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0 pointscivilian10y ago0 comments

Yeah! It's why it's so weird to see politicians and their supports protest efforts to reduce trade tariffs. With more trade, we will be literally creating new wealth. It will be helping lower the cost of the related goods in the first world, and it'll be giving more and slightly better jobs to the third world, where it'll be helping the poorest there. So why is it a bad thing again?

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m3rc10y ago

It's not good to end statements by throwing your hands up in the air and going "golly gee I just can't possibly fathom why anyone would think differently than ME!"

Right off the bat, never regulating trade means you only create short term wealth. You can't possibly think that no one would ever take issue with trade deals that take advantage of countries participating in human rights violations, or countries whose economic situation means they can offer manufacturing for drastically less and undervalue key industries

civilianOP10y ago

The "golly gee" isn't what I was going for--- I'm saying that if we're looking to help the poor, then we should help the poor, rather than the poor in region. But I am maybe trying to challenge people to come up with good reasons for trade regulation. :)

I agree that we shouldn't partake in violating human rights.

Your other points aren't good reasons to regulate trade. If other countries can produce goods for drastically less then that's exactly when we should be opening up trade! It's a more efficient use of resources, and it creates more wealth for everyone. Here's a Khan academy economics video on how trade creates wealth: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

Trade does not produce short term wealth, it just creates wealth. And if anything, "short term wealth" is an oxymoron. If HDDs are $50 cheaper because they're manufactured in Thailand rather than California, then the people who buy those HDDs are never going to have to turn in the $50 they saved at some later point.

We still have trade protections set up from the great depression. That's why our sugar costs 2x what it costs the rest of the world. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/us-trade-po... That's bad, and we should get rid of it.