Are you... Free Trade or Protectionist?

[augbell]

Protectionist:

1. It pollutes less to produce near the consumption spots than to import
2. Some of our commercial partners are not fair (China) and we're not fair with some of them (Europe is ruining Africa)
3. We do not have same sanitary and quality standards.
4. It destroys well paid and protected jobs in Europe and North America, while creating allmost slaves in Asia.

[Karpatsky]

Protectionism is objectively,mathematically a bad policy in almost every case. The problem is that free trade makes it easier for controllers of capital to suck up all the gains, and it is politically easier (both in terms of lobbying and explaining to the economically illiterate) to implement a protectionist policy compared to a tax on producers.

[Lechasseur]

Somewhere in between, but have been shifting towards protectionist - I used to be much more pro-free trade.

Me it's the opposite

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

Full-on free trade.

[MR DARK BRANDON]

Free Trade all the way.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Free trade in EU.
Protectionism towards non-EU regions (incl. USA, Canada and potentially soon UK*).

I have nothing in personal against UK and Canada, but I believe companies might move their headquarters to Canada or UK to bypass EU regulations, making use of American low lage workers moving the companies to American soil, abandoning Europe which might cause unemployment to rise rapidly here in the EU. This is why i'm in favour of high import tariffs.

I also believe our economy is currently way too dependant on America, and that we should produce most stuff at home, instead of importing it from somewhere else. I want a separete European cultural identity, instead of a globalized or mostly American cultural identity. Our movie theatres and supermarkets are all filled with American movies and brands, mostly because American workers are being exploited and have barely any kind of labour rights.

Protectionist:

1. It pollutes less to produce near the consumption spots than to import
2. Some of our commercial partners are not fair (China) and we're not fair with some of them (Europe is ruining Africa)
3. We do not have same sanitary and quality standards.
4. It destroys well paid and protected jobs in Europe and North America, while creating allmost slaves in Asia.

Basically this, while adding working right and environmental standards to 3. We should be free to add environmental regulations on companies here, while not being threatened by those companies that they move their companies overseas to countries that keep continuing polluting the environment and to low minimum-wage countries like USA.

I used to be in favour of free trade in 2014-2015 but since i now understand what free trade means, i've become a protectionist.

The EU should be considered one region in trade, where every country specializes itself, and the East (like Poland) being the largest food / agricultural producers, while western Europe specialize in tech.

[OneJ]

Somewhere in between, but have been shifting towards protectionist - I used to be much more pro-free trade.

[Deleted User #4049]

Somewhere in between, but have been shifting towards protectionist - I used to be much more pro-free trade.

[GoTfan]

In the middle. If you go too far one way, you end up with an economy that regularly offshores jobs and effectively casts people aside win a winner-take-all system. If you go too far the other way, your economy becomes stagnant and it harms your relations with powerful countries.

The solution is somewhere in the middle-something a few MPs out here call "fair trade".

[Mr. Smith]

Somewhere in between, but have been shifting towards free-trade - I used to be much more pro-protectionist.

[YE]

In the middle. If you go too far one way, you end up with an economy that regularly offshores jobs and effectively casts people aside win a winner-take-all system. If you go too far the other way, your economy becomes stagnant and it harms your relations with powerful countries.

The solution is somewhere in the middle-something a few MPs out here call "fair trade".

This but with the overton spectrum so far right in the USA, I sometimes identify as protectionist anyway.

[dw93]

Somewhere in between. Also, for all you pro free traders, most of you on this forum are neoliberal Democrats who believe in Climate Change, why are you in favor of doing trade deals with Countries that have little to no environmental regulations/standards and pollute the planet? Hell some of you are for raising the minimum wage and far for labor standards, yet you have no problem doing business with governments that work their people into the ground for pennies an hour, and do so at the American Worker's expense. Granted Automation will also be an issue down the road, but still...

[parochial boy]

I mean it really depends how free trade is implemented, seeing as it means far more than "abolishing tariffs" but also leads in to questions of harmonised standards, labour and consumer regulations and so on...

It's also a little bit more complicated than that, especially because supply chains are so global these days. Like, the company I work for buys in raw materials that are manufactured in Germany, and finishes them up in Switzerland. Being able to do in a frictionless way that means that the manufacturing site in Switzerland is viable, and highly profitable despite high wages.

