United States and Free Trade

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Yes, of course.

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You know what else would protect manufacturing jobs? A decline in automation. Declare war on machinery, if you really want to bring jobs back.

But let's be clear. Tariffs hurt American worker's and protect a cossetted group of businessmen. For example, if you tariff steel then steel prices rise and industries that use steel in manufacturing will be forced to make cuts. You also cause other nations to hit you back with reciprocal tariffs that hurt your countries ability to export, forcing export industries to make cuts.

Like, if you really want (I guess) to build up a large manufacturing sector you could go the French way, and have a few mostly nationalised "prestige" companies that raise revenue in other countries through your diplomatic pushing. Or you could go the German model of worker's councils and union-corporate symbiosis. But tariffs are just horrid garbage that don't work and punish the poor for the benefit of a few lucky richies. It's pretty much as close as "proven" as you can be in the field of economics - the antivax. global warming denialist comparisons are fair enough.

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Why not use free trade agreements to force through proper labour regulations, though?


You are letting American business owners off the hook. Their greed and incompetence is the enemy, not workers in other countries.

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Why not use free trade agreements to force through proper labour regulations, though?

You realize that homogenizing labor regulations between the US and Mexico would imply either sharp relaxation/abolition of much of Mexican labor law, or the sorts of regulations in the US that would make Bernie Sanders blush? Mexican labor law is incredibly stringent on labor protections. For instance, it is pretty much impossible to fire a worker (not even paying a fine), unless he deliberately assaults his supervisor (there is an exception for the so called "confidence employees": these can be fired, but have to be paid a lot of money - 90 days wages + 20 more days wages for every year of service). Downsizing, BTW, is not a legal ground for firing an employee - unless the company goes bankrupt, it cannot fire anyone. Add to this unions, that are, in many industries, much stronger than in the US. If Mexico insisted on applying Mexican labor law to the US, nothing would ever be produced North of the border. If the US insisted, as a condition of concluding trade agreements, remodeling Mexican law on US pattern (something I would wholeheartedly support), producing in Mexico would become much cheaper than it is now.

well, I suppose the important thing is the promotion of unions that are independent from the PRI aligned ones, no? As I understand it, the major issue with Mexican unions is that they're a) mostly undemocratic protection contracts dominated by employers b) corrupt and aligned with the PRI; and perhaps more crucially they give a privileged platform for the lucky formal workers, while leaving workers in informal sector in the cold? Could be wrong though.