then earlier you said you wanted to cut a trillion dollars in defense spending. Which is it? Are you cutting?

Trump: I never said cut. I’d love to cut defense spending but not now pic.twitter.com/7uxTDlZlOX

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 9, 2025

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 President Trump says the US will make "hundreds of billions of dollars" from tariffs and "become so rich you won't know where to spend all that money." pic.twitter.com/iznal6aiJN

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 10, 2025

Assassin said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

---

Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

---

Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

---

What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

---

LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

---

For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

---

Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument…

---

Great point

The same is true of immigration…there is a time for it…and a reasonable number.

But it's become like a religious commandment for some people. It must go on endlessly and with no restrictions

Canada for example was bringing in 500,000 immigrants a year….into a country that only has 39 million people.

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians is a recent immigrant

[As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was made up of immigrants, which was the highest percentage in 150 years]

Talk about warping the labor market and sending home prices through the roof.

---

Never. Not in undergrad....not in grad school....and not abroad.....did I ever LIKE the reasons we were obligated to accept unbalanced tariff structures and pervasive non-tariff barriers just because we were America and we had to do it to keep the merry band together. Always I hoped for the day the Cold War would end and we could poke our trade partners as hard as they poked us. But if the last 30 years have taught us nothing else, it's that established government policy structures will endure until the are destroyed. It took Donald Trump to do it, someone who did not care how hard those structures fought to resist, to the point of his personal destruction.

Globalism makes no sense whatsoever in a post-Cold War world. We built dozens of economies into developed countries or nearly so. We grew the the number of viable trading partners. Now, it's time to go compete with them. Balls to the wall. Throw one high & tight fastball after the other until they start respecting the strike zone.

---

Globalism made sense to only one group, Open Society and the Soros family who, along with their cronies, were looking to become "Kings of the world", quite literally.

---

whiterock said:

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Assassin said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

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Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

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Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

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What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

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LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

---

For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

---

Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument…

---

Great point

The same is true of immigration…there is a time for it…and a reasonable number.

But it's become like a religious commandment for some people. It must go on endlessly and with no restrictions

Canada for example was bringing in 500,000 immigrants a year….into a country that only has 39 million people.

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians is a recent immigrant

[As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was made up of immigrants, which was the highest percentage in 150 years]

Talk about warping the labor market and sending home prices through the roof.

---

Never. Not in undergrad....not in grad school....and not abroad.....did I ever LIKE the reasons we were obligated to accept unbalanced tariff structures and pervasive non-tariff barriers just because we were America and we had to do it to keep the merry band together. Always I hoped for the day the Cold War would end and we could poke our trade partners as hard as they poked us. But if the last 30 years have taught us nothing else, it's that established government policy structures will endure until the are destroyed. It took Donald Trump to do it, someone who did not care how hard those structures fought to resist, to the point of his personal destruction.

Globalism makes no sense whatsoever in a post-Cold War world. We built dozens of economies into developed countries or nearly so. We grew the the number of viable trading partners. Now, it's time to go compete with them. Balls to the wall. Throw one high & tight fastball after the other until they start respecting the strike zone.

---

Globalism made sense to only one group, Open Society and the Soros family who, along with their cronies, were looking to become "Kings of the world", quite literally.

---

I wouldn't go quite that far, at least until the late 1990's.....

---

🚨 Trump. Is. HILARIOUS.

REPORTER: Is Putin disrespecting you by attacking Ukraine while trying to make a peace deal?

TRUMP: Who are you with?

REPORTER: Washington Post.

TRUMP: *Shakes head and chuckles* you've lost a lot of credibility. Anyone else? pic.twitter.com/pXgXP71PUJ

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 10, 2025

Assassin said:

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whiterock said:

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Assassin said:

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

---

Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

---

Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

---

What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

---

LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

---

For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

---

Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument…

---

Great point

The same is true of immigration…there is a time for it…and a reasonable number.

But it's become like a religious commandment for some people. It must go on endlessly and with no restrictions

Canada for example was bringing in 500,000 immigrants a year….into a country that only has 39 million people.

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians is a recent immigrant

[As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was made up of immigrants, which was the highest percentage in 150 years]

Talk about warping the labor market and sending home prices through the roof.

---

Never. Not in undergrad....not in grad school....and not abroad.....did I ever LIKE the reasons we were obligated to accept unbalanced tariff structures and pervasive non-tariff barriers just because we were America and we had to do it to keep the merry band together. Always I hoped for the day the Cold War would end and we could poke our trade partners as hard as they poked us. But if the last 30 years have taught us nothing else, it's that established government policy structures will endure until the are destroyed. It took Donald Trump to do it, someone who did not care how hard those structures fought to resist, to the point of his personal destruction.

