pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:
DiscoGary wrote:At least someone on our side is finally pushing back.
How does this work exactly? "Pushing back" against what? Why is big government getting in the way? I thought government encroaching on economic Freedom was a terrible thing only dirty liberals did. What happened?
Please explain this mystery. Conservative Justice Warriors, I want to believe!
Our Constitution only covers the US. The President is in charge of negotiating treaties with other countries, so this isn't a "freedom" or "big government" issue. Trump is working very hard to create world-wide free markets.
"Pushing back" against closed markets that harm free trade. Many countries have tariffs on our goods, where we don't have tariffs on their goods coming in to the US. Now those tariffs on US goods harm our companies, but they do more harm to the country putting up the tariff because instead of harming one industry, the tariff lowers the standard of living across the board. I saw this first hand when I lived in England where imported Japanese cars cost twice as much there than they did in the US. The result was that a couple 100,000 car manufacturing jobs were protected, with the unintended consequence of drastically lowering the standard of living for the other 55 million people. One of the reasons the US has been able to maintain a high standard of living is that we generally keep our tariffs low, so US citizens benefit from the productivity across the world.
Trump's "Fair Trade" goal is to lower tariffs everywhere, allowing US companies to sell overseas in currently closed markets, which would help the target country overall even if certain market segments would suffer with the new competition. Politically, dropping tariffs is difficult because previously protected businesses would see competitive pressure, so Trump has to turn up the heat to force them to open their markets to US competition. If he succeeds, then everyone wins. If he fails, then we have some temporary pain and go back to the old ways and the target country continues to suffer.
That's what's going on.
Please tell me there's a Liberal out there somewhere that understands this.