re: If There Has Ever Been A Litmus Test For Why Democracies Only Last

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Is this wrong?

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Yes, but that's not my point.

My point is that you can't get both outcomes. You can choose to use tariffs to force manufacturing or you can use them to force free trade. You can't use them both ways at the same time.

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Explain this...

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It's pretty self evident.

Free trade = more trade globally. Dropping tariffs = more free trade.

Everyone dropping tariffs means that manufacturing jobs will continue to leave the US. If you want to use tariffs to bring jobs back, you can't drop them. You have to keep calling and raising until companies fold and bring the manufacturing back here, and then you have to keep them up to keep the manufacturing here.

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Therefore, the only reason they are cheaper is they are not playing by the same rules as America.

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That's completely false, particularly with China and Mexico. Their labor is cheaper because their economy is less developed. China's cost of living is 74% less than the US. They don't need as much money. $6 an hour is all it takes for the average Chinese worker to live like a factory worker here making $24 an hour. The "slave labor" bullshite is just that...it's complete bullshite.

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Ergo, it's perfectly right and just to impose a tariff on these companies even if they reduce their tariffs on US goods to zero

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Number one, the argument you just made is exactly why the EU and Canada and other countries are pissed off at the US for raising tariffs even though they have had higher tariffs on us for decades. It's the same argument. They feel entitled to tariff us b/c we don't have as stringent regulations that artificially drive up the cost of production.

So are you o.k. with those countries keeping higher tariffs on us using the same argument you just used to justify us keeping higher tariffs on Mexico and China?

Secondly, it doesn't matter what you or I think is "justifiable," what matters is what you can get other countries to agree to. If they are mad right now because trump wants to even up the tariffs, how do you think they'll respond when he says, "Oh, and btw, you'll be dropping your tariffs, but we won't be dropping ours?"

Sounds like a complete fantasy to me.

China would go to war with us militarily before it would allow that IMO.

It was absolute sarcasm.

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I said it in another topic and I'll say it here: people should be very, very skeptical when that word is used as the rationale for government action.

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Or, you take the word in context of the subject...

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Or, you take the word in context of the subject...

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What would that change? "Fair" can mean anything and almost always means something different to different people.