Why I defend NAFTA on DU, in four charts

[joshcryer]

57. The trade deficit is a symptom of our consumer society.

If you look at the trade balance between the US and China it is some 5x worse than with Mexico.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c2010.html

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

I think NAFTA and TPP are a response to the way the society is moving. We want cheap goods made by slave labor, and we want to sit in office jobs doing spreadsheets and taking phone calls for a living. NAFTA makes up a paltry 5% of the trade deficit. China's "free trade" (unfettered trade without agreements) makes up 40%.

That's why NAFTA and TPP have nothing to do with jobs (though Recursion makes a compelling case, the quality of jobs has declined and it has had no positive effect on the wealth gap; 20 million new jobs should've resulted in a much larger increase in income). They're geopolitical entities to favor some countries over others.

Tariffs against Chinese goods would be extremely unpopular with our consumer society. We want those cheap goods.

So what's the solution? You got to lower the corporate tax rate to Germany's, close the tax loopholes completely, give tax incentives for people making jobs here, and eventually you're going to have to address a living wage concept as automation increasingly takes over production. Because manufacturing across the board is going to want to employee less and less people with automation whether we like it or not. Eventually even the burger flippers will be replaced by robots.