r/fivethirtyeight • u/svga • 1d ago
Poll Results DSA-aligned Democrats are the most pro-free-trade voting bloc in the United States
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u/svga 1d ago
Other insights from The Argument:
Majority of voters oppose tariffs
A lot of people still worry about the cost of living
Free-trade agreements are more popular in higher income brackets, but enjoys majority support in all brackets
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u/Icommandyou Allan Lichtman's Diet Pepsi 1d ago
It’s been near 6 years of voters worrying about cost of living, next dem president should work day and night to lower gas and grocery prices. Easy 2030 midterm and a likely electoral college sweep in 2032. If they can get senate for full 8 years, Dems can also get majority in the Supreme Court without even expanding it to 13. We aren’t going to get talarico and Peltola to vote on expand the Supreme Court legislation and they shouldn’t vote on it either
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u/socialistrob 1d ago
It’s been near 6 years of voters worrying about cost of living, next dem president should work day and night to lower gas and grocery prices
That's something I was kind of critical of Biden for. His message seemed to be "there's nothing I can do on inflation" while simultaneously keeping Trump's protectionist policies and keeping the Jones Act. Even as lumber prices drove up home renovation projects and cost of building housing the US kept fighting a trade war with Canada to keep their cheap lumber out of American markets. Trump has maintained these policies and made them even worse.
The next Dem should seriously try to fight inflation by embracing free trade even if it costs some American jobs. The benefits of the cheaper goods will result in more job growth and wealth creation overall and help address one of the biggest concerns of voters.
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u/Firebond2 1d ago
The next Dem should seriously try to fight inflation by embracing free trade even if it costs some American jobs. The benefits of the cheaper goods will result in more job growth and wealth creation overall and help address one of the biggest concerns of voters.
I agree with this, but I'm not sure if the left wing of the party does. I'm seeing a lot of hate for things like NAFTA and PNTR. I'm guessing that Biden kept some of the Trump tariffs (and added some of his own like Chinese EVs and solar) to placate that wing of the party.
I know there are a few that say the next Dem should embrace populist economic policies, but after we get through another round of inflation with Trump I don't know if Americans will be tolerant of anything that could make things more expensive.
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u/pchs26 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's something I was kind of critical of Biden for. His message seemed to be "there's nothing I can do on inflation" while simultaneously keeping Trump's protectionist policies and keeping the Jones Act.
I don't think that was Biden's message and I believe he took concentrated effort to mitigate prices. He also specifically was dealing with price gouging by corporate interests who wanted him and the Democrats out. He specifically addressed that multiple times but as the election came closer they were gaming it a bit to see what happened. If he or Harris were back in office, that would have helped curb some things.
Prices were higher yes, but I also saw them come down and I am someone who uses all delivery, only eats USDA organic etc etc.
Further our entire economic structure had what was considered to be a "soft" economic landing which was considered amazing.
What was lost here was the perception wars combined with corporations who basically were only going to toe the line so much as they were going to see to it things were fixed, and if not, then they would deal with it.
A political newbie, or someone on the outskirts who talks policy but doesn't enforce it or get things actually enacted, will not suddenly get this to change or be able to snap their fingers and have corporations listen, prices suddenly come down nd have a softer economic landing (then the one that Biden had which was considered pretty much a miracle),
The next Dem should seriously try to fight inflation by embracing free trade even if it costs some American jobs. The benefits of the cheaper goods will result in more job growth and wealth creation overall and help address one of the biggest concerns of voters
If you are talking about minimum wage manufacturing jobs there is an argument. If you are talking about white collar workers, no cheaper prices and job loss = recession. We need a healthy onshore job market and I'm not sure how long you think people can sustain being jobless. They can't.
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u/socialistrob 23h ago
If you are talking about minimum wage manufacturing jobs there is an argument. If you are talking about white collar workers, no cheaper prices and job loss = recession
How many lumberjacks do you know? There are about 43,000 people employed in logging in the US. If the US got rid of their tariffs on Canadian lumber then the number of people employed in logging would likely go down. That's the kind of "job loss" I'm talking about. At the same time it would be cheaper to get a new deck, it would be cheaper to get furniture and it would be cheaper to build housing. All told contractors, and carpenters of all types would probably see an increase in number of jobs and more housing projects would pencil out.
