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Let's Put A Tariff On Snobs
Townhall ^ | 8 March 2016 | Kurt Schlichter

Posted on 03/07/2018 10:11:38 PM PST by lowbuck

I like free trade – I just don’t like snooty ideologues who won’t take their own country’s side in a trade fight. The ideal market means a willing buyer and a willing seller paying a mutually agreed price for goods or services with minimal government interference. That’s called “capitalism,” and as a business owner and someone who digs prosperity, I really like it. So why am I not wetting myself about Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs?

Cue the True Conservatives™ to tell me it’s because I’m stupid and terrible and awful. I know how they work. It was only a few years ago that I might have been with them. And they aren’t totally wrong opposing trade barriers – in the macro, free trade is a powerful engine of prosperity, the most powerful ever devised. But the key part of “free trade” is the “free” part, and they never want to talk about that when it comes to holding the foreigners accountable.

My question, one a lot of Americans before me have been asking and that no one seems to want to answer, is “When does this free trade stuff actually start?” I mean, if we’re going to have free trade, we all understand that this involves us lowering our barriers to imports. Fair enough. We have dropped our barriers – the trade deficit is enormous. We buy from everyone. We got importing stuff down. But what about the other guys, though? We export a lot, to be sure, but is it on equal terms?

We never seem to hear much about that from the Free Trade Crew – a crew I was a part of not long ago, and with which I still sympathize. It’s a simple question – “Do foreigners have exactly the same barriers to entry to their steel and aluminum markets as the United States does?”

And if not, why the hell should we put up with it?

Again, cue the calling me dumb and economically illiterate and stuff. That’s been the default reaction of my party’s establishment whenever members of our party who believe they are being hurt by foreigners who put up high barriers that keep our stuff out while we drop ours and let the competitors dare to complain.

“Hey GOP, unfair trade practices are hurting me!”

“Shut up, economic illiterate! There’s no problem. You’re imagining it. Shut up.”

I don’t know – I am thinking that’s an unconvincing argument to those folks who actually go out and vote and who have concerns that probably could be addressed better than with hysterical dismissals clothed in insults.

Maybe you didn’t notice that our president is Donald Trump, but our Republican voters are a bit done with GOP Establishment gaslighting. It’s not just on trade. Remember the whole illegal alien thing? You know, our own voters kept expressing concern about the myriad problems illegal aliens cause our voters but our intrepid establishment undertook a dual-track strategy of denying the problems our people were experiencing while calling them racists. That sure worked out for President Jeb!.

Please clap.

Here’s the thing – foreigners are not always facing the exact same barriers to entry into the United States market as Americans are facing to entering foreign markets. Look, if a U.S. company can’t compete on a level playing field, that’s one thing. Sorry guys. But when it has to push a boulder uphill, that’s another. Sometimes it’s laws, sometimes it’s taxes, sometimes it’s products being subsidized by the local government so they can snag market share over here. Where the trade barriers are not identical, can we at least agree that this is a problem, and something needs to happen to change that?

No, we can’t agree to that, because American workers and their jobs are not the priority of the bipartisan establishment that is beholden to its corporate donors. To them, our workers are an inconvenience, a hassle, drones to be browbeaten into silence.

Well, there are consequences when you ignore the expressed concerns of a large group of Americans. One is named Donald. Trump did not campaign as a free trader – instead, he campaigned as a fair trader and promised that he would put America’s interests – not the interests of the corporate bigwigs who don’t mind sacrificing our people on the altar of their balance sheets – before anything else. Trump ran against 16 others who failed to pick up the torch, and then against a drunken felon who actively hated the Normal Americans who build and feed and fuel this country.

He beat them all. There’s a message there, and this festival of fussiness about the last-resort step Trump took 15 months into his term shows that the GOP Establishment has learned nothing from this failure either.

It’s a bad idea not to stick up for your own voters. Why is the notion that we should refuse to engage in unequal trade relations so crazy to so many people who write for the cruise shilling conservative press? Ahoy, mateys – maybe run a panel on the Lido Deck about how we ought to listen to our voters when they are hurting instead of demanding that they ignore their lying eyes.