Globalism makes no sense whatsoever in a post-Cold War world. We built dozens of economies into developed countries or nearly so. We grew the the number of viable trading partners. Now, it's time to go compete with them. Balls to the wall. Throw one high & tight fastball after the other until they start respecting the strike zone.

---

Globalism made sense to only one group, Open Society and the Soros family who, along with their cronies, were looking to become "Kings of the world", quite literally.

---

I wouldn't go quite that far, at least until the late 1990's.....

---

Soros is still thinking he can pull it off as he's bought off some much of the EU.

---

whiterock said:

---

Assassin said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Assassin said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Oldbear83 said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Oldbear83 said:

---

You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

---

Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

---

Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

---

What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

---

LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

---

For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

---

Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument…

---

Great point

The same is true of immigration…there is a time for it…and a reasonable number.

But it's become like a religious commandment for some people. It must go on endlessly and with no restrictions

Canada for example was bringing in 500,000 immigrants a year….into a country that only has 39 million people.

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians is a recent immigrant

[As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was made up of immigrants, which was the highest percentage in 150 years]

Talk about warping the labor market and sending home prices through the roof.

---

Never. Not in undergrad....not in grad school....and not abroad.....did I ever LIKE the reasons we were obligated to accept unbalanced tariff structures and pervasive non-tariff barriers just because we were America and we had to do it to keep the merry band together. Always I hoped for the day the Cold War would end and we could poke our trade partners as hard as they poked us. But if the last 30 years have taught us nothing else, it's that established government policy structures will endure until the are destroyed. It took Donald Trump to do it, someone who did not care how hard those structures fought to resist, to the point of his personal destruction.

Globalism makes no sense whatsoever in a post-Cold War world. We built dozens of economies into developed countries or nearly so. We grew the the number of viable trading partners. Now, it's time to go compete with them. Balls to the wall. Throw one high & tight fastball after the other until they start respecting the strike zone.

---

Globalism made sense to only one group, Open Society and the Soros family who, along with their cronies, were looking to become "Kings of the world", quite literally.

---

I wouldn't go quite that far, at least until the late 1990's.....

---

Soros is still thinking he can pull it off as he's bought off some much of the EU.

---

If Trump can see it thru to destruction of the NGO ecosystem, Soros is toast. He's totally invested in that. Without it, he will have to start over.

---

China announces new naval exercises with Russia and Iran. 🇨🇳🇷🇺🇮🇷

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 9, 2025

boognish_bear said:

---

China announces new naval exercises with Russia and Iran. 🇨🇳🇷🇺🇮🇷

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 9, 2025

---

william said:

---

Osodecentx said:

---

Who wins?

The Populist vs. the Billionaire: Bannon, Musk and the Battle Within MAGA
President Trump has made clear he wants to keep both men and their allies within his movement, but the tensions are growing.

---

47 will keep them in line.....

If you're not having disagreements....

Part of the Creative Destruction Process.

- il KKM

{ sipping coffee }

---

boognish_bear said:

---

BREAKING: 🇨🇦 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau officially resigns. pic.twitter.com/xF76fttYf6

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) March 9, 2025

---

boognish_bear said:

---

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Friday that Pres. Trump "intends" to sign an executive order to dissolve the Department of Education — but it's still unclear when. https://t.co/UOy7ca56HZ

— ABC News (@ABC) March 9, 2025

---

historian said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

BREAKING: 🇨🇦 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau officially resigns. pic.twitter.com/xF76fttYf6

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) March 9, 2025

---

And they replaced him with someone just as bad or worse.

---

BREAKING:

Marco Rubio says the U.S. will be “revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported”

🇺🇸🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/9rN2p7DhZl

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 9, 2025

boognish_bear said:

---

China announces new naval exercises with Russia and Iran. 🇨🇳🇷🇺🇮🇷

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 9, 2025

---

Oldbear83 said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

China announces new naval exercises with Russia and Iran. 🇨🇳🇷🇺🇮🇷

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 9, 2025

---

Given that none of the three has a credible blue water fleet, this might be interesting to watch

---

Oldbear83 said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

CNN said the world is $217 trillion dollars in debt... who tf we owe? The Decepticons?

— 𝓒𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻 🏴‍☠️ (@c0mmandderr) March 8, 2025

---

This all started when they decided to run nations like corporations.

---

boognish_bear said:

---

China announces new naval exercises with Russia and Iran. 🇨🇳🇷🇺🇮🇷

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 9, 2025

---

Reporter: Russia, China, and Iran are doing military exercises together. Does that concern you?

