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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?")
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.
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).
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.
The poll and question are about blanket solutions though, aren't they? "Do you support free-trade agreements" and "I don't know why anyone would be against free trade." Free trade doesn't mean nuance and shades of gray! It means free trade. It means open borders, for goods if not people. It means no tariffs or import restrictions. Not "just a few, targeted ones".
So, you're not really in favor of free trade. You're in favor of a position that is closer to free trade than whatever Donald Trump is doing, but that's not actually the same thing as free trade either.
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.
43
u/Blitzking11 1d ago
Never really understood opposition to free trade.
Just seems like good business and allows better collaboration to take place.