So, if tariffs on unfair steel and aluminum competitors are a bad idea, what is a good idea? How do you propose to solve the problem, and continuing to ignore it is a NO-GO. What is your idea that results in an end state where U.S. manufacturers face exactly the same obstacles to entry into foreigners’ markets as they face entering ours?

I don’t know the answer, but then I am not wetting myself over these tariffs just yet. Maybe pain will work where talk talk talk has failed. If there is a better tactic that will actually achieve the goal of exactly equal footing between our workers and the foreigners, cool. I want to hear it. Tell me exactly what it is. I get tariffs. “You hurt us, we hurt you” – I get that. So do the voters. But if there’s a better idea, let’s hear it. I don’t like tariffs – give us an effective alternative.

But we haven’t heard anything but demands we unconditionally return to the unacceptable status quo, and how the economy is going to collapse because a beer can will cost another penny. Somehow, I am unconvinced about these hypothetical risks. What is not so hypothetical are the devastated communities throughout the Midwest.

Yeah, I know. But but but…

There’s always some reason we can’t stick up for our own people. There’s always some reason we can’t offend the foreigners. There’s always some principle that demands Americans who didn’t get fancy degrees like we did be the ones getting shafted.

Weird how that works. Except it isn’t working anymore. To the extent free trade has a bad name, it’s because the free traders are less concerned with actual free trade than with the purity of their doctrine. Our voters are not going to support a system where they are getting the short end of the stick, nor should they. How about we demand equal trade terms, and when we don’t get them we make it painful? Because if someone has to suffer the pain that comes with unfair trade, I vote it be the people trading unfairly.

How about you?


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: freetrade; tariffs; trump
A master word-smith turns to the topic of tariff's and free trade.

Try this logic on your "progressive" friends and what heads explode.

1 posted on 03/07/2018 10:11:38 PM PST by lowbuck
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To: lowbuck; All
The term “free trade” is misused. Nothing is free. FAIR trade is where the exchange of goods and services are mutually agreed upon and beneficial to both parties.

Trump seems to get it since he occasionally uses the term “fair trade.” In terms of balance, I like his policy of RECIPROCITY. His thinking is: “If you F with me, that goes both ways.”

2 posted on 03/07/2018 10:31:02 PM PST by Cobra64 (Common sense isn't common any more.)
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To: lowbuck

Thanks for posting


3 posted on 03/07/2018 10:40:34 PM PST by redinIllinois (Pro-life, accountant, gun-totin' Grandma's​ - multi issue voterp it)
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To: lowbuck
Here is a historical perspective of US tariffs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history

4 posted on 03/07/2018 10:48:52 PM PST by Cobra64 (Common sense isn't common any more.)
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To: lowbuck; All
Here is a historical perspective of US tariffs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history

5 posted on 03/07/2018 10:49:02 PM PST by Cobra64 (Common sense isn't common any more.)
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To: lowbuck

I think there is a huge boatload of people who call themselves “conservatives” who have nothing whatsoever conservative about them. They are GREEDY.

That is it. They don’t care if America is treated well, because they don’t give a flying ‘f...’ how we are treated, as long as they can MAKE MONEY.

Those people have now very much enriched a country which is making every single sign that it intends to challenge us, and doing NOTHING to protect America.

Those people are why Trump was elected. They are the owners of a lot of companies which sold out and went to China.

Their companies MAKE all the stuff you buy in every single store, which says “Made in China”.

To heck with those people. We need to have more people like Donald Trump, and we need to have a lot FEWER people who are just motivated by money, over country.

America first. For a generation and a half everyone has been chasing the ‘mighty dollar’ away from the home of ... the mighty dollar.

It is high time, to return businesses to America. With or without, the companies who thought that going international, was a good idea.

No. Building things in America is a good idea.


6 posted on 03/07/2018 10:52:49 PM PST by cba123 ( Toi la nguoi My. Toi bay gio o Viet Nam.)
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To: lowbuck

bkmk


7 posted on 03/07/2018 11:46:39 PM PST by gattaca ("Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." Ronald Reagan)
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To: Cobra64

That’s a very good article. Our country was built on tariffs.

Yet the globalists seem not to care a whit that “free” trade leads to unemployment, and that the unemployed are not in a position to buy goods even if they are priced extremely low due to cheap importation. They would rather tell us that America’s days of prosperity are behind us.