Trump: No

Reporter: Why not?

Trump: Because we’re stronger than all of them pic.twitter.com/IkJM1BfVZh

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 10, 2025

whiterock said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Oldbear83 said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Oldbear83 said:

---

You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

---

Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

---

Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

---

What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

---

LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

---

For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

---

Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument…

---

Great point

The same is true of immigration…there is a time for it…and a reasonable number.

But it's become like a religious commandment for some people. It must go on endlessly and with no restrictions

Canada for example was bringing in 500,000 immigrants a year….into a country that only has 39 million people.

Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians is a recent immigrant

[As of 2021, 23% of Canada's population was made up of immigrants, which was the highest percentage in 150 years]

Talk about warping the labor market and sending home prices through the roof.

---

Never. Not in undergrad....not in grad school....and not abroad.....did I ever LIKE the reasons we were obligated to accept unbalanced tariff structures and pervasive non-tariff barriers just because we were America and we had to do it to keep the merry band together. Always I hoped for the day the Cold War would end and we could poke our trade partners as hard as they poked us. But if the last 30 years have taught us nothing else, it's that established government policy structures will endure until the are destroyed. It took Donald Trump to do it, someone who did not care how hard those structures fought to resist, to the point of his personal destruction.

Globalism makes no sense whatsoever in a post-Cold War world. We built dozens of economies into developed countries or nearly so. We grew the the number of viable trading partners. Now, it's time to go compete with them. Balls to the wall. Throw one high & tight fastball after the other until they start respecting the strike zone.

---

boognish_bear said:

---

JUST IN: 🇨🇦 New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says "my government will keep tariffs on until the Americans show us some respect." pic.twitter.com/U9nRSLYueO

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 9, 2025

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

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Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

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Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

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What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

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LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

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The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

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For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

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You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

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Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument. Reciprocal tariffs are essential tools of trade policy. They are win-win. They either force fair-er trade, or they generate revenues and protect jobs in critical industries from unfair competition. (somehow, the globalists can never come up with an example of unfair competition from our trade partners).

It does not matter how much wealth you generate if you cannot defend it.

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william said:

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boognish_bear said:

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JUST IN: 🇨🇦 New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says "my government will keep tariffs on until the Americans show us some respect." pic.twitter.com/U9nRSLYueO

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) March 9, 2025

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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You use the tools available to you, not imaginary things .

---

Like the imaginary new manufacturing jobs that tariffs create?

---

Nope. Imaginary like ignoring tariffs and just hoping other countries stop using them on us, like we have seen the last several decades.

---

What's not imaginary is the ability to negotiate trade deals. You want lower tariffs on your goods in another market? Ask for it. Don't punish your citizens for it. And why do we want to be more like Europe? Do we not understand that model doesn't work? The facts and numbers don't lie. But lying about imaginary manufacturing jobs so you can raise prices on your citizens is an unfortunate reality.

---

LOL those other countries do not agree that tariffs punish their citizens. The model works for them. Why should it not work for us?

Perplexed that you cannot see that imbalanced trade is bad for us.

---

The model isn't working. Why do you think Europe has been stagnating under higher prices, low wage growth, and reduced outputs for years?
Faulty premise alert - trade is neither the only nor the most significant policy lever available to address macroeconomic problems

I want to attack the real reasons behind the trade imbalances, which is sustainable and puts us back at a competitive advantage. Not proven ineffective government tax gimmicks hoping it's some magical fix.
Trade 101: the primary reason for the trade imbalance is the non-market support for the value of the USD (i.e. its use as a reserve currency, which insulates the USD from supply/demand pressures that drive pricing).

---

For example: Europe has no significant competitive advantage over us in automobile manufacturing. It uses tariffs to protect its market, and subsidies to promote its exports. And we never challenged them on it, for a number of reasons most of which involve national security.

Pure Free Trade arguments ALWAYS presume that only wealth creation matters. In the real world, it doesn't matter how much wealth you generate......if you cannot defend it. And automobile manufacturing involves skills and assets which a state must have if it has any hope of outfitting armies & navies that can fight & win wars. EU protects its automakers not just to protect jobs, but to protect the ability to have machinists with machines to make ordnance. So if we are allied with EU (via Nato), it is indeed in our interest not to have our ally totally dependent upon our merchant marine to carry US-made ordnance over the Atlantic. It is a good thing that they can much and possibly all of their own supply. such will free our industry up to focus on China, who unfortunately now has 12x the steel production capability we have. We promoted free trade with China based on the classical liberal belief that trade brings peace. Well, it can. But not always. We helped China enter the WTO. They used free trade to build up steel mills. and we bought the cheap steel. And 60 years later, China is no more of a partner in peace than they were before Nixon went to Beijing, only they have 12x the steel production capability we do. (and are now building assault barges to retake Taiwan in an open challenge to the USA.)

