On Trump, Free Trade and Fair Trade

[4est_4est_Gump]

[With the usual caveat, if all you want to do is bash the source or bash the conservative, go fuck yourself.]

...

There is an ongoing debate on free trade versus fair trade. I believe under our current circumstances, free trade is an illusion. Free trade was repudiated in 1971 when President Nixon suspended the Bretton Woods gold standard and implemented de facto fiat currencies. All countries have evolved to various forms of mixed economies since the Bretton Woods monetary and trade system was signed in 1944. All countries are now a mixture of freedom and government controls -- a mixture of freedom and force ranging from mostly free to repressive dictatorships. Free trade cannot exist without objective currencies, a level playing field of laissez-faire capitalism and a complete separation of state and economics. Any trade involving the mixture of freedom and force is not a free trade; it is trade by national coercion.

Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group has characterized this as “when the Chinese government comes into a room, they’re bringing to the negotiating table their military, their political system, their economy, their diaspora, their propaganda tools, and everything else.” On the other side of the table sits the American businessperson with marketing tools of product, price, place and promotion. I know, I have been there many, many times.

Anyone that advocates for free trade in the current world context of mixed economies and fiat currencies is totally naïve. Americans were naïve in thinking that if we played by the Bretton Woods’ rules that everyone else would follow. Our competitive disadvantage is self-imposed from our altruistic culture. We have swallowed the idea of globalism, the idea that nations should put the interests of the entire world above their own. Our foreign policy needs to assert our own national self-interest and defend the freedom and individual rights of our citizens and should therefore ensure fair international trade for American companies and individuals.

I believe a proper approach aligned with America’s self-interest would look something like this:

http://www.americanthinker.com/arti...reatness_border_adjust_oil.html#ixzz4adkSSZfT

 

[JohnnySavage]

We can't have free trade as long as governments subsidize their chosen industries.

For example: Boeing has a hard time competing with Air Bus because Air Bus is subsidized and Boeing has the burden of paying for worker health care.

Sugar is protected in the US because of US government regulation.

and on and on.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Agreed.

Government drives up costs.

So, I guess that Trump has a point when he vows to drive up costs in order to protect us?

 

[JohnnySavage]

Agreed.

Government drives up costs.

So, I guess that Trump has a point when he vows to drive up costs in order to protect us?

There's little he can do as he doesn't control other countries.

China undercuts us on all sorts of things. So Trump says he will impose import taxes on Chinese goods. China does the same to American products and Caterpillar goes out of business.

We have a paradox here: The marketplace has become globalized, while at the same time global nationalism is on the rise.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

There's little he can do as he doesn't control other countries.

China undercuts us on all sorts of things. So Trump says he will impose import taxes on Chinese goods. China does the same to American products and Caterpillar goes out of business.

We have a paradox here: The marketplace has become globalized, while at the same time global nationalism is on the rise.

But your unstated assumption is that no Chinese firm will go out of business?

Is it also true that China is Caterpillar's lone customer?

We've always been globalized, always.

What hurts us most is the myth that corporations pay taxes...

 

[JohnnySavage]

But your unstated assumption is that no Chinese firm will go out of business?

Is it also true that China is Caterpillar's lone customer?

We've always been globalized, always.

What hurts us most is the myth that corporations pay taxes...

I'd disagree there.

Until the rise of the computer and information age, labor followed capital. Now, capital follows labor. The marketplace is only globalized now because of instant transfer of capital to anywhere in the world.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I also beg to disagree.

Maybe we have different understanding of what globalization is, but the Silk Road was Capital chasing down labor...





... as were the Vikings.



I simply think that this is one of those instances where the "intellectual class" is reinventing definitions and paradigms as if they were some new phenomenon, but let's face it, Bastiat was writing about globalization and trade barriers in the 1840's and he wasn't the first and he wasn't using "new-age" Progressive pejorative language.

 

[RobDownSouth]

[With the usual caveat, if all you want to do is bash the source or bash the conservative, go fuck yourself.]





http://www.americanthinker.com/arti...reatness_border_adjust_oil.html#ixzz4adkSSZfT

And a great big fuck you and your caveats, fatso.

Random cut and paste from a tinfoil hat site with no original thought....

Part of Chief TubOfLard's "Long March" to recreate Literotica in his own image, i.e. "Stormfront With Tits".

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Oh, sweet, pig shit is here to fertilize the thread...