And you realize we're sitting on over a billion pounds of cheese we're having to take care of, we're paying them to over produce.
And the whole point of tariffs is to correct for the negative effects of free trade, which can be quite severe when the trade partner is at a much different level of economic development (this goes both ways, incidentally - e.g. NAFTA wiped out millions of small farmers in Mexico). In reality, no trade decision occurs 100% solely on the basis of economics. Let's take an extreme example and say that North Korea has just opened up to the world. They're offering to produce clothes at 50% off the cheapest available prices elsewhere, for no reduction in quality. To make this happen they plan to use massed slave labor; workers who fail to meet production quotas are beaten, while management publicly tortures the families and children of the workers to force them to move even faster. If any item a worker produces fails QA, the worker is immediately killed and another forced to take his place. All profits from the venture (which are considerable, despite the low prices) will go directly into Kim Jong Un's personal bank account. Would you say that the government can prohibit U.S. companies from purchasing any clothes produced in this way, or are we actually forced to trade with North Korea in this scenario because slave labor is their "comparative advantage"? As to red vs. blue states: they are all in the same country, subject to the same laws (OSHA, FDA), courts, federal regulatory agencies, taxes and spending programs. States compete on state tax levels and a few other things but the differences are really minimal; nothing like the U.S. versus a country like China, India, or Vietnam.
It's about time...... India has the 6th largest economy in the world India has the 4th largest military in the world They have 150 nuclear weapons With stats like that, they don't need special privileges.
Except that's not what defines a developed nation. I'm ok with changing definitions, just not changing treaties/rules on established definitions