General Discussion

Last edited Wed Apr 2, 2025, 09:06 AM - Edit history (1)

What's crazy is that the only thing I've ever really agreed with Republicans on is Free Trade. They were the free market capitalists for forever. Tariffs were a dirty word to them.

Now the cover they're using is that these tariffs are in response to other countries' existing tariffs, but that's mostly not true. We actually have fair trade with most countries. Sure, we protect our auto industry, in return we let other countries protect some of their industries with tariffs. But it's mostly a series of trade deals that have created an incredible amount of wealth for the United States. How that wealth has been distributed is the issue, but that has little to do with our trade deals.

I don't think Trump knows what he's doing and I don't think there's a single serious economist who supports this ham-handed tariffs for all policy. And this wasn't even part of his first term and wasn;t that big a part of his campaign. Someone who wants to disrupt the global economy has gotten his ear.

In the last 150 years, free trade has been more successful at bringing about positive change than all the wars and the charities combined.