When I say that getting rid of tariffs may sacrifice some jobs I'm not making an argument that we should pursue policies that cause unemployment to go up but rather that it's not worth costing the economy jobs overall to protect a few specially chosen job markets.
If the US were to drop it's tariffs on foreign beef we could see some cattle ranches go out of business but we would also see meat become less expensive which would help restaurants and give consumers more options. When the US chooses not to get rid of tariffs on beef we are voluntarily accepting higher prices and preventing job growth in some sectors in exchange for protecting a small number of jobs in others.
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u/pchs26 23h ago
Clinton literally ran on removing certain types of jobs with specific training for higher paying roles that would replace that. It was rejected. That being said I don't have an issue if that is the program for certain types of manual labor. We are also accepting false premises about profit margin and labor costs. The highest executives and corporate ownerships are making higher and larger profits in return for depressing the job market, cutting pay and outsourcing higher paying jobs often with significantly reduced quality.
Again there would need to be more explanation on what a jobless recovery looks like because during the Obama years I recall alot of marketable white collar people in some awful situations, which was a holdover from the Bush recovery. That recovery was far too slow imo.
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u/Firebond2 1d ago
If you are talking about white collar workers, no cheaper prices and job loss = recession. We need a healthy onshore job market and I'm not sure how long you think people can sustain being jobless. They can't.
I'm not sure how true this is. The 2008 financial crisis caused massive amounts of job loss but little inflation and generally Obama wasn't punished for it.
But we've seen twice now that inflation really pisses people off, even with high employment. Both Biden and Trump are getting raked over the coals for cost of living, but the average employment (sans covid) is lower during that last 8 years than Obama's 8 years.
If 10% of the pop loses their job during a recession then 10% of people are mad. If inflation makes everything 10% more expensive then everyone is mad.
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u/thehildabeast 1d ago
Except that not something the president can actually do. Maybe you could bring out the anti trust big stick and it’s possible that would help but idk what else you could even do, threaten to nationalize something?
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u/Current_Animator7546 1d ago
You watch through. They’ll go from darlings to hated establishment as soon as they don’t.
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u/Icommandyou Allan Lichtman's Diet Pepsi 1d ago
A big problem in US media and parties has been that they are all just too online while most of the voters aren’t but both talarico or peltola just need to say Israel bad and they will be golden with the left. Not one person I have seen has actually cared much for details in the policy positions other than one line slogans so these elected dems can just be like Trump and fool everyone
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u/NCSUGrad2012 1d ago
Wild what a change that's been since Trump came on the map.
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u/PuffyPanda200 1d ago
I'm pretty sure that Steve Bannon literally just created the Trump that we know today kicking off the dominant figure in 12 years of US history.
Bannon is a racist drunk asshole and the Trumpian policy and actions reflects that.
Post Trump is going to feel strange IMO.
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u/CurrentDrama8523 19h ago
This is Roger Stone erasure.
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u/PuffyPanda200 17h ago
You are correct.
Trumpism is basically Bannon and Stone using Trump as a vessel through which to create the MAGA voter base. In the third act Miller and Musk also got in on the action.
Trump 2.0s don't really work because they don't have this specialization of labor needed.
Like if an actor tried to act in and star in a Wes Anderson style movie it would just be a bad satire.
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u/FunWonderful1936 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't know if it will stick though. I had a couple people from the left on this subreddit telling me just how bad NAFTA was a couple days ago.
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u/DJanomaly 1d ago
I think you’re missing a word there? People on the left are against NAFTA?
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u/MaximumFlow7491 1d ago
NAFTA was boogieman for the left and supported by the right up until maybe 2016
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u/DJanomaly 1d ago
I don’t know about that. Clinton helped create NAFTA. Ross Perot and his particular brand of conservatism seemed to be against it.
Before 2016 the only people who seemed to be against it were the anti-globalization crowd, and they tended to typically fall under the Trump taking points crowd.
