I honestly have a hard time wrapping my mind around how dumb Trump's tariff idea is. I mean that super literally. Trump is dumb. He's a moron. And this idea is the dumb idea of a dumb brain, with dumb reasoning.
Western countries are (rightly) worried about the increasing economic influence of China. Of course, people aren't questioning exactly
why inferior state-heavy mildly liberal policies have been drastically more effective than Friedman-inspired radically liberal free market policies. Just look at when Friedman
went to China and embarrassed himself. China wanted practical solutions to real problems. They wanted to learn various economic theories, learn from history, and pick from the best. Which they probably did pick up an idea or two from him, but it's clear that Friedman was first and foremost interested in promoting his free markets religion, which the Chinese really didn't care about. His advocacy was radical and untenable for the Chinese.
This starry-eyed economic idealism is basically defining the United States as of late: it honestly feels to me like this country is incapable of seeing the writing on the wall in really key ways, and economic doublethink on China is just one part. How can China both have an inferior economic system, yet be the biggest economic threat? How can the United States have the superior economic system, yet is struggling and lagging? While Friedman thought the Chinese were "unbelievably ignorant about how a market or capitalist system works", they rose to power. Not to mention the complete failure of Western economies in 2008, and the subsequent inability to deal adequately with the problem through monetary policy.
Which isn't to say China hasn't adopted
any modes of western economic thought. It certainly has, and many of these changes have been very good for China. At the same time, China appears to have accepted that quantitative easing would work, that the recession would be just a recession, and business would continue - that's why they built up so much debt, expecting growth to return to historic trends. It hasn't, and China's currency depends so heavily on the dollar, so they're stuck. The only way for China to free up the Yuan would be to internationalize the currency. How will the United States respond to attempts such as these? I'm not sure what the future holds, but the current situation is Trump shooting us in the foot and
people complaining that China isn't following the rules.
That's why TPP
could have been good: if all other countries outside of China can agree to trade freely, then they implicitly tariff China. This would inhibit China's growth and probably lead to more growth outside of China. That's probably good insofar as China is fairly totalitarian, so we'd prefer them not to have more control. But the authors of these deals can't help themselves, they can't write trade deals that are structured neutrally, they have to try to double dip and advantage themselves. At the same time, American workers lose out to foreign competition. If we're going to have free trade, it should benefit all, and not just by giving us cheaper TVs.
My point is, free trade is not the issue here. The problems in America are our own, we allow the elites to continue to rob from us, at no actual economic benefits, suffering produced for no valid reason. It's they who are the problem, not trade.
At this point, basically what Jon`C said. Pay people to sit around and masturbate. Obama
tried a tariff on Chinese tires and it ended up costing us so much money, it would have been cheaper to just pay
all of the at-risk employees $100,000/year. ****, liberalize trade deeply then just make sure there's good tools to prevent people from being dumped off to suffer when they lose employment.
But Trump's solution is just ****, it's going to lose us jobs and not help anyone except a few particular elite interests.