Companies generally make investment decisions on more than just wages - the proximity to supply chains is a big one. So using my company again, the Swiss site is way more profitable than the one in the US, even though the ages are three times higher; because the supply chain is more efficient but also because the employees are more skilled and productivity is higher. The latter is down to the government here being much more intelligent in the way it organises skills training and apprenticeships than what you get in the USA

Like, there are a lot of manufacturing jobs, especially the ones that are left in the west, that actually rely on easy access to export markets - generally making high quality stuff where the expertise doesn't exist in China or wherever - and wind up creating both more jobs, but also better skilled and better paid ones. A lot of what is made in China these days, you'd find almost impossible to "bring back", because there is very little you can realistically do to overcome the fact that someone can pay $2 per day or whatever in China.

So really, free trade is probably a net good in many ways, but it needs to be regulated, on a global level, by the participants - in terms of making sure minimum standards, in terms of product quality, consumer protection, labour standards and wages and so on all exist. We lost out, massively, by assuming that the only way that globalisation can occur is the neoliberal, nation-state based model of it that we have been sold.

[Gustaf]

The extent to which it makes sense to not be just for free trade is so marginal and generally misunderstood that it mostly gives legitimacy to cranks and special interest lobbies. Free trade is great and protectionism is typically stemming from some mix of economic illiteracy and lack of solidarity.

[RaphaelDLG]

Anti-tariff but not generally a fan of some of the free trade agreements like TPP that are a flimsy pretext for multinational drug corporations to take over the world

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

Free Trade.

[S019]

Free trade

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Protectionism is a slippery slope that leads to an uncompetitive economy, results in our becoming a technological backwater, and puts us behind the rest of the world.

This is not what happened in the late 19th century. Protectionist Germany and US developed the most advance steel production operations while Free Trade Britain's industry was too set in their ways.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Somewhere in between, but have been shifting towards free-trade - I used to be much more pro-protectionist.

Changing your political views to own Trump

And the realignment continues!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Free trade! Capitalism doesn't suddenly stop working once you cross international boundaries.

That is part of the problem and in spite of promises to the contrary, China has not been democraticized by free trade and more likely is we will end being censored by the Chinese. Amazing how free trade came back to bite our sense of freedom almost as effectively as Jefferson's protectionist embargo.

It is not he free trade or the protectionism that kills you, it is the excess in either direction.

Protectionism is harmful to the average American, only serves to help politically-connected industries, and forces the heavy/destructive hand of government into economic decisions that free individuals making voluntary exchanges should be making.

And yet protectionism created the industrial powerhouse that defeated Nazi Germany.

[Orthogonian Society Treasurer]

Free trade! Capitalism doesn't suddenly stop working once you cross international boundaries.

Protectionism is harmful to the average American, only serves to help politically-connected industries, and forces the heavy/destructive hand of government into economic decisions that free individuals making voluntary exchanges should be making.

Capitalism 'working' is the problem.

[TPIG]

Free trade! Capitalism doesn't suddenly stop working once you cross international boundaries.

That is part of the problem and in spite of promises to the contrary, China has not been democraticized by free trade and more likely is we will end being censored by the Chinese. Amazing how free trade came back to bite our sense of freedom almost as effectively as Jefferson's protectionist embargo.

It is not he free trade or the protectionism that kills you, it is the excess in either direction.

Protectionism is harmful to the average American, only serves to help politically-connected industries, and forces the heavy/destructive hand of government into economic decisions that free individuals making voluntary exchanges should be making.

And yet protectionism created the industrial powerhouse that defeated Nazi Germany.

Trade is not some magic bullet that will turn an authoritarian nation into some European-style democracy. However the move towards open trade with China has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty and opened avenues of potential co-operation with the Chinese.


As to your point about World War 2, you seem to be ignoring a lot of history. The industrial powerhouse we utilized to defeat the Nazis was largely built up for the specific purpose of wartime mobilization. The entire nation, including our economic base, was united in one cause. Protectionism deserves no thanks. You seem to forget that it was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which dramatically raised import duties and exacerbated the Great Depression, caused trade wars, and hurt the average American.