The Assault on Free Trade Begins

And if you would have told me a few years ago that it would be conservatives leading that assault I would have labeled you as being nuts.

Anybody who has read my posts knows that I am not a fan of free trade. I have never believed it lived up to the promise that free trade proponents pushed for the last few decades. In fact, I have always believed that it caused much more hardship and problems for ordinary people than helped them. I have always believed that this would eventually lead to free trade being targeted by those very same people, if someone could come along to galvanize them.

There have been signs that the shine was rubbing off of the free trade rose for some time as I have pointed out a few times on this blog. So it should surprise no one that an American presidential candidate ran on imposing wide ranging tariffs on imports into the US, essentially putting paid to all sorts of free trade agreements the US has with other countries, not to mention their support for the World Trade Organization. What does surprise me is the fact the Republican presidential candidate was the one leading the charge and the Republican establishment going mute in the face of that. After all, it was conservative politicians that lead the push for free trade to begin with, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney to name three.

An assault on free trade coming from the right instead of the left. Who would have believed that even 5 years ago?

Free trade proponents have no one else but themselves to blame for this. They have failed to keep the promises of programs to assist those who would inevitably lose as a result of free trade. They failed to allow workers, in the industries that were left behind when free trade lead to jobs moving to other countries, to organize so that they could raise their salaries and benefits. They generally failed to believe that causing millions of people to lose their livelihoods would eventually come back and bite them on the ass. Short sightedness and hubris are never a good combination. 

I am also kind of surprised that conservative politicians are contributing to the continued breakdown of the conservative consensus. What a world we live in.

Of course, the proposed tariffs that Donald Trump is proposing will have no other impact than to make things more expensive in the US. The idea behind tariffs is to protect domestic industries but there is very little domestic industry left in the West. Look in any store and look online and you will see that virtually all consumer goods that you can purchase are made anywhere but in a western country. The reason is large manufacturers only need to pay their workers in poorer countries a fraction of what they would need to pay western workers. Doing a quick calculation it is apparent that the tariffs being proposed by Donald Trump will not change that calculus. It will still be cheaper to manufacture goods in China and other countries and ship them to the US than spending billions of dollars to relocate those factories back to the US and pay workers in those factories 100 times what they pay Chinese workers. So the only thing that is going to happen is companies will import consumer goods into the country, pay the tariffs and pass along the cost of those tariffs to US consumers.

The decades of broken promises by free trade proponents were inevitably going to lead to a critical mass of people being against it, ready to be exploited by a politician of some sort. I just bet that they did not see one of their own leading the charge to reverse all of the work they have put in over the last 40 years and their erstwhile allies on the right going mute in the face of it. Go figure.