Reply #8: Wait a second.

[jacquelope]

There's no demand because our nation's wages are declining and jobs are going away. In fact, if we go by what you are saying, what do we have to lose with tariffs? Accelerate the decline or let it drag us more slowly to hell, it still all ends the same way.

There's no reason why we can't fire up demand if we put people back to work in $30/hour factories and keep tech and research & development jobs here. Give them more money and they'll buy stuff. We could always trade freely with Europe and other high-wage nations. I'm all for embargoing anything that comes out of cheap labor nations. Don't bring it here. You pay good wages to workers or don't export it here. American farmers are fooling themselves if they think they'll not be washed out by Brazil and China anyway. So then we'll have Mexican imports, farmers going out of business and then we'll be even worse off.

I disagree totally that we can't create demand here. Give Americans jobs producing the goods that we consume and they'll want to buy more. We cancel our debt to China and other third world nations who are fleecing us with cheap labor, start all over. It's sheer defeatism to believe we cannot fire up our factories, modernize our infrastructure and create a high-tech economy using our own home-grown talent. We just have the Koch Brothers standing in the way.

If current American companies flee America then we just take their factories, sell them cheap and let new companies produce for America, in America.

America has lost its spirit of self-sufficiency. We need a kick in the butt to regain it. If it is impossible for us to regain it, then frankly all this is moot - we're done for no matter what we do.