[Vigilanteman]

It is worth remembering that when much of the world was in ruins postwar, America allowed their manufactured goods into this country at much lower tariffs than they imposed on ours. This was a courtesy to grow their economies and help them rebuild. We also stationed our armed forces around the world to protect and defend them with a small commitment on their part to contribute more toward that cost as their economies grew.

For years, we have tried to wean them off the gravy train with mixed success. Japan and the United Kingdom, in particular, have stepped up to the plate to provide the cost of their own defense and our cost of maintaining troops there to the extent that is is cheaper to station an air force wing in Scotland or Okinawa at a lower cost than keeping them stateside. Germany and South Korea make some contributions as well. The rest of the world, not so much.

Just about all of them have manufacturing bases which are subsidized (or at least not kneecapped) by their governments. While that is happening less since Trump came to town and pushed through the corporate tax cuts, we also need to keep in mind that even with those tax cuts all we really did was put our rates in the same range as the rest of the world.

Disclosure: I work for a multinational and hear the whining about retaliatory tariffs raising our prices. Yeah, they do. But not as much as we've increased sales and gained from lower tax rates.

[ohioman]

Thanks for the informative post. This reminds me of the pitfalls of the welfare system - people eventually feel entitled to their benefits/freebies and get mighty upset when the gravy train leaves town.