Trump, tariffs, and the Left's big lie about trade

Back in the last millennia when Rush Limbaugh was pushing NAFTA many people raised the concern about how it would destroy American jobs because American's can't survive if paid the same amount as people in Guatemala are paid.

It's not that Americans are greedy it's that in these countries that ended up stealing millions of American jobs a man can support his family for a tiny fraction of the cost of supporting a family in America.  Historically the high cost of transportation provided a buffer that offset that but beginning in the 1960s with the development of the now ubiquitous cargo containers the cost of shipping has been dramatically reduced.

The loss of American jobs has been exacerbated by other countries, especially China, predatory trade practices.

The Left is excoriating Trump for his trade war with China but the reality is that China declared war on the US long ago.

When Trump took office the average tariff on Chinese goods entering the US was around 2% but the average tariff China charged on US goods entering China was around 7%.  But somehow Trump threatening to eliminate that disparity, with his best case scenario not being higher tariffs but lower tariffs by China, has been pitched by the #FakeNews media as bad for America.

The rich upper class folk who are the #FakeNews media "journalists" probably don't know anyone who works in manufacturing or who has lost their job due to "free trade" practices so to them raising tariffs in retaliation to China's predatory trade practices is bad because it raised the cost of their new iPhone.

And of course China also is guilty of massive intellectual property theft and extortion.  China won't let most companies sell in China if they don't agree to sharing intellectual property which China then gives to Chinese companies.  It also doesn't address the fact that the Chinese deliberately subsidize certain industries so that those industries can drive foreign competitors out of business. We've seen that in the rare metals industry--rare metals are critical to almost all modern technology--as well as in other fields.

But to the Left all that matters is power so their only enemy is Trump; they don't care if American jobs are fleeing overseas because the more people there are on welfare the more Democrat voters there are.

In the abstract free trade is good and we have learned that protectionist trade policies can cause very serious problems.  But we've also learned that if some countries use protectionist trade policies and their trading partners don't protectionism can be a big win--China being the best example.

So far Trump has been very reasonable and his latest set of tariff increases are strategically targeted to force the Chinese to back off on their protectionist policies yet the #FakeNews media never reports on China's attack on American jobs but continually screeches about how evil Trump's standing up for America is.

Given that the Left despises the US and yearns for a world government--which is oddly like the dystopian futures in so many movies where multinational companies rule the world--we can expect them to lie and spin in order to hurt Trump even when he's working to benefit Americans.