Arguments Against Free Trade Are Deeply Flawed

Townhall.com ^ | April 8, 2016 | Jonah Goldberg

[Rockitz]

SHOCKER....He missed it, again.

Under the uniparty, the US has become a fascist/corporatist state beholden only to the whims of big business.

American workers finally figured out that free trade allowed businesses to move their operations out of the country to get lower wage workers and lower taxes and left American workers without jobs and then those very same businesses exported their product back into the US sans tariffs to the American consumer.

[peeps36]

I remember when NAFTA was supposed to create a Mexican middle class who were suppose to buy American made products. All these years later and the Mexicans are still dirt poor and the American jobs are long gone.

[lacrew]

Very well put.

[DugwayDuke]

“Arguments Against Free Trade Are Deeply Flawed
...because it’s not really free trade.”

Exactly, the US imposes tariffs on over 12,000 items. How many more do we need?

[amihow]

On trade and increasing legal immigration too much, Cruz appears as one of them.

[kearnyirish2]

“Free trade” people want a 2-tiered society... a handful of elites like George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg and a servant class of everyone else can just “service” the elites.

Trump & Sanders are doing well because more and more Americans realize this every day. Europe realized it a century ago, and while their answer is deeply flawed (and we are trying to duplicate it) people there expect a lot more from their elected officials. Not that they get it, but at least they’ll burn down buildings intended to house “refugees” and REALLY build walls.

[central_va]

Exactly, the US imposes tariffs on over 12,000 items. How many more do we need?

The USA collects less than 1% on imported goods.

[amihow]

And the poor Mexicans are flooding the U.S.

[Yashcheritsiy]

Sure Jonah.

This is also the guy who thought arguments against gay marriage were “deeply flawed,” so we can see how jacked up his thinking seems to be.

It’s time for America to just say NO to the Free Traitors.

[Don Corleone]

Just as is there is no such thing as a free lunch there is no such thing as free trade. Somebody must pay. Guess who?

[CapitalistCrusader]

The money line for me is:

Indeed, it is largely thanks to trade that the average American worker is in the top 1 percent of earners in the world.

The problem is that there are more than 90 million able minded/bodied Americans that just aren't even looking for jobs anymore.

[goodnesswins]

EXACTLY...

[goodnesswins]

Yeah....”slavery creates free trade” The irony is lost on so many.

[DugwayDuke]

“The USA collects less than 1% on imported goods.”

Which says very little about the actual tariff rates. The World Bank says the weighted mean applied tariff for the US is about 1.5% and that is a function of the rate and the amount imported. IOW, items with very high rates will have low imported amounts contributing little to the weighted mean average.

BTW, tariff rates, as recently as 2010, were as high as 350% tobacco; 164% on peanuts; 100% on jam, chocolate and ham; and 48% on sneakers. There are tariff based quotas on other items such as sugar. Some estimates in 2011 indicated that the tariffs on sneakers indicated that this tariff increased the cost of a pair of sneakers by 40% costing consumers over $2B per year.

[InterceptPoint]

I am simply astonished at the lack of understanding of basic economics and trade by at least the vocal population of Free Republic. It is a sad day when those posting on this thread find themselves in agreement with socialists like Bernie and Hillary.

I happen to think that Von Mises and Milton Friedman are the proper guides for real conservatives. Instead we get Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Trump giving us their uninformed, populist, politically corrupt guidance.

Here is von Mises on tariffs in a nutshell:

""All that a tariff can achieve is to divert production from those locations in which the output per unit of input is higher to locations in which it is lower. It does not increase production; it curtails it."

- Ludwig von Mises
(Human Action, p. 737; p. 744)".

If you don't know who von Mises is then read the following comment he made about tariffs. He is correct. Hillary, Bernie and Donald are wrong.

[BfloGuy]

Our international trade problem could be solved by simply requiring that we not buy more from a given country than we sell to them. In other words, neither country becomes indebted to the other country.

How are you going to do that?

Countries don't trade with each other. People trade with other people. At some point, are you going to announce to the American people, that, after today, they may not buy anything from China?

Also, a so-called trade deficit does not "indebt" anyone to anyone. The trade deficit does not create debt. Period.

If you buy a Chinese TV, you pay for it. You have not created a debt with the Chinese. Now, it may well be that you put that TV purchase on a credit card, but in that case your debt is with an American bank.

That imbalances in trade create debt is one of the biggest economic fallacies in existence.

[central_va]

It is a sad good day when those posting on this thread find themselves in agreement with socialists like Bernie and Hillary founding fathers like George Washington.

Fixed it.

[Hawthorn]

ping

[InterceptPoint]

You should have read past the first few llines. Whether you like it or not you will find very little disagreement between Bernie, Hillary and Donald when it comes to Trade Policy.

You can study the subject a bit or you can, like Donald Trump, fly by the seat of your pants.

Your loss, not mine.

[1rudeboy]

We don’t have a free trade agreement with Malaysia.