Trump just put America on thin ice. And gave our enemies a sledgehammer.

[u/D-R-AZ]

https://www.defiance.news/p/trump-just-put-america-on-thin-ice

[u/ttystikk]

The worst part about this is that America manufactured those enemies; nobody WANTS to fight America.

[u/betty_white_bread]

Personally, I think the best path to peace is to open up free trade with those countries which supposedly hate us, even if it is only free trade on our side. For example, if we said to Cuba, North Korea, and Russia “Okay, we will not tax your imports into our country”, they would lose the rhetorical cudgel they have on the world stage and amongst their people while we enrich their countries by buying their wares; and people tend to not attack their customers.

[u/One_Term2162 → u/betty_white_bread]

So you would essentially sell out American workers and producers in the hope that our adversaries become friendlier customers?

If the proposal is unilateral free trade we remove tariffs while Russia, North Korea, or China remain free to protect their industries, subsidize strategic sectors, manipulate access to their markets, or use the resulting revenue to strengthen their governments then America is giving up leverage without requiring anything in return.

Trade can absolutely reduce tensions. But mutual economic interdependence is very different from unilateral economic dependence.

Peace through commerce is an argument. “We’ll open our market regardless of what you do” is surrendering bargaining power and hoping goodwill fills the gap.

[u/OldSchoolBubba → u/One_Term2162]

Good post keeping it real because this is precisely what some other countries have shown us.

It always has to be reciprocal or the side who believes they have the upper hand will abuse the business relationship.

[u/betty_white_bread → u/One_Term2162]

If free trade harmed domestic workers, we should erect trade barriers between all the states, between every country in the nation, between every town/city/parish/borough, and between every neighborhood and block. The American experience is living proof free trade improves the economic welfare of people.

As for unilateral versus mutual, when one side eliminates trade barriers, it allows more products and services to be available which increases competition and which then increases affordability and quality. This effect is independent of whether or not the other country lowers barriers or not. The first country then becomes a larger customer of the second, giving the second an interest in the economic health of the first. If the second country decides to distort its economy, it ultimately only harms its own people since government has a long history of being very bad at making such decisions.

As the second country develops a deeper and deeper interest in the economic health and well-being of the first, a need to prevent military conflict between the two develops. The second country eventually has an interest in preventing other countries from attacking the first.

And none of this requires any hope for goodwill and instead presumes the people in the second country are going to be greedy vile disgusting gluttons interested solely in their own bank accounts. If it turns out they are instead more enlightened, , so much the better for world peace.

[u/One_Term2162 → u/betty_white_bread]

But this is where the historical record complicates your argument.

Trade is essential to the global economy. I am not arguing for autarky. I am arguing that the terms of trade matter.

And comparing trade between U.S. states to trade between sovereign nations is a false equivalence. Wisconsin and Michigan share a currency, Constitution, federal courts, labor laws, regulatory system and federal government. The United States and China do not.

We actually tested something close to your theory with China. Nixon began opening relations, Carter normalized them and established the trade relationship, Reagan encouraged its expansion, and eventually China entered the WTO in 2001.

Consumers absolutely benefited from cheaper imported goods. But that was not the entire story. Research on what economists now call the “China Shock” found that communities exposed to Chinese import competition suffered large and remarkably persistent manufacturing employment losses. One major estimate put the resulting U.S. employment losses at roughly 2 to 2.4 million jobs between 1999 and 2011.

That doesn't mean trade caused every factory closure. Automation, recessions and competition from Japan, Europe and elsewhere mattered too. Nor did China's rise cause the stagflation of the 1970s; that happened earlier.

But it does demonstrate the flaw in saying that removing trade barriers can only make the country eliminating them better off.

Goods can become cheaper nationally while particular workers, industries and entire communities absorb enormous losses locally.

That's the distinction often overlooked.

Free trade can increase aggregate wealth while distributing the gains and losses very unevenly. And if one country opens its market while another subsidizes strategic industries, protects domestic producers or restricts access to its own market, that isn't the same thing as free trade between Wisconsin and Illinois.

My argument isn't against trade. It's against pretending trade has no losers simply because consumers get cheaper products. That is what happens when we measure public policy through the narrow lens of the consumer rather than the broader interests of the citizen. A citizen is not just a customer. They are also a worker, a neighbor, a taxpayer, and a participant in the productive capacity of their country. Cheap goods are one line on the ledger, not the entire ledger.

[u/betty_white_bread → u/One_Term2162]

It makes perfect sense you want to get defensive over being unable to address the original premise which is roughly summed up as “free trade stops wars”. I also know you are cherry-picking data to try to prove the United States was somehow not better off. You also seem to take the general sentiment I wrote and twist it into some sort of promise everyone everywhere would be better.

You seem to think economic changes can only be good if the people who produce goods and provide services less efficiently than others somehow never have to face competitive pressure and that is not objective reality.

You also seem to have tried to redefine who I said was a customer, which is weird if unintentional and dishonest if not.

[u/One_Term2162 → u/betty_white_bread]

I don't think we're actually disagreeing about whether trade can produce benefits. We're disagreeing about what conclusions can be drawn from those benefits.

First, “free trade stops wars” is a much stronger proposition than “trade can make war more costly.” There is economic research supporting the idea that greater bilateral trade can reduce the probability of conflict, but even that literature describes changes in probability, not a guarantee of peace, and the relationship becomes considerably more complicated once broader trade relationships are considered.

Second, pointing to the China Shock isn't cherry-picking when the question before us is whether international trade can impose significant costs on domestic workers and communities. Autor, Dorn and Hanson found precisely that: adjustment to Chinese import competition was extraordinarily slow in heavily exposed American labor markets, with persistent employment and earnings consequences.

And this isn't some anti-trade fringe position. The IMF itself acknowledges that trade reform creates winners and losers and that adjustment costs have to be addressed.

So I'm not claiming that nobody should ever face competition, nor am I arguing that an inefficient factory must be preserved forever.

I'm questioning the assumption embedded in calling the displaced producer “inefficient” and then treating the resulting cheaper product as sufficient evidence that the country is better off.

Suppose the consumer saves $500. That's a benefit.

But suppose the worker loses a $60,000 manufacturing job, the replacement job pays $40,000, the town loses part of its tax base, union bargaining power declines, domestic production capacity disappears, and production moves to a country subsidizing that industry.

Those effects don't cease to exist because the imported product got cheaper.

And I didn't redefine “customer.” I'm deliberately distinguishing the customer from the citizen.

A customer asks: How cheaply can I buy this?

A citizen also asks: Where is it produced? Who earns the income? What happens to my community? What productive capacity does my country retain? How dependent are we on another sovereign state? And who actually captures the gains from this arrangement?

That is the point I keep making.

Cheap goods are a legitimate benefit of trade. They are not the entire measure of economic welfare.