The laptop I'm typing this on would have cost a few extra hundred bucks if I had to subsidize some boated pension plan with my purchase. I paid less money than I otherwise would have. Penny saved and all that. And my laptop is working fine. Hence, I have gained. The money that I saved will go to something else, maybe an American product. And no, we don't need global trade, but having it beats the hell out of not having it.
We became a super-power during and after WWII, when American manufacturing was at its peak. We became reliant on Asian and other foreign manufacturers and products because we became too greedy to pay our own workers what they were worth, and saw a bigger 'bottom line' in using slave labor overseas. We lost our world leadership in producing and manufacturing the best products on earth to our own greed and stupidity.
Our workers were asking more than they were worth, and the labor union thugs prevented any domestic workers from asking for less. Later on, government-mandated employee benefit packages made employing American workers even less attractive. High taxes thanks to the Johnson and Carter Administrations didn't help either.
As the German and Japanese auto manufacturers have so clearly proven, when you make the best quality products you outsell everyone else. Cadillac and Lincoln luxury cars continue to get badly hurt by Lexus, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volvo, because these foreign competitors make far superior quality cars. The same thing goes for American mid-level cars, they get hammered by Toyota, Subaru and Nissan because they won't produce cars of equal quality.
So, what, I should subsidize American auto-makers by paying for inferior products just because they're under the same flag as I am? No thanks. Patriotism doesn't work that way. We don't reward mediocrity 'round here.
If globalism is so 'good' for America, then why are we getting our behinds kicked by all our foreign competitors, weather in consumer electronics, automobiles, motorcycles, whatever; and why do we run up frightenly high trade deficits with them?
You talk about dollars leaving the United States like it's a bad thing. Read Wealth of Nations some time.
All global trade, as it has become today, has done for America is bring us low priced gadgets and things that we don't need, like Nintendo, televisions, stereos, electric can openers.
I will be the judge of what I do and do not need, seeing as how it's my money that I'm spending. And if we had tariff-protected domestic producers making that stuff, we'd still be buying it, albeit with lower quality for a higher price.
Meanwhile, the prices of things we need for survival continue to skyrocket out of sight. We're just not paying attention to what really matters.
"Things we need for survival..." Like what? Food? If we dropped tariffs on foreign-produced food, we could get it even cheaper than we do now. No thanks to the Senators and Representatives from my state, in particular, for opposing elimination of the sugar and shrimp tariffs under NAFTA and CAFTA. Oil? A gallon of gasoline costs less than a gallon of orange juice, and it could be even cheaper if the environmentalists would get off the oil companies' backs, and if, oh, I don't know, Congress dropped taxes on oil and gasoline products. Clothing? That isn't hard to find, and it's cheap to get, if you know where to look. Shelter? We don't seem to have a serious homeless problem (even though it is Christmastime and there is a Republican in the White House, so the MSM would normally be churning out homeless stories right now).
So especially given the great economic news recently, I refuse to believe that the American economy is going to hell in a handbasket, let alone that it's international trade's fault.
We don't? We just rewarded communist China with 'Most Favored Nation' trade status, and their imports are so cheesy that mediocrity would be several steps up for them.
As to your comments about 'rewarding' U.S. made products by buying them for patriotism's sake, even the most patriotic man in America would have a hard time doing that, because we simply don't make much of anything anymore. Even American automobile manufacturers buy their materials and parts from overseas, and have the engines assembled in foreign lands.
Because of this obsession with 'globalism', our nation has become dependent on foreign countries, (dependent even on our enemies like Communist China and Saudi Arabia, whose oil we could completely replace with Alaskan oil). Many a nation's bad intentions were covered under the viel of 'improving the economy', just look to Hitler's 1930's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, (the Nazis said ridding themselves of the Jews would help their economy, while communism promised to spread the wealth around to everyone).
Globalism, that bloodless coup that has thrown down autonomous borders, and its twin brother, 'multiculturalism', which has brought Islam to infect every Western nation, promises you that your toys will be cheaper and your lives will be 'enriched'. Meanwhile, all the consumer essentials like food, energy and housing continue to rise out of sight and terrorism threatens every formerly autonomous, free nation.
Manufacturing and producing are what make a nation mighty, and patriotism is what keeps it that way. Just look at post-war Germany and Japan, and our own rise to superpower during and after WWII. Then look at what globalism threatens to do to America, ("soon there won't be any money left to support America's elderly", the warn us; and our national debt will reach the Milky Way before NASA does). Then look at what 'multiculturalism', (Globalism's twin), has done to Western Europe. How stupid can people today be? Is your laptop and automatic coffee maker really all that important?