We COULD have protected our steel industries (more than we did). Yes, we would have paid more for steel . But we would have the ability to make enough steel to replenish our armies & navies. Now we don't, at least with respect to China. But the free traders keep banging the table about wealth creation, as though it's all that matters.

the model of a structural trade deficit offset by capital account surplus is the business model of a Switzerland or Holland or Singapore or......a state which does not have the resources to become a more balanced economy. We are not that kind of state, and it would be foolish for us to continue to act like it.

Again, free trade does not exist. Never has. Never will. Free trade agreements are not negotiated by markets. They are negotiated by political elites who have existential interest to protect their industries. We never played hardball. There was a valid argument for doing so in the Cold War. But the Cold War is over....

We built the post-WWII global order. And because of it, we won the Cold War. It was in our interest to let market forces whittle away our manufacturing base, because doing so strengthened our allies, whom we needed very badly. Now, it is no longer in our interest to do so. We have a manufacturing base to rebuild. Trump is going about it cleverly. He's put every CEO in the position of having to calculate potential US tariffs into how they build supply chains. Many are concluding its wise to invest in manufacturing capacity here, rather than abroad, for fear of getting locked out of the US market altogether.

Trump using the bully pulpit to drive trillions of dollars of investment to the US. And yet, you complain.....

---

You keep referring to "Economics 101". Well let me move you to Advanced Economics. Blanket tariffs are a flawed economic policy that impose broad costs while delivering limited benefits. They are inefficient and costly, raising prices for domestic manufacturers and consumers while inviting retaliatory tariffs from trade partners as we're seeing. History has shown that tariffs often backfire, as seen in the 2002 steel tariffs under President Bush, which led to an estimated 200,000 job losses in steel industries, and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened the Great Depression by shrinking international trade. Similarly, Trump's 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs increased costs for domestic industries and resulted in job losses in sectors reliant on affordable steel.
The law of unintended consequences is a prudent caution for policymakers. But not all policy involves them. Same is true for tariffs. If they ALWAYS did harm, few would ever use them. Yet literally every country does. They do generate revenue. They do change market dynamics. And most importantly, they support industries deemed essential to national security. So stop cherry picking on policy failures...... They are just a tool. Used wisely, they can be effective.

The argument that free trade undermines national security misrepresents economic realities. A strong, diversified economy is essential for sustaining military power, and a tariff-heavy, protectionist approach weakens competitiveness rather than strengthening it. If national security is truly at stake, targeted industrial policies such as subsidies for critical defense industries are far more effective than broad tariffs that disrupt universal markets. Furthermore, China's rise in steel production is not solely a result of free trade but is largely driven by state subsidies and market manipulation. The United States still leads in high-quality steel production, focusing on advanced alloys rather than bulk steel, which China produces at artificially low prices.
whatever can be said about how "diversified" is our economy, it is a plain mathematical fact that China dwarfs our capacity on steel production and shipbuilding. That has critical impact on policy - we can theoretically win a sharp, short war against China, but if it turns into a war of attrition, we are toast. We simply cannot replace fleets of ships & aircraft like China can. Allowing China to 12x us on steel production is arguably the single greatest (bi-partisan) policy failure of the Post WWII era. We will not easily close that gap if we try, and will never do it if we don't.

The claim that the U.S. sacrificed its manufacturing base for the sake of its post WWII allies oversimplifies globalization's effects.
You are so dug into your position that you cannot even see the plain, obvious course of history. We literally structured the post WWII order to run a structural trade deficit and a capital account surplus. We didn't call it globalism at inception, but "globalism" is what happened. It was no accident. Certainly wasn't generated by free, or even "free-er" markets. It was a policy choice. And every objection met with predictable (true but one-sided) rebuttals: "Q: Why are we regulating our oil & gas so hard...why are we so intent on driving up the cost of our own oil and dead set on importing Middle East oil? A: If the Arabs want to sell their oil today while it's cheap, great. We'll leave ours in the ground and sell it at a higher price after the Arabs run out.. Plus, Saudi oil is cleaner than most of ours." True dynamic. I know ranchers that manage their wells pretty much with that kind of logic. But sovereign power does give you options, and policy like drill-baby-drill will have impact on markets.....like lower energy costs being one of several factors in making manufacturing more competitive. I've even heard the transition to a service economy as related to energy policy = it takes a lot more energy to run factories than McDonalds or a consulting firm..... Anything to justify maximalist globalism. Anything.