8 posted on 03/08/2018 2:40:47 AM PST by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: lowbuck

When you have a trade deficit that is close to annual GDP and National debt that is over GDP you have to ask yourself, “Just who is working for whom?”


9 posted on 03/08/2018 3:24:55 AM PST by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: Cobra64

>>Here is a historical perspective of US tariffs:

History does not account for massive changes in communications and transoceanic shipping that have occurred in the past 30 years. The entire game has changed and the old rules greatly penalize the worker in the developed nation (i.e. Americans). We can’t be a nation of philosopher-poets (as Nancy Pelosi suggested we could). Americans need work too.


10 posted on 03/08/2018 3:43:02 AM PST by Bryanw92 (Asking a pro athlete for political advice is like asking a cavalry horse for tactical advice.)
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To: lowbuck
The ideal market means a willing buyer and a willing seller paying a mutually agreed price for goods or services with minimal government interference.

If someone is willing to sell something to me at a lower price he subsidizes himself, and we mutually agree upon that price, it's free trade if both he and I agree upon the exchange ... no matter what its impact on other parties.

11 posted on 03/08/2018 3:57:33 AM PST by Mr Ramsbotham (Laws against sodomy are honored in the breech.)
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To: Bryanw92
"The entire game has changed..."

It seems as though some free traders are as devoted to their models as the most rabid climate changers are, clear evidence not withstanding. One-way free trade makes as much sense as unilateral nuclear disarmament did back in the Cold War.

12 posted on 03/08/2018 4:37:27 AM PST by Flag_This (Liberals are locusts.)
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To: cba123

Its the Chamber of Commerce, they are the ones that are driving more illegals, amnesty, HB3 visas and globalism.


13 posted on 03/08/2018 8:13:56 AM PST by thirst4truth (America, What difference does it make?)
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To: lowbuck

Kurt Schlichter - Please run for President in 2022!


14 posted on 03/08/2018 8:26:21 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: Mr Ramsbotham

See, we Americans have a say in that transaction if it crosses an international border. Tough if you don’t like that. We get to charge you a fee(tariff) for that transaction. It’s out right to do so. Read the US Constitution.


15 posted on 03/08/2018 8:30:14 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: lowbuck

Transnationalists who aren’t out and out socialist worm their way into “conservatism” because they like profits. That’s the only strong distinction between the establishment Republicans and Democrats, who are synergistic and feed off of one another. Cheap domestic labor via unfettered immigration, cheap imports via unfair trade agreements. The “conservatives” profit, note that we citizens never really saw any reduction in price on anything, the “cheap” part just increased profit margin. The Democrats get a huge influx of new participants in their social programs, which practically guarantees their vote because people vote their pocketbooks, whether it’s illegal immigrants voting fraudulently or actual citizens who have been reduced to wards of the state due to a collapse in the standard of living for working class and middle class citizens. Nice scam. Trump throws a monkey wrench into it. Tarriffs? Oh no, can’t have that. Border wall? GASP! From both sides. It breaks their toy.


16 posted on 03/08/2018 8:37:41 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: lowbuck

Only 16 responses to one of the most important and best pro protectionist articles I’ve ever seen. The cowards that call themselves “free traders” would not dare come to this thread and pick apart Kurt’s well laid out arguments..


17 posted on 03/08/2018 10:01:29 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: Flag_This

>>It seems as though some free traders are as devoted to their models as the most rabid climate changers are, clear evidence not withstanding. One-way free trade makes as much sense as unilateral nuclear disarmament did back in the Cold War.

The “Free” Trade people says that as long as the wealthy are getting wealthier and those who remain in the middle class keep their jobs and stay close to keeping up withi inflation, then America will continue to thrive...enough for the powerful.

Its like the gun control argument. As long as the powerful keep their armed guards, and those who remain in the middle class don’t get victimized by violent crime too much, then America will be safe...enough for the powerful.

Health care had the same argument.

So does education.

Pattern??


18 posted on 03/08/2018 2:12:04 PM PST by Bryanw92 (Asking a pro athlete for political advice is like asking a cavalry horse for tactical advice.)
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