Free trade is like free love. If you have different sex partners, you need protection. If you have different trading partners, you need protectionism. Failure to take this precaution will expose your nation to Acquired Industrial Deficiency Syndrome, in which manufacturing muscle is replaced by service sector fat and the body becomes vulnerable to such parasites as derivatives traders and hedge fund managers. As young cells struggle on low wages, a greater proportion of the bodys energy (Social Security and Medicare payments) is used to sustain old and dying cells.
There's only a limited number of reasons to hide from complete trade liberalisation: 1) Health & Safety 2) Infant industry protection 3) Strategic trade policy in order to reallocate oligopolistic profit 4) Optimal tariffs designed to change the terms of trade Of course thankfully we have multilateralism and the risks of those factors leading to negative trade wars are curtailed. End result? Celebrate the trade gains through comparative advantage!
Sure, according to the liberal economic school of thought. You forgot a few: - protecting entry level workers from unfair job competition - maintaining decent wages, since if workers have to compete with low-wage workers in other countries it can drive down wages - lower environmental standards in other countries - protecting jobs in ones own country (yes, contrary to some economists, free-trade does not always result in more jobs) - helping to prevent trade-deficits, and the resulting capital drain which can accompany it - not supporting another country's military (the USA is spending billions to counter potential Chinese military threat) - avoiding economic reliance on another politically unreliable country - lowering transportation costs (the overall cost of protectionism might be higher but at least all the costs are going to job creation, whereas a significant part of the cost of trade might be wasted on fuel, a non-renewable economic commodity
There was no liberal specific comment in my post, so that's a nonsense start. You've then gone for the standard zero sum game spewed by economic nationalism. The idea that protectionism, for example, creates jobs is just drivel
No, it's not just a zero sum game, in many instances it can actually be a negative sum game. You ignore extraneous effects and benefits, for example. We had this discussion before. Here are some other threads which may interest the OP: http://www.politicalforum.com/econo...logy-free-trade-killing-americas-economy.html http://www.politicalforum.com/history-past-politicians/266320-ross-perots-warning-legacy-nafta.html http://www.politicalforum.com/economics-trade/203459-why-free-trade-does-not-work.html
Negative sum? That is taking ridiculousness to a new level, given it would suggest an irrational but willing exchange. You won't find one scholarly resource that finds the US loses from trade, nor will you find one that supports the 'protectionism increases employment' tosh. I know, I know, its all an intellectual conspiracy designed to unfairly attack nationalism!
Clearly you haven't heard of exchange! Why don't you try and support your argument with scholarly evidnece? Get going!
There are very few scholarly economists who are not of the free-trade school of thought. But just because a scholars in a particular field of academia almost all hold the same belief does not necessarily make it true. Admittingly, in the field of economics there is no self-censorship going on (at least not at present), so it is difficult to explain exactly why the seductive free-trade ideology so overwhelmingly dominates amongst scholarly economists. I would make the suggestion that it may be mainly because of the concept's simplicity. The benefits of exchange and comparative advantage is one of the most basic concepts in economics, taught to all first year economic students. When you start off teaching students one way of thought, that perspective has a way of dominating their subsequent perspectives. Of course, all the economic departments make a clear point of teaching Keynesianism early on from the beginning, otherwise I would imagine most economists would be of the Austrian perspective. There are, nonetheless, a number of prominent economists who have not supported open free trade:
The reason why the HIV virus is so successful at taking over its host is because it deactivates the T-cell immune response. Yet this is exactly what Acquired Industrial Deficiency Syndrome has been doing too — it has been silencing both academic and financial economists, who are like the immune cells in the world of economic policy. Obviously the economists in London and on Wallstreet have an incentive to support free trade, it means higher stock prices. If mainstream economists have been silenced, who is left to speak out against trade deficits and outsourcing of all the manufacturing?
That would be wrong! There is, for example, strong support for the use of protectionism as an aid for economic development. There just isn't anybody supporting your economic nationalism. "Kicking Away The Ladder", for example, doesn't provide any support. It is an economic history analysis that supports the infant industry hypothesis and therefore highlights the nature of dynamic comparative advantage. Economic nationalism makes mercantilism look 'advanced'
Mercantilism is not exactly "primitive", although many biased university textbooks seem to convey that notion. It was never really about gold, it was about land ownership. Today we might say it would also be about capital, particularly non-renewable forms. Selling off all your capital is not always a win-win positive sum game.
It was destroyed by Smith and Ricardo. Yes, it is primitive. It had no understanding of the impact of trade, adopting a bogus reference to treasure
I adopt a political economic approach. That necessarily ensures application of multiple schools of thought. It also helps me spot clear tosh. Economic nationalism is ridiculous stuff!
Including Marxism? you know that the marxist perspective is critical of international open trade. I am rather partial to the views of Peter Schiff. What is your take on him?
You'd have to refer to historical structuralism, which is critical of the nature of the multinational. We can use that, for example, to help us understand why trade doesn't necessarily benefit populations in developing countries. You won't be able to use it to support nationalistic prance
