re: Protectionism is not the answer

OPEC and Carter are very good examples of why government interference with markets are a bad idea.

No way the OPEC embargo would have had any impact on US supply had price caps initiated by Nixon and continued by Carter not been in place.

Reagan ended them his first month in office and no embargo has been successful since. They can't even collude effectively to raise oil prices any more.

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You let a foreign govt. cripple a major industry and possible kill it so consumers at home can reap the rewards.

Sure.

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Why would you permit a foreign rival to kill an important industry in the USA?

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Ok fine, then what do you do when all the steel is foreign and they decide to leverage that against us. Do you just let consumers take it below the belt and pay obscene prices now?

No, I would expect the market to respond, and that industry would come back to life naturally. Fortunately for us we have the ability to respond quickly.

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The market responded, steel mills closed, workers went on welfare or got other jobs. You can't reverse this on a dime.

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And what happens to all the employees who got laid off by the steel companies locally?

Find another job. Crazy.

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Great, but our economy pays the price and so do the taxpayers.

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They wind up getting public assistance, or possibly taking lesser paying jobs and in the end the govt. and yes the taxpayers gets hammered all because a foreign government undercut the market.

Well then we better ban technology and innovation since it does the very same thing.

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That's an entirely different issue, and a problem all societies wrestle with, but it doesn't have anything to do with protectionism.

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If a foreign govt. is attacking our private businesses, our govt. should fight back.

The government is our savior, huh? That's the type of mentality I expect from socialists, not the other side

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Our Constitution gives Congress authority to levy tariffs. As a strict Constitutionalist, I don't see how govt. is overstepping their powers by levying tariffs. What am I missing?

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and can be a serious threat to our national security.

Maybe in rare exceptions, but the statists love this argument.

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If the USA didn't fight back maybe the situations wouldn't be so rare.

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Remember OPEC? Remember the Carter years? And what had changed since then? More energy independence, maybe?

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American technology overcame the problem and our own govt's interference in time, but meanwhile we had the economy crippled by OPEC, we fought two wars, and it cost the economy Billions of dollars.

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Free trade is no longer free trade when one of the trading partners is cheating.

But responding with anti-free trade policies, is a step further away from it. People can support that, but it's dishonest to pretend that they are for free trade when they advocate for policies further from it

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It's either free trade or its not free trade. If one govt. interferes in the market no matter what the other governments do won't change things. It won't be free trade.

There are two options, do nothing and let foreign interests dictate how your economy works to a certain extent, or try to do things on your side so the interests of the US are improved.

I realize that is a simple outlook, and things are way more complicated, but simply sitting idly by when all the other nations of the world use their govt. to benefit their businesses while we sit and watch things slip away isn't very smart.