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Politics - Free Trade equals Fair Trade? - Page 4

Bush defends free-market system

US President Bush admits the financial system needs reform but insists the credit crisis was not a failure of the free-market.
Ref. Source 5

Trade Fair equals Trade Free Politics

"By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments. The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments, that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity." -- John Hospers (1918- ) Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, author

Politics - Free Trade equals Fair Trade? History & Civil Business Politics

NZ wins free trade first with Russia

New Zealand has scored a trade coup by becoming the first country to start negotiating a free trade deal with Russia. Ref. Source 2

Page 4 Trade Fair equals Trade Free Politics

Congress passes free-trade bills with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

President Barack Obama sent the proposed trade deals to Congress last week.

The White House, Republicans and big business groups have said the deals would create jobs in the United States. The deals could spur $13 billion annually in new exports and "support tens of thousands of jobs," a senior administration official has said.

Union groups and some Democrats have opposed the bills, expressing doubt that they would create jobs. Ref. CNN

Trade Fair equals Trade Free Politics

US considers 100% tariffs on EU goods as Trump ramps up trade WAR:

DONALD Trump has ramped up tension between the US and EU as his administration threatens to impose 100 per cent tariffs on European goods. Ref. Source 6y.

Politics - Free Trade equals Fair Trade?

Free trade has never meant fair trade. Everyone wants to make the best profit they can therefore there will never be a fair trade. With the 100% tariff on imported good form the EU that will make it even more unfair. I guess we wait and see what comes out of this.

Politics Free Trade equals Fair Trade - Page 4

Oh sure, just piss off our best trading partners and ensure they take their business elsewhere. That'l help our economy…

Politics Free Trade equals Fair Trade Politics Business Civil & History - Page 4

Tariffs and trade wars are bad for everybody. They are bad for the countries and regions being taxed. They are bad for the country doing the taxing. They are bad for consumers. They are bad for workers. So why contemplate it? Because free trade isn't exactly free.

The countries we're trading with often supplement their industries to give them an advantage. Then, these industries can undersell US companies making things like, say steel. Eventually, US companies go out of business and then the other country's companies can raise prices. It's been done before.

Add to that a paradigm shift in manufacturing. There was a time we built things mostly by hand. Over the last 120 years or so that has been changing. From the 1920s through the 1980s those changes favored the US. Why? Because they were still fairly labor intensive, which meant high employment while being mechanized enough that a rich country like ours could afford to pay for highly mechanized plants. Add to that a fairly educated workforce and American workers were the most productive. So, the policies that are killing us now had less effect.

The shift occurred with robotics. Now, it takes very few humans to make most things. The few it does take can be lower paid workers in another country and saves a company money. And since it doesn't take many people to run these plants, mass education is less of an issue. Add to that lower construction costs and usually lower taxes and you see why industry flees. That affects employment. Those jobs that Are human labor intensive are vastly more profitable in countries with cheaper labor.

So, the US has lost much of our manufacturing edge and fair a bit of our manufacturing capacity. No, not all of either by a long shot. But other countries are helping their industries be competitive, which either purposefully or accidentally hurts our industry. Now, politicians from both sides of the political spectrum, like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, are searching for way to keep manufacturing and blue collar jobs in the US. One way they both generally agree on is to break the NAFTA-like trade deals in place and negotiate them anew. Another is to punish countries whose monetary and industry supplement policies hurt US industry.

Edited: Abnninja on 31st Mar, 2017 - 3:17pm