What if Tarriffs to Protect the US Manufacturing Base Were Imposed in the 60s/70s?

kernals12

Banned
Don't get the rest of the world started on US farmers. Even without industrial scale farming they have been hiding behind a tarriff wall since the Depression.
Cheap food for the world courtesy of American taxpayers sounds like a good thing.
 

elkarlo

Banned
We don't need to compete. We live in a world of scarce labor and endless demand for stuff that requires labor.
There is still a lot if labor out there waiting to be used. Maybe one day that'll be ture, but it certainly wasn't true last century
 

elkarlo

Banned
That’s kind of the gist of the matter. Free trade is supposed to be win-win, not a race to the bottom.

Globalization has lifted the living standards of many people in China. I’m less sure about other countries. I have read that regular farmers in Mexico we’re outcompeted by U.S. agribusiness ! ? ! Going to look up that one.
They were, q 10-25 acre farm with min mechanization will lose every time.
Free Trade should be done between countries of similar economic standing. Otherwise as in this case it hurt Mexican farmers and us blue collar
 
If they put in tariffs like that, the Big 3 would still be making crappy cars that fall apart. Seriously, they got hit because their costs were so high, and quality so low. It wasn't until they got hammered by the foreign competition that they changed. And no, I'm not talking workers wages. Statistics from the time showed Toyota, iirc, had one middle manager per guy building cars. Detroit had like a 1-1 ratio. Toyota didn't have to pay much health benefits, because, you know, government run tax-paid health care. Etc.
 
Statistics from the time showed Toyota, iirc, had one middle manager per guy building cars. Detroit had like a 1-1 ratio. Toyota didn't have to pay much health benefits, because, you know, government run tax-paid health care. Etc.

Toyota didn't have the worker absentee problem that the UAW encouraged, or protecting drunk and stoned workers on the line.

Poor designs were being made by highly paid, low productivity workers who didn't give an F about quality, and 'forgot' to do all the assembly steps, like the 1974 LTD my neighbor bought, with no oil in the rear differential, besides a bunch of minor defects and trouble with the dumb seatbelt/ignition interlock system
 
....Toyota didn't have to pay much health benefits, because, you know, government run tax-paid health care. Etc.

I would suggest that countries that have such systems perhaps have an advantage in implementing realistic free trade deals. If some of your workers loose their jobs as a result of a trade deal that provides overall benefit to your nation at least the workers who loose their jobs will likely still have health care (not only for themselves but likely for their dependents as well..)
 

kernals12

Banned
There is still a lot if labor out there waiting to be used. Maybe one day that'll be ture, but it certainly wasn't true last century
No there isn't. Most people in the third world are busy on subsistence farms. Productivity is so low that children and the elderly are forced to work nonstop.
 

kernals12

Banned
I am confident that there would be busybodies complaining about the US "dumping" grain and impoverishing farmers if it had been able to export vast quantities of corn to Ethiopia in 1984.
 
Generally protectionism is effective for embryonic industries. But if your corporations are international titans and still need tariffs/subsidies to be competitive, you’re just going into a tax-payer financed non-competitive death spiral.
 
That’s kind of the gist of the matter. Free trade is supposed to be win-win, not a race to the bottom.

Globalization has lifted the living standards of many people in China. I’m less sure about other countries. I have read that regular farmers in Mexico we’re outcompeted by U.S. agribusiness ! ? ! Going to look up that one.

For the people who lives in the coastal area of China, those who live inland but can find jobs as unskilled or skilled labourer in coastal areas, that is true.

But the social fabric in the Chinese 'Rustbelt' in Northeast almost unrevaled and crime rate there soared in the 90s as the country dumped without much compensation the gov owned heavy industry to the market, making millions of people that has not done any other job losing jobs, which created a wave of suicides and tregadies.

Those Northeast provinces did a bit better now, but it remains 3 of the most underperforming provinces despite being heavily invested by central gov.
 

kernals12

Banned
International trade is harmful to the most vulnerable portion of the global population who are voiceless.
It's the vulnerable portion of the population that buys the cheap foreign goods and saps away the economic rents earned by the protected sectors.
 
Growing up in Houston suburbs, my first real job was in Oct. 1981 when I worked at a department store for the Christmas season and was kept on through March. I was unable to find another job.

A good friend of mine graduated from high school in June 1982, was unable to find a good job, he did work cooking in a restaurant, and joined the U.S. Navy where he served honorably.

And yet, no older adult told us jack shit.

No one said, actually we’re in a recession, this is not a normal economy. Or . . . it’s always been a numbers game, now more than ever, by all means, keep trying, don’t blame yourself, don’t get down on yourself because of the economy.

Those were really rough times in Houston. The oil bust and national recession did a number on the economy down there. Not a great time to be graduating and looking for a job! As for adults not saying much, well, they had their own problems and that generation tended to blame themselves when things didn't go well. Bootstraps and all that BS...
 
If robots automated everything we wouldn't need any income. We would be in a Star Trek style society where everything could be conjured up for free at the push of a button.



The resources and costs of operating the robots wouldn't go away. Also why would the owners of the robots give away free money?
 
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