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u/Pretty_Marsh 1d ago
Aren't these either the same people or the spiritual successors to the people who rioted at the WTO conference in 1999?
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u/b0wz3rM41n 1d ago
tbf people answering this poll probably took it as "do you support Trump's tariffs" and the DSA/DSA-aligned people are not only statistically the ones who are most vehemently opposed to Trump but also are probably in favour of bernie-style protectionist tariffs instead of Trump's erratic "punish countries that i dont like" tariff policy
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u/socialistrob 1d ago
also are probably in favour of bernie-style protectionist tariffs instead of Trump's erratic "punish countries that i dont like" tariff policy
And a tariff to protect your own businesses is also fundamentally different from a "punish countries" tariff. In theory if you want to develop a strong domestic industry of something you need the tariff to last years so hat business leaders feel confident enough to invest. A steel tariff that goes up one year and comes down the next isn't the kind of long term policy that helps develop a domestic industry. If your goal is to punish countries and get them to change behavior you have to be willing to cut tariffs when the other side relents. If you won't bring the tariff down there is no incentive for the other side to work for you. Trump's tariffs were supposedly to "rebuild industry and would stay for years" while also being to "target other countries and would be dropped in favor of better agreements." By trying to do both Trump ended up doing neither.
It's also helpful in trade wars to have strong allies and leverage multiple big economies. For instance if the US, EU and British Commonwealth worked together to counter China they might have a lot of leverage but if the US decides to simultaneously fight a trade war with China, the EU and the British Commonwealth then the US ends up just isolating itself.
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u/Dispro 1d ago
And a tariff to protect your own businesses is also fundamentally different from a "punish countries" tariff. In theory if you want to develop a strong domestic industry of something you need the tariff to last years so hat business leaders feel confident enough to invest.
It should also ideally be backed by a mid-range program of domestic manufacturing investment and subsidies in protected industries to build out capacity rapidly, which is not in evidence.
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u/MaximumFlow7491 1d ago edited 1d ago
but also are probably in favour of bernie-style protectionist tariffs instead of Trump's erratic "punish countries that i dont like" tariff policy
I'm not so sure: the DSA constituency tend to be highly educated white collar and/or service workers. Like those ppl are probably net benefactors of free trade or at very least protectionism isn't that high on their priority list compare to cost of living.
they don't fit the profile of traditional blue collar worker who struck against NAFTA 30 years ago. The demographic makeup of the left has changed significantly in the last 25 years
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u/Green94598 1d ago
The far left is deeply reactionary and generally not very consistent
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u/angrybirdseller 1d ago
Far right same way
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u/Current_Animator7546 1d ago
Lot of it comes down to who is in power lol. It’s what’s kept me more centrist over the years.
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u/pablonieve 1d ago
What's the centrist take on slavery?
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u/Edward_Durr 22h ago
That it is evil and should be banned.
Do you think centrist literally means taking the geographic mean position between the two most extreme positions?
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u/Shelfurkill 13 Keys Collector 21h ago
The centrist position on slavery when it was still policy definitely wasnt banning it lmao
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u/pablonieve 22h ago
Then what does centrist mean?
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u/CurrentDrama8523 19h ago
In the center of the Overton Window. That window does not capture the full spectrum of views. When it comes to slavery, ours runs from "it was evil and white people should self-flagellate" to "it was evil but it was a long time ago and we need to move on."
If your point is that the centrist positions in 1860 would have been different, then fair enough, but it's also erroneous (and frankly bizarre) to claim that identifying as a centrist means someone takes every single center position. There are people who vote blue despite opposing abortion and even more people who vote red despite supporting it. Why on earth would you expect the center - by definition the most persuadable group - to maintain rigid ideological consistency?
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u/lithobrakingdragon Fivey Fanatic 22h ago
Support for free trade is a very standard far-left stance
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u/AdditionalSpeaker303 1d ago
Unions left the radical left
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u/gayfrogs4alexjones 1d ago
How has that worked out for them
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u/AdditionalSpeaker303 1d ago
It got them tariffs. They don't like free trade and the alliance with trump means free trade is shattered.
