>he doesn't believe in Free Trade How does it feel to

>>1541657
Let it go mate.

There's no use trying to explain basic economics to a bunch of keyensian neck beards.

The psychological aberration of most people is so great that they could never imagine an economy without government intervention.

Typical Millennial thinking. You probably watched a Youtube video and now you're trying out your new material before embarrassing yourself in front of others with your cringe-worthy myopic rants.

Trade restrictions are an exercise of government authority, and therefore must reflect and appropriate balance of government interests. Yes, those interests include maintaining good relations with foreign countries and providing cheaper goods to its citizens.

But those government interests also include encouraging nascent businesses, protecting domestic employment levels, and, on a broader level, promoting the interests of its own citizens over the interests of foreign nations. We don't elect governments to be economic calculating robots; we elect them to serve on our individual and collective behalf.

As with most topics, the right answer here isn't black or white. No nation should default to either open trade or closed borders as their default position. That's not how your strike the right balance between competing, legitimate interests.

The only people who say that free trade is the only right choice are the people too stupid to appreciate the circumstances where it's not. Same is true for those who advocate closed borders, for the record.

OP, you're a perfect example of the single worst danger to modern societies: people just barely intelligent enough to form a thought, but far too stupid to reach an intelligent opinion.

>>1541695
0/10

>>1541657
I consider myself a free trader. What concerns me is free trade with countries that I'd call "state capitalist."

What i mean is a country like Russia or China, where most major companies are state-owned, either directly or through stocks. I'd support free trade with these countries if they were free markets or at least market-oriented, but when you have state-owned companies involved, then international trade gets boiled down to what's in the state's foreign policy interest and not what's in the market's interest.

Take, for example, the steel industry in China. Since China is an authoritarian regime, it basically derives its authority from the ability to provide jobs to its citizens. Thus, when the state-owned steel firms see a reduction in aggregate demand, rather than adapting to market forces, the steel firms will flood the market with cheap steel and the government will step in and subsidize their losses. That's not capitalism and I believe that our government should promote capitalism/market-oriented philosophies in our free trade agreements (for example, the privatization of Japan Post under Junichiro Koizumi in Japan).

A similar thing can happen with Russia, even more obviously. Since Gazprom is state-owned, building pipelines for natural gas with Russia is really selling your soul to the devil as a European nation, because Gazprom can essentially manipulate the price of natural gas for unrelated reasons. If a country goes against Russia, hypothetically condemning Russia for human rights violations, then Russia can easily use natural gas a tool of economic warfare.

I'm not saying I'm a protectionist, again I'm a free trader. I'm just worried that a die-hard commitment to free trade would expose market-oriented economies in the West that lack the state-owned component to the risk of economic warfare.

>>1541695
Hey, you can try to educate, but it almost never works. There's an unending stream of people who think they know better.
It's pretty simple. "Free Trade" doesn't always benefit both sides. In fact, it's used as a form of warfare far more than they realize.
Thanks for the attempt, though.

>>1541657
Also, when it comes to countries like Japan and South Korea, I'm also concerned about barriers to entry. It makes no sense to me why our free trade agreements allow the Japanese and Korean governments to regulate American multinationals with a different standard than they do for Hyundai or Toyota. I think that, if Japanese and Korean firms are allowed to compete openly in the American marketplace, then the same should be true for American firms in the Japanese and Korean marketplaces.

I'm more concerned with nations following the rules of trade, i.e. adhering to a market-oriented economy and the rules/regulations therein, rather than whether or not trade should be occurring.

>>1541726
>What i mean is a country like Russia or China, where most major companies are state-owned, either directly or through stocks.
It's not limited to authoritarian or socialist countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government-owned_companies

>>1541726
hello econ 101

muh aggregate demand

l0l

>>1541657
look at me some economists have said globalisation is more efficient we should all have open trade agreements.

Yeah.....

>>1541695

/thread

Globalism promotes big multinational corporations and squeezes out small local businesses, and compresses wages of the natives as foreign cheap labour takes over

>>1541726
Even democratic places like France have 50% SOE economies.

Outsourcing =/= free trade
Free trade is a meme

>>1541666
>imagine an economy without government intervention.
You mean the global economy right? The global economy made up of tiny banana republics and huge industrial powerhouses. Yeah, lets us westerners try to manipulate a global economy into being. Who gives a fuck if it causes more harm than good to the vast majority of participants in 1st world countries.