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The United States isn't self sufficient, either. At least not at current living standards.
If we are going to start trade wars around the world like we did in the 1920's and 1930's we will all be screwed anyway.
Smoot-Hawley, went a little to far. There was a very good balance and the best this nation has ever had, in the 1920's after WW-I.
All the campaigning in 1927 & 1928 brought on a very protectionist attitude, with Hoover gaining steam.
Hoover. A Big Government knows best, micro-manager. Compared to lasse faire Coolidge. The economy contracted, right when everyone was addicted to free money(well easy to get loans) with the Fed fueling the banks with money.
Imports, should be taxed by our Federal Government, to be competitive with American made Products. To protect US workers. Now notice I said competitive. Not overboard, so no imports are competitive.
Not totally open and free, so 3rd world slave nations can undercut our workers labor cost, with the regulations and we no longer have slavery to compete on the same ball field.
Imports, should be taxed by our Federal Government, to be competitive with American made Products. To protect US workers. Now notice I said competitive. Not overboard, so no imports are competitive.
Not totally open and free, so 3rd world slave nations can undercut our workers labor cost, with the regulations and we no longer have slavery to compete on the same ball field.
No, they should not. Why don't we pay some people to dig holes and pay others to fill them up instead?
One voice that is hardly ever raised is the consumer’s. That voice is drowned out in the cacophony of the “interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers” and their employees. The result is a serious distortion of the issue. For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number–for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs–jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.
Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.
Moving all the production to foreign countries is asset stripping.
It has benefitted the 1 percent at the expense of the middle class.
The only reason dummies support it is due to brainwashing.
Only an idiot would describe educating yourself in basic economics as brainwashing. Tell me what is wrong with Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage?
You think the trade agreements with China have benefitted America? You have to be stupid AND blind to buy that brainwashing.
Yes, they have. They have saved the consumer more than they have cost the worker. Only someone completely ignorant in economics would think otherwise.
From the same link I posted earlier:
Quote:
Consider an extreme case. Suppose that, to begin with, 360 yen equal a dollar. At this exchange rate, the actual rate of exchange for many years, suppose that the Japanese can produce and sell everything for fewer dollars than we can in the United States–TV sets, automobiles, steel, and even soybeans, wheat, milk, and ice cream. If we had free international trade, we would try to buy all our goods from Japan. This would seem to be the extreme horror story of the kind depicted by the defenders of tariffs–we would be flooded with Japanese goods and could sell them nothing.
Before throwing up your hands in horror, carry the analysis one step further. How would we pay the Japanese? We would offer them dollar bills. What would they do with the dollar bills? We have assumed that at 360 yen to the dollar everything is cheaper in Japan, so there is nothing in the U.S. market that they would want to buy. If the Japanese exporters were willing to burn or bury the dollar bills, that would be wonderful for us. We would get all kinds of goods for green pieces of paper that we can produce in great abundance and very cheaply. We would have the most marvelous export industry conceivable.
Of course, the Japanese would not in fact sell us useful goods in order to get useless pieces of paper to bury or burn. Like us, they want to get something real in return for their work. If all goods were cheaper in Japan than in the United States at 360 yen to the dollar, the exporters would try to get rid of their dollars, would try to sell them for 360 yen to the dollar in order to buy the cheaper Japanese goods. But who would be willing to buy the dollars? What is true for the Japanese exporter is true for everyone in Japan. No one will be willing to give 360 yen in exchange for one dollar if 360 yen will buy more of everything in Japan than one dollar will buy in the United States. The exporters, on discovering that no one will buy their dollars at 360 yen, will offer to take fewer yen for a dollar. The price of the dollar in terms of the yen will go down–to 300 yen for a dollar or 250 yen or 200 yen. Put the other way around, it will take more and more dollars to buy a given number of Japanese yen. Japanese goods are priced in yen, so their price in dollars will go up. Conversely, U.S. goods are priced in dollars, so the more dollars the Japanese get for a given number of yen, the cheaper U.S. goods become to the Japanese in terms of yen.
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