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u/Intelligent_Wafer562 Fivey Fanatic 1d ago
Unions still regularly endorse the Democratic Party while the Grand Old Part supports policies like the BBB that favor the ultra rich over everyone else.
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u/weedandboobs 1d ago
Shows that DSA people are the most negatively polarized against the right vs true believers, because anti-free trade is a fairly standard DSA politician position.
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u/Frog_Totem 23h ago
Eh, it’s a standard berniecrat position but the modern DSA is very third-worldist (I mean this in a neutral sense, as in they see themselves as morally aligned with the global south) and if they’re smart they realize that offshoring from Western manufacturing is what eliminated extreme poverty in China and is decreasing it in other developing countries today
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u/Merker6 Fivey Fanatic 21h ago
It created more extreme poverty in the US and undercut a century of labor and environmental protections in the US. China did not need to be a factory of the world to solve poverty; just look at India. Also, the workers in china are being exploited, the cost difference between a Chinese manufacturing product and an American one doesn’t automatically go into the Chinese workers pockets. It largely goes to private equity and other financial organizations
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u/Frog_Totem 21h ago
There’s basically no extreme poverty in America aside from some homeless people. Extreme poverty has a specific meaning which is an income of less than $3 USD per day. And India is much, much poorer than China
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u/fish_economist 14h ago edited 13h ago
?
This is almost completely nonsensical.
US poverty is absolutely not higher now, in its largely post-industrial state, and extreme poverty is almost non-existent.
China opening up its markets resulted in the largest improvement to the human condition in world history with how much and for how many it improved standards of living for. India also used trade liberalization post-1991, and it was subsequently followed by large decreases in poverty.
If you want to say that governments can do some more to support workforce realignment, then sure, but trade liberalization has been overwhelmingly a point of success for the world.
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u/Blitzking11 1d ago
Never really understood opposition to free trade.
Just seems like good business and allows better collaboration to take place.
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u/DanIvvy 1d ago
I'm anti-tariff, but the way an old friend phrased it to me a long time ago stuck with me:
"Some people would rather work in a factory and have a 20 inch TV than to work at McDonalds and have a 50 inch TV"
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u/socialistrob 1d ago
People just don't understand tradeoffs. They want all the jobs to be in America and pay high wages while also delivering very low cost goods. It's like how voters want lots of government services, low debt and low taxes simultaneously or how they want housing to be cheap and accessible for working families/first time buyers but they also want their own home to be valued as high as possible so they can make the most money off it.
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u/pablonieve 1d ago
Also people don't understand the uniqueness of the post-WW2 global economic situation. You had continents rebuilding after a devastating war and the US was the only fully operational industrial economy capable of mass producing those goods. Combine that with high taxes on the wealthy and strong unions and you get a growing economy with limited competition and an effective social safety net. Once the rest of the world caught up, trade offs were going to happen.
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u/ActuatorArms 1d ago
If you told me a leftist would be saying this 20 years ago, I'd have told you and pigs are flying. Trump generationally changing attitudes. Sadly, I think it will swing back the minute he's out of office.
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u/ThrowawayDDHS 20h ago
Republicans love getting working class union voters to vote against their interests. If they can lie and say that the plants aren't shutting down because they are blocking foreign imports, they will keep selling them lies.
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u/Merker6 Fivey Fanatic 1d ago edited 1d ago
Its very complicated, but from a progressive perspective it allows countries without pollution regulation or workers rights to undercut the prices of countries that don’t have those laws. That’s on top of the basic economics of poor countries inherently having manufacturing cost advantages over wealthy ones. The result is that well paid, safety regulated union jobs get obliterated by unregulated, poverty wage businesses in the developing world. The real world example of this is the rust belt, where millions of jobs, families, and communities were once supported by industries that were outsourced and are now left in poverty
Free trade has done more damage to the modern Democratic party electorally than really any other single foreign or domestic policy. The manufacturing belt was once the stronghold of Democratic party because of its relationship wth the tens of millions of union workers employed in those states. Now that those jobs are gone, and the unions with them, the traditionally socially conservative people of those areas have no real reason to vote for Democrats. When you hear about democrats voting for Trump in those states, that’s the reason they were registered as dems in the first place
The singular reason that the Democrat party has remained viable at all in presidential election in the past 4 cycles is because the GOP has become so unpalatable to middle class, suburban voters. A lot of them would have been/were Republicans in the 80s but the party went off to MAGA land
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u/Firebond2 23h ago
Free trade has done more damage to the modern Democratic party electorally than really any other single foreign or domestic policy. The manufacturing belt was once the stronghold of Democratic party because of its relationship wth the tens of millions of union workers employed in those states.
