but..but.. if Trump fixes the trade deals, I won’t be able to buy so much cheap Chinese made stuff anymore! Boo Hoo.
You dont understand global trade. In FREE trade, everything is more efficient and prices go down, productivity goes up and with productivity, the standard of living.
In trade DEALS politician of government A makes a deal with politician of government B to allow products to be made in B provided Goldman Sachs of A is allowed to finance the deal and provided the brother-in-law of the B politician gets a brokers fee for arranging the deal.
The NAFTA originally proposed by Reagan was FREE trade. But by the time Clinton signed it many years later NAFTA had been stuffed with DEALS for labor unions, environmentalists, Chamber of Commerce, family members of politicians an enemies of politicians that needed to be bought off.
TPP never even started with FREE trade. Anything that requires 20,000 pages plus adendums and appendices cannot possibly be FREE trade.
Trade DEALS between politicians do not bring down prices. FREE trade does.
Actually, if productivity is turned loose on the American industrial base, we may very well be able to buy higher quality American made goods for LESS than the cheap products now pouring forth from Chinese factory towns, where quantity is much more important than quality. The relatively short lifetimes of the cheaply made goods is more cost per hour of operation than quality goods made right the first time, but which can last for years. Add to that the capability of simple and reliable access to maintaining the operation of those goods, and the favorability of the US-made product begins to far outweigh the temporary advantage of “cheap”.
Many of the products now made by complicated processes could be constructed on a “3D” printer for much less than the current fabrication costs.
Work smarter, not harder.