No. of Recommendations: 18
Tariffs are another way to do that, btw. They do that without incurring the fiscal burden that a direct subsidy incurs.
Unless you impose tariffs on everything from every country. If you're trying to reduce our strategic dependence on China for certain things, then targeted tariffs on China on those certain things can provide incentives to reshore to the U.S.
Of course, the major problem with doing that is that we have all sorts of international trade agreements under which nearly all countries have bargained not to do that. Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, so to speak - we all agree not to use tariffs to block imports, and whichever countries end up with those industries based on their skills and talents and resources end up with them. There are some exceptions for militarily strategic things, of course....but you don't get to just decide that you'd rather have more textile factories just 'cause. I mean, you can decide that - but then you lose the benefits of the global trade regime that helped make your country so rich in the first place.
No. We don't need to over-regulate or have government people involved in every. little. thing.
But that's not what I said. If you want to make sure your capitalist economy ends up with the industries that you want it to end up with, rather than the industries that will result from the application of free market forces carried out by millions of free autonomous people and firms, then the government has to intervene. If you want to make sure your company is making microchips domestically rather than importing them, but it's cheaper to import them, then the government has to intervene.
However, that can't happen unless the government is big and strong enough to intervene. There's no magic bullet that avoids it. If you want the government to be able to do things, it has to be able to do things: it has to have the resources, personnel, experience, and capacity to actually shape the economy....if you want the country to end up with outcomes that are different from the free market outcomes. TANSTAAFL - you don't get to have a stripped-down bare-bones government and have the kind of outcomes that require powerful government interventions.
We've been doing this for decades, pretty much since the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved. How's it going for us?
Yeah, and we've had police for decades, but we still have crime. But that doesn't mean we should get rid of the police. We've been playing a global game of influence and strategy....but because the populist right doesn't like foreign aid, we've now given up entirely and gone home. China's been aggressive and resourceful in wooing developing nations because they've been putting in the work, and they've been successful even when we were pushing back on them. Imagine how things are going to be now.
You're assuming that our friends and allies have been dealing with us straight this entire time.
I have not. I noted in this very thread that Europe (like most countries) employs significant protectionism measures in favor of their politically powerful domestic agricultural sectors. As does the United States (hello, tariff-quota protections for sugar!). And the EU and the US have been negotiating for decades over various measures to mutually reduce those tariffs and non-tariff barriers: gradual and slow progress to be sure, and the barriers remain, but progress nonetheless.
And then Trump walks in and imposes the highest average tariffs across the globe in a century. Which is a thing one can do, but then it is unreasonable to expect that other countries' responses will be to work cooperatively with us.