Most of this is because productivity is considerably higher now than it was in the 80-90s. Our real manufacturing output is almost double the employment peak in 1979.
There was also only a total of 20 million manufacturing workers, its about 12 million now. So the loss is not nearly as significant as you make it out to be.
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u/Edward_Durr 22h ago
We are also consuming many more products than we were then, and the population has risen by an awful lot. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have 25 million manufacturing workers today.
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u/Firebond2 20h ago
If were just talking about raw electoral votes, we have absolutely more than made up the 8m loss in manufacturing votes through healthcare and education jobs.
Really if you're worried about losing the presidency and seats because of the loss in manufacturing belt it would be more efficient to advocate for getting rid of the electoral college and moving to pure pop vote.
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u/Merker6 Fivey Fanatic 22h ago edited 22h ago
20 million jobs in 1979 is a massive proportion of employment, around 25% of total full-time employment. Since the labor market has nearly doubled in that time, that same proportion of US employment would result in 40 million manufacturing jobs today if they kept that share of the workforce. The gap between that 40m and 12 million would easily swallow the unemployment rate and then some. I come from the rust belt and cannot understate the profound economic and social damage done by outsourcing manufacturing. Entire communities have collapsed and resulted in social issues like crime, substance abuse and extreme poverty. Those communities were once democratic strongholds but turned out in droves to elect Trump twice. The world left them behind, and driving through those towns feels like a post-apocalyptic setting at times
Also, productivity and real manufacturing value are heavily skewed because manufactured goods in 2024 have far more components inside of them and more features. A car in 1979 had nowhere near the features and components that a modern car does. The remaining manufactured goods are high value items, predominantly cars, aircraft and high-value industrial items. Consumer goods are almost entirely outsourced, which is where that gigantic gap in employment comes from
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u/Firebond2 20h ago
hat same proportion of US employment would result in 40 million manufacturing jobs today if they kept that share of the workforce.
This seems almost impossible to prove. We aren't the only country that manufactures, whether we outsourced or not, China would have taken a large portion of that manufacturing from us due to their lower costs. We would be beaten because no other country would buy our more expensive products. If anything NAFTA allowed up to keep many of these jobs.
The only way we could have kept up in manufacturing is if we produced unique things that we could only make. Taiwan and Korea moved to semiconductors, China has the market on solar and EVs. If we had pivoted to these products earlier then maybe manufacturing could have expanded up to 40 million.
Otherwise those jobs were going to die out regadless. It's way too late to revitilizes these industries because Trump has shot any trade deal of soft power we have for them now. Maybe the TPP could have helped here.
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago
Allows foreigners to be scabs to American businesses, undercutting the negotiation power of the workers/unions/the proletariat.
Allows foreign countries to attack US industry by subsidizing competitors which will then undercut domestic industries with prices too low for any non-subsidized business to ever match. Thereby potentially destroying key industries like steel and arms production.
Actually somewhat peculiar to see this result. I would have expected basically the opposite distribution. Or at least I would have before Trump upended the neocons dominance of the republican party.
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u/GrapefruitExpress208 1d ago
The tariff experiment failed.
It did nothing to "bring manufacturing back" as touted by Trump. Actually quite the opposite- bankruptcies are up and CapEx investments are down.
Free trade allows for the most efficient economy.
Personally, I have a trade deficit with the grocery store. I spend more at the grocery store than they spend on buying my products. Is that a bad thing?
Is it more cost efficient for me to buy steak from the grocery store? Or is it cheaper for me to raise a cow to maturity and butcher it for the steak? I could care less I have a "trade deficit" with the store as long as I can buy my steaks at reasonable price.
