Free Trade- just what can we live without?

[whatthehey]

51. Been tried. Failed.

You have to import competitive advantage.

China - today's economic juggernaut/boogeyman tried the self-strengthening isolationism bit in the 19th Century. The result being they lost the economic benefit and then the political rule of one of the world's most profitable ports for a century, suffered decades of economic and technical stagnation and internal poverty of epic propoertions.

Japan tried it for a couple of centuries until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. They regressed into a semi-feudal state with much of their population as subsistence farmers, then had to pour an enormous ratio of their GDP, possible only in a central command and control political structure, into rapid re-globalization.

The Russians tried it during the Soviet era. Lines for bread hours long. Two year waits for cars 25 years behind global comparisons. Terrible standard of living.

Isolationism fails. It fails more quickly and completely with instant communications and global mobility.

We have plenty of tariffs BTW - tens of billions of revenue from them. Could they be increased? Sure if you want an instant trade war that will throw export workers on the dole years faster than new domestic manufacturing can be built. You will permanently shatter export-based manufacturers like Caterpillar whose domestic market is a fraction of their output. You will create mountains of spoiled agricultural produce that cannot be sold domestically at any price. We don't need as much soy as we grow, and China can grow their own faster than we can build our own TV factories. You will cause foreign-owned corporations to pull out of the US because they cannot afford their own supply chain, leaving their employees out of work. At the same time as this you will cause massive inflation on everything that cannot be rapidly added to the US manufacturing base (do you know how long itytakes to plan, get permission for, build, equip, hire and train workers for a new manufacturing facility, at the same time everybody else is doing it? Inflation AND delay...).

Now it will get slightly better, after years that is. The necessities will indeed be produced here, and sure people will be hired. But the rustbelt 70s won't come back. We have robots, integrated software, instant communications now. Your plan just made everybody build new plants in an inflationary market. Were you investing in that area, how sensible would it be to choose a production model that relies on workers who will be making increasing wage demands because trhey are living in a society that just turned their back on competitive advantage and doubled its prices essentially overnight? Or would you do everything in your power to have a predictable stable cost base with maximized automation?

People on DU often bemoan income inequality, and with good reason. But we've seen nothing compared to what we would in the inflationary explosion of a trade war. Anyone without highly marketable skills and an ability to work in automated industries would have no chance of a job and face prices far in excess of what we see now relying on competitive advantage to maintain affordability.