Ah yes, here we go again, if you don't agree with free trade, you are ignorant of economics. Please, I suppose tarriffs and bilateral trade agreements and the folks who wrote the constitution and sustained this and every other nation state for hundreds if not thousands of years were all ignorant doofuses? Be serious.
Yes. If you just flipped through the pictures of a standard macroeconomics text you would see that a nations's production possibilities curve increases dramatically trading with even just one other comparably sized nation. Free trade == bigger economy. That isn't a philosophical point... that's just a mathematical fact.
I suppose tarriffs and bilateral trade agreements and the folks who wrote the constitution and sustained this and every other nation state for hundreds if not thousands of years were all ignorant doofuses? Be serious.
I believe it was 1806 that Jefferson brilliantly decided to embargo trade with Europe. Nearly sacked the economy and the embargo was repealed the next year. Nope, Jefferson didn't know much about economics at the beginnin of his presidency, but he sure learned a good lesson by the end. Is it so much to ask that you would realize what was empirically proved 200 years ago--the economy is better off with free trade?