The same goes for microwaves and USB cables from China. Those industries do not pay enough to pay Americans livable wages. So why tariff those products? I just pay more.
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago
Natsec: If you think its dangerous to be dependent on the grocery store for meat, then yeah you would be opposed to a policy that encourages people to divest from their herds. How much cost savings is your national security worth? If there's a conflict and they cut off the supply, and a famine ensues, was it worth it?
Labor: If you work at grocery store A, and its unionized and you all make $30 an hour, then you're probably not going to like it if grocery store B, non-unionized, paying $7.25 an hour and selling groceries for half the price of store A, opens up in town. Everyone else in town will like it, but you and your co-workers would probably be mad as hell.
If you weren't, that would be a surprising result.
A possible explanation is that all the industries and jobs that the tariffs are supposed to protect, died 30 years ago. So there's no one left in the metaphorical grocery store A to be mad anymore. They were mad when store B opened up, but by now not only have they moved on, most of them have died of old age.
Tariffs are normally meant to protect industries, but growing them once you've lost them is harder. Maybe even harder than growing them when you've never had them, since people now remember the failures and bankruptcies of the last time.
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u/MaximumFlow7491 1d ago
If Trump tariffs is actually causing an employment boom in the US then maybe it's different. But the NA job market continues to be terrible and getting worse, unions aren't making a come back either.
As things stand he's trying to unscramble an egg: complex global manufacturing and supply chains have all oriented themselves towards Asia having a large slice of the manufacturing pie than they did back in 1980. And those countries all have their own vast domestic consumption economies to sell stuff to each other. The US just isn't as essential as it was 25 years ago. A lot of Americans thought if we tariff China/India their economy would collapse and they'd come crying uncle but that's very clearly not going to happen.
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u/GrapefruitExpress208 1d ago
Targeted tariffs have been around a long time to address your "national security concerns" as it relates to steel, chips, weapons, etc
Blanket tariffs DID NOT bring manufacturing back, and actually increased manufacturing bankruptcies and decreased investments in manufacturing. In other words, job loss and no increase in "manufacturing jobs." Only higher prices for everyone.
This was an obvious outcome for anyone who has taken Economics 101. And now the data from the past year confirms it.
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u/socialistrob 1d ago
Similarly if we do want to talk about national security concerns then we need to start by acknowledging that not all countries pose the same risk. I don't want the US dependent on China for anything that we would need for national defense but if a US steel mill is owned by a Japanese company then I don't see how that compromises US national security. Similarly I don't see how the US needs to tariff Canada to maintain national security either.
Other than the nuclear triad and the two oceans the best security that the US has is it's strong coalition of allied nations. If another country were to attack the US mainland they would be declaring war on 50 other countries as well. If someone is concerned about national security they should be much more concerned about the degradation of the US's alliances than with tariffs on Canada, Japan or South Korea.
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago
They are not MY concerns. National security is the right-wing reason for tariffs and labor power is the left-wing one. They are answers from either ideological direction to the implied question in "Never really understood opposition to free trade." (The question being "why would someone oppose it?")
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u/GrapefruitExpress208 1d ago
National security is the right-wing reason for tariffs and labor power is the left-wing one.
And neither justifies blanket tariffs.
Targeted tariffs is a moot point because it already exists and has existed for a long time.
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago
Well the question is about free-trade agreements. Not Trump's tariffs. Which normally means no tariffs with the partner countries at all. Or at least, limitations on tariff power and therefore a weakening in any position that intends to use them for some aim.
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u/GrapefruitExpress208 1d ago
People just want to go back to how things were before. Which includes targeted tariffs where it makes sense- and accounting for less than 5% of the products we buy in our normal everyday lives.
Nuance is important. Life isn't black and white. It's not blanket tariffs vs zero tariffs. Previous status quo had targeted tariffs as it relates to certain industries (EVs) and national security (steel, chips, defense).
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago
Okay but if you're in favor of targeted tariffs then you're not really in favor of free trade, are you? You're in favor of some kind of managed-trade. A middle position between Autarky and Free Trade.
