yeah , its just killing china right now...they can't grow their economy because of it BTW,,,Im not for protectionist either....all i want is for every country we trade with we honor the same agreements that they have in place for our exports...why is that concept so foreign? EX: Japan...we cannot bring rice into their country fine. we pick a product that equals the % of rice to our farmers and find a japanese product of similar % and ban that. ex: France won't allow us red wines ..ok we have to ban all French wines from import to the us..
France not allowing our red wine in hurts them more than it hurts us. If we ban their red wine it will hurt them sure, but will hurt our consumer also as we'll have less choices and higher prices. Protectionism hurts, reciproality (spelling!) doesn't help the matter. Let our markets be completely free and try to convince the others of the benefits. We are supposed to capitalists.
thats the point..." Let our markets be completely free and try to convince the others of the benefit" If they haven't gotten the message after 200 years you think they are suddenly going to wake up and go " shoot dog!,,,im wring..Im gonna let american products into my country"???? wishful thinking at its best... Give peace a chance is a great slogan too...if somebody strikes your cheek turn and offer him the other...well, at the end of e day if your lying in a pool of blood you have to wonder if your made an error by not at least protecting yourself.
But we do not have anywhere near free markets, we still put tariffs on things. And when we try to protect ourself by reciproality it ends up hurting us, NOT HELPING!!!
still not seeing where it hurts us...again...if a trade agreement for our goods entering another country is good they should have no problem with us imposing the same .......ya know...I have a question...Why is it always America who gets screwed in trade? Im tired of waiting for this perfect world inwhich everyone trades like an open air auction...take the blinders off...it aint working my friend
First of all it ain't working because we are not now and have never done it. This is very basic stuff here, go pick up a Globalization or International Trade college textbook. Say we block French wine from coming in. This will make the suppy of wine here low and prices will go up, thus consumer pays more. Right now we have tariffs on imported shrimp. This helps a few shrimp farmers in the US to keep their jobs, but consumers in turn pay more for shrimp. Basically welfare for business which many socialist countries do. You notice how expensive shrimp has become. My favorite example is steel. Bush put tariffs on steel back around 2002. Well this makes the price of steel go up for buyers in the US, again it helps the few steel companies in the US but consumers pay more for products made from steel. But not only that, this also hurts our exporting companies. For example now GE and GM pay more for the steel used to make their products. This hurts their exporting business because their overseas competitors are still paying the global price for steel. Toyota and Volkswagon pay less than GM and Ford for the same steel. I am not saying the other countries don't hurt us by not letting our products in, it does hurt us. But by retaliating with 'revenge' tariffs it actually adds to our hurt. So that is not the answer. Got it? By the way the steel tariff got removed recently.
Are you blind to certain periods of history. High tariffs sent us into the Great Depression in the 30's. You also seem completely naive to international economics. Reciprocal tariffs don't work well. Countries don't necessarily place flat rate tariffs on all goods from a particular nation. They place tariffs on particular goods. Let's say Japan places a 20% tariff on US rice. Does it do us any good to place a 20% tariff on japanese rice. No! We don't really import any rice from Japan. A reciprocal tariff wouldn't hurt them at all. Consequently, we would have to place a tariff on japanese autos or electronics for the tariff to even be effective. In the end, there is a ton of dead weight loss and most of that falls on the shoulders of US consumers who now have to pay more for japanese autos. That is a great idea. Why don't we screw everyone in the US who wants to buy a Japanese auto simply to help a handful of US rice farmers increase their global market share? When it comes down to it, Japan is hurting their entire population while only hurting a handful of US farmers. Not to mention that US consumers are now benefited by the rice surplus. If we placed a tariff on japanese autos to retaliate, now our consumers are hurt too and our farmers are still hurt. Sadly, our government does exactly as I just described. You are complaining about our government not doing something only because you are too uninformed to realize that they do. Retaliatory tariffs are a huge part of US political policy. That was exactly my point. Tariffs only screw the consumer in the end. They shouldn't be used for political agendas.
I am with on that one NAFTA, has been bad ( and yes it was Clinton whom pushed it through and yes I like him as Pres. ). Now they want an North American Union, no thanks to that. I am in favor of tax cuts for corporations on a couple of conditions. 1. You employ legal citizens and residents. 2. You stop outsourcing jobs. Fine if Corp X wants to outsource that's great but no tax cut. 3. Companies that develop clean alternative fuels and advanced solar, such a nanosolar, that will get us off our dependency on the Middle East should get a hefty tax break. And I am not talking about ethanol which at this point is a net loser, from my reading. 4. This one is broken down into subparts A. If you buy an American car made in America from a Co. with a American based HQ you get max tax write off as a consumer. B. If you buy an foreign car made in America, lets say my 2 Toyotas ( both American made ) but the Co. HQ is overseas you get tax break level 2. C. You want to buy a fancy exotic car with Co. HQ overseas, great, no tax break for you, you made it big and you don't need it. I am afraid that what the Fed and US government has chosen to do is stop supporting the dollar so that it will stimulate exports and mfg. growth. Well that great as long as you not holding US greenbacks.
I think you are the one who needs to take the blinders off. The US benefits from trade more than most other major countries. Why do you think we have this lifestyle. If a country wants to screw their consumer to protect an industry, that's fine. I would never encourage ours to do the same thing, because it was stupid of the other country to do it in the first place. They are hurt more by it than we are. Unfortunately we do the same thing for US steel, because we have economic morons running this country. I will admit that I do partially buy into the national defense argument for protecting our steel industry though.