Again, I'm not a moral critic of globalism. There was a time and place for it. It worked. We won the Cold War. I'm a pragmatic critic of globalism AT THIS TIME - it makes no sense to pay the consequences of it without a Cold War context.

Economic shifts have been driven more by automation, specialization, and efficiency than by government decisions to let industries decline or "give in to friends".
badly confusing micro & macro dynamics leading to cause-effect error. I can't tell you how many times, in class and in government, I would see us willingly giving "an ally" a sweetheart deal, ask why, and get the answer along the lines of "well, it's the best we can do, we can't push them too hard, we need them as allies, they have valid concerns about (this industry or that one)...." Neve did the consequences on us matter as much as the consequences on them. Over and over and over again, we eschewed hard-edged competition and allowed Japan and the EU to protect various parts of their economies with tariffs, non-tariff barriers, subsidies, VAT, etc..... We did get something for it - buyers of T-Bills, which allow us to finance long-term budget deficits. But there were costs = hastening the transition away from manufacturing to service. This is what Trump is talking about when he talks about electeds being so dumb, giving away the candy store, etc....... He's correct. We did reflexively put ourselves into weaker trade positions over & over. Now, he's not mentioning why, because the past is not terribly relevant. What matters is from here forward. And the Cold War is over. Our policy to win it built a strong neighborhood of developed economies. NOW LETS GO COMPETE WITH THEM (as equals)! To the extent one believes in free trade, then having built more and larger developed economies to trade with is a signature success of globalism. But at some point, the building has to stop and the living has to start.

The U.S. remains a leader in advanced manufacturing, with sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors still thriving. While Trump's trade policy seeks to push investment into U.S. manufacturing, but even his own efforts had mixed results with higher consumer costs, limited reshoring (leave China go to Mexico or Vietnam), and persistent trade deficits indicate that tariffs were not the most effective strategy.
Tariffs are PART of an effective strategy, particularly as a cudgel to force concessions.

Instead, a combination of targeted trade enforcement, strategic alliances, and domestic industrial investment would better address economic and security concerns without the widespread negative consequences of blanket tariffs.
Again, you are taking threats of blanket tariffs as a policy statement in & of itself, just because it serves your argument.

You can never eliminate asymmetric trade, which Trump seems to think is possible with his retaliatory tariff approach. There is a scarcity in the global economy that cannot be resolved entirely or even a majority domestically. That's why you take a strategic and not a blanket approach.
Again, you are cherry picking. Leading with threats of tariffs is not necessarily a blanket approach to policy. It's a negotiation tactic. And reciprocal tariffs are exceedingly wise policy. If one reflexively opposes them, as you do, you end up allowing others to protect their markets for no offsetting benefit (like a stable Cold War alliance) for yourself.

---

Tariffs are in some ways a coal mine canary. Propose there is a time & place for them and the globalists literally lose their minds. That's how you know globalism has become a religion. And when ideas are defended with religious fervor, that's how you know the idea has lost the argument. Reciprocal tariffs are essential tools of trade policy. They are win-win. They either force fair-er trade, or they generate revenues and protect jobs in critical industries from unfair competition. (somehow, the globalists can never come up with an example of unfair competition from our trade partners).

It does not matter how much wealth you generate if you cannot defend it.

---

There's a lot to unpack here, but the fact you aren't aware the U.S. has brought many unfair trade cases against its trading partners (driven by globalists I guess?) as well as nations bringing unfair trading practice cases against the U.S. is an amazing revelation from someone claiming to be in tune with global economics. Heck they brought suit during the first Trump administration. That's where these get hashed out when bureaucrats (apparently you were one at some point it sounds like?) screw up the trade patterns. That's the real trade work that has to happen when politicians (around the world no less) get their bright ideas to retaliate or hand out political favors to certain voter blocks or donors through tariffs and market games. Or they just cheat like China.

Believing the way to "LET'S GO COMPETE WITH THEM" is arbitrarily price fixing through tariffs lacks any awareness of the complexities and interconnectedness of supply chains, and the reality of our economic leadership globally. We are competing everyday. Except those certain companies within certain industries we keep propping up repeatedly under false pretenses instead of letting them die and morph into better versions. You're too busy making a political argument instead an economic one.

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We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported https://t.co/oKba2Mmi3C

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 9, 2025

Moore: The steel and the aluminum tariffs did not work. It is true that… we created 3000–5000 steel and aluminum jobs. The problem was we lost 25000 jobs in other manufacturing in the United States that use steel and had to use more expensive steel pic.twitter.com/0BslJlq3FV

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 10, 2025