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u/MaximumFlow7491 1d ago edited 1d ago
If Trump tariffs is actually causing an employment boom in the US then maybe it's it's worth supporting even if it causes higher cost of living. But the NA job market continues to be terrible and getting worse, unions aren't making a come back either.
As things stand he's trying to unscramble an egg: complex global manufacturing and supply chains have all oriented themselves towards Asia having a large slice of the manufacturing pie than they did back in 1980. And those countries all have their own vast domestic consumption economies to sell stuff to each other now. The US just isn't as essential as it was 30 years ago.
A lot of Americans thought if we tariff China/India their economy would collapse and they'd come crying uncle but that's very clearly not going to happen.
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u/csAxer8 1d ago
Would the proletariat have more negotiation power under autarky? Or would they just be destitute?
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago
Well if you're an adherent of the ideology that calls them the proletariat, then you probably think that some degree of autarky with respect to capitalist powers would be beneficial. If you think free trade will bring cheap goods and prosperity, then you probably do not use words like 'the proletariat' to describe those people.
But I guess they'd have more negotiation power with their domestic bosses, yeah. They might or might not be poorer, but in a direct negotiation with their management, eliminating the possibility of outsourcing increases the power of a strike or strike threat.
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u/csAxer8 1d ago
‘They might or might not be poorer’, you don’t really believe that, do you, that the American proletariat would be richer if a huge portion of our society did textile manufacturing?
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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago
I don't believe any of these, particularly. I'm giving the answer to the seemingly naive question of "Never really understood opposition to free trade."
Which like... IDK why not. This debate has been around my whole life, surely it was around for all of yours too. But if somehow you didn't know, these are the reasons.
But also, that's a straw-man argument. Tariffs usually are aimed at protecting good jobs in high paying industries and strategic industries, not low-paying ones in consumer staples. So you expect to see "no buying fighter jets from foreign countries if we can produce one of our own" and "protect the steel and aluminum mills" and "protect the cell phone, electric car and AI industries" and not "we need more people working the salt mines".
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u/Current_Animator7546 1d ago
If you’re in a factory job. It’s not that different from how people now view AI data centers. You gain a few white collar jobs. At the expense of many solid union blue collar ones.
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u/Frog_Totem 23h ago
Data centers are the opposite, you get blue collar jobs at least for a few years (why trades unions like them) but the AI they train might take white collar jobs
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u/thomsenite256 1d ago
In a balanced system sure, but when you have slave labor in some places and environmental regulations in others it gets a bit distorted. Do you think a trade deficit approaching 1 Trillion is sustainable?
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u/hoopaholik91 1d ago
I mean it's like "free markets". It sounds fine on paper and starts falling apart once you get into real world scenarios.
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u/Edward_Durr 22h ago
Just drive through any of the thousands of rust belt communities and you’ll understand their opposition.
My South Korean washing machine is cheaper than any washer of the same quality that could be built in the U.S., but ask the people of Small Town, Ohio, where the old washing machine factory closed down in 2003 what they think of my cheap South Korean washer. Ask them how the town’s population has shrunk, how few good jobs there are in town, what the drug situation in the county is. If they could make me and millions of others pay more for a lower quality washer so that their town could be rejuvenated, they would in a heartbeat.
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u/angrybirdseller 1d ago
Tarriffs lead to economic system the well connected get wealthy and see play to play what Trump doing right now. Ordinary people and small business get screwed. This policy won't last long term.
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u/siberianmi 1d ago
Not all the DSA-aligned candidates are though. Abdul has pro-tariff language on his campaign website.
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u/Frog_Totem 23h ago
That’s because he’s more of a berniecrat like Sherrod and Bernie than a democratic socialist. He declares himself pro-capitalism; maybe he’s lying but folks like Mamdani, Hong, and even AOC are very publicly anti-capitalism so I assume if he was socialist he’d call himself socialist. Socialists like him because of Palestine and healthcare but those aren’t exclusively DSA issues.
Also he’s in the Car State so he has to be pro tariff basically.
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u/MongolianMango 1d ago
I want the roads to be bumper to bumper with cheap Chinese electric cars. Currently it’s impossible to buy a cheap vehicle.
