>For decades, America pursued free trade with gusto, chasing cheaper goods and higher corporate profits. The result? De-industrialized towns, millions of lost jobs, and rising inequality.<p>Millions of lost jobs, millions of better, easier, higher value jobs created.<p>Unemployment rate is extremely low and has been except for a few years of the Great Recession.<p>>Traditional economic models assume fair play.<p>Why? It has never been fair play. The US has the world's biggest military and they push countries around for economic gains. The US has historically installed dictators as long as the they side with the US.<p>>But if the aim is rebuilding industries, protecting workers, and rebalancing global power, tariffs start to look like a strategic necessity.<p>No one in America wants to work in factories anymore. Unemployment is already extremely low. Where are you going to find workers to slave away in a factory in America? Illegal immigrants?
Trump's tariff plan starts with a lie and goes down hill from there.<p>Tariffs are a tax, plain and simple --- paid directly to the US government by US importers and manufacturers who are ultimately reimbursed by consumers (you and me).<p>Huge new tariffs amount to nothing more than a massive tax increase combined with huge price increases (aka a spike in inflation) --- a double hit to the economy.<p>Show me a country that has ever taxed it's way to greatness.