Saturday, December 3, 2016

Protectionism and Jobs: It Could Work, But…

If trade barriers barriers are raised, I speculate it could be  jobs will be created. BUT. We know this history. It is the history of the Soviet Union, which forbade trade which capitalist countries. The USSR did, indeed, make consumer products on its own. Shoddy, expensive ones which everyone hated. Bootleg Western products were prized. Consider US-made automobiles; they are among the least reliable and comfortable.

I don’t see how the USA can produce consumer products at anything like the price or in anything like the quantity that foreign producers do; all the US ability to do so has been taken apart. (Much of it was shipped to China by none other than Mitt Romney.) Meantime, though, we’ll be putting up with appalling quality at high prices.

There's probably other negatives here I can't see, but I'm pretty sure they are yuge.

1 comment:

The Blog Fodder said...

Neither the TPP nor the Atlantic version were about free trade as much as about creating supra-national corporations above the laws of the countries in which they operate.