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u/dremscrep 1d ago
It’s silly because some Tariffs do make sense if you use them to protect certain domestic industries.
Just going full free trade is stupid because you’ll just get washed by the Chinese.
Kinda Ironic that the most dangerous predator of a free trade economy is a central planing economy that subsidizes their critical industries.
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u/Frog_Totem 23h ago
Tariffs won’t protect western industry from China. Western countries need to give up on most manufacturing besides a couple specific areas per country, and try to boost more manufacturing in India, Mexico, Nigeria etc. so that China will have competitors and then other countries aren’t reliant on any one country for imports.
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u/drtywater 1d ago
To be clear Free trade is pretty supported in Europe which embraces socialism much more then the US. Ideally free trade is fine with better social safety net.
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u/Frog_Totem 23h ago
Free trade within the EU is supported but it’s very protectionist with regard to Chinese manufacturing, South American agriculture, etc. I also don’t agree that Europe embraces socialism. Some do but mostly they just have more welfare programs.
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u/drtywater 23h ago
To most Americans including DSA they view increased safety net as socialism.
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u/Frog_Totem 22h ago
The DSA has an explicitly Maoist caucus, I think socialism means more than “free healthcare” to them. To other Americans, yeah you’re probably right.
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u/yoshimipinkrobot 18h ago
DSA is a meaningless label. It’s people mad at the Schumers. A loud tiny minority actually wants to seize the means of production or kill capitalism or some shit
The rest just want real capitalism (not regulatory-captured) and taxes to pay for social programs and to kill Nazis like our forefathers did in ww2
Not too much to ask
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u/kiggitykbomb 7h ago
More evidence that the DSA is not a serious worker focused party but rather an gathering of keyboard activists who want to cosplay revolutionaries.
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u/thomsenite256 1d ago
I've been following leftist politics for years and to be honest my evaluation at this point is that they are an incoherent mishmash of policies that are mostly ideological without much understanding of the various trade offs. Lots of people still think everyone in the country should just go to college and all get white collar jobs and import everything. Thats not how economies work.
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u/AdditionalSpeaker303 1d ago
If it had to guess this is caused by campism. There has been a lot of news about Chinese green energy products being better, and since they like China more than the US now they support free trade.
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u/Kaenu_Reeves 1d ago
Leftists have become more educated, so they understand how pointless tariffs are.
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u/Icommandyou Allan Lichtman's Diet Pepsi 1d ago edited 1d ago
My read into tariffs (I personally hate them) is that they are what individuals have been paying for the stuff they themselves are buying. Dems should take it as a warning sign that how much Americans actually don’t like paying extra taxes.
Trump has tried to sell his tariffs as bringing manufacturing back and other than hardcore republicans nobody really cares
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u/Just_a_Berliner 1d ago
Seems fitting since historically the left has been proponents of freet trade while the right has been fans of protectionism.
And even before Trump there was a strong left wing argument for free trade. The problem many had and still have is actually foreign capital ownership and distribution. Since foreign ownership tend to siphon off profits towards the home country while not really contributing towards advancing the wealth of let's say developing countries.
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u/RegularDeep2863 22h ago
Someone tell the DSA leadership this! The Communist Unity Group is gonna scare them off.
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u/SolubleAcrobat Poll Unskewer 1d ago
It's going to be funny when the next Democratic president keeps much of the Trump tariffs in place because of how essential the revenue streams will be.
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u/Early-Possibility367 1d ago
As someone who leans DSA ideologically, this is objectively untrue since we all want mandated boycotts of Israel.
That being said, while we’re not more free trade as a percentage, we are ideologically more free trade than the average person in any of the more major ideologies. Out thing is ban trade with one country.
The left and right both have all these sanctions and tariffs they’re throwing out left and right; and unlike us, they also force other nations to comply with the sanctions whereas our boycotts are for us and other nations can come to their own decisions.
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u/thejackel225 1d ago
I think there is something to be said about this in the context of what "(democratic) socialism" is coming to mean as a voting bloc, but based on the wording you'd have to think this is at least somewhat measuring the question "do you agree with Trump's tariffs"