Reply #6: Tariffs work for China. [View All]

[jacquelope]

Companies are making sales everywhere but here; and they're not hiring here, either. Their sales going into the toilet means what, then? Losses of American jobs that don't exist because of them?

Let's look at this US isolating itself thing... we already do not have jobs producing goods for third world nations. They all run a huge surplus against us. They're already buying from their own people, overall. We opened our country to Mexico's trucks because of corporate lobbyists. We could have blocked ALL goods coming from Mexico and they would have backed down when they realized the world's largest export market was closed to them.

The third world relies on exports to America; to give you an idea of how devastating the closure of our market would be to them, our recession in 2008 caused China to lose 20 million jobs. 20 million. If we get tough on trade deficits and they retaliate en masse, their biggest export market will go away and that means it hurts them more than it hurts us. Countries that are net exporters have much more to lose.

Yes, our stuff is in disrepair - and it's not going to get fixed by any other method but biting the bullet and putting Americans back to work bringing all that stuff back.


One other thing: our trade deficit with Mexico, China and India is increasing our national debt. If we don't lower those deficits our dollar will collapse anyway and they won't be able to sell anything to us because their imports will be too expensive. Then what?

In free trade you can never compete on any level with lower wage nations. No matter what innovations you come up with they can be duplicated elsewhere and implemented using cheaper labor. If we stay this course we disappear as a global export market, regardless. As I said... what then?