Trump’s Psychotic Protectionist Trade Policies
We Have Been Here Before, Twice
The terrible trade deals
against which Donald Trump rails have been
instrumental in preserving the half century of relative global peace since the Vietnam
War. In the half century before Vietnam, there were two world wars. World War I
killed 16 million soldiers, 7 million civilians and wounded 22 million (that’s
45 million casualties out of a total world population of less than 2 billion,
or between 2% and 3%). World War I was followed by the Great Influenza,
that infected one-third of the world’s people and killed another 50 –
100 million. Life expectancy dropped by 12 years. (The flu was the real
explanation for the roaring 20’s, the carpe diem philosophy with no thought of
tomorrow.) Then there was the great Global Depression that was exacerbated by
exactly the same protectionist policies being touted by Trump.
World War II, which
was partially caused by the trade wars precipitated by the protectionism of the
1930’s, carried off another 60 million, which was 3% of the world’s population.
After World War II, the United States got smart. It got involved in
international organizations like the United Nations to try and preserve the
peace, and instead of letting the ruined nations fight one another for the
scraps remaining after the devastating conflict, it voluntarily extended
massive loans to help the non-communist world rebuilt its economies. This was
also a device for preventing the spread of communism in central Europe and
Asia.
In the fifty years since the Vietnam War the United States
has run massive trade deficits almost as a deliberate policy because, to be
honest, during the Cold War and after the United States Congress has refused to
pass the foreign aid budgets necessary for national defense, preferring to
sacrifice someone else’s child in conflicts created by economic collapse and
scarcity.
Yes, the trade deficits and
budget deficits were huge, but that’s the price the United Stated paid for
peace. Yes, the jobs moved overseas, but
one of the reasons for that is that the pollution moved overseas with the jobs.
China is taking advantage of us, according to Trump. The air in China is
poison. Yes, global trade has impacted blue collar jobs, but would those
workers rather be dead, or have their children die in wars?
It Has Happened Before
Trump’s
plan to bring the jobs back is not going to work. There was a good reason they
left in the first place. In the 1950’s
and 1960’s, states like South Carolina with low taxes and anti-union labor laws
used tax incentives to lure textile and shoe manufacturers from New
England. The Northeastern states, because of the terrible deal of the “United States Free
Trade Area” was unable to levy countervailing duties on products from
South Carolina. What did they do?
The used their brain power to create whole new industries
in things like electronics. Today, the average annual household income in
Massachusetts and New Hampshire is over $70,000 versus $47,238 in South
Carolina. Do you need other proof that the stealing jobs scenario is a dead
end? China and the developing world are stealing the American jobs that are
dying anyway. Trump’s plan to restore
them is insane. His “Make America Great Again,” is inaccurate. America is
greater today than it has ever been. Trump’s policies are going to Make America
Second Rate, in addition to killing more soldiers in Colonial Wars.
What has kept America great is its innovation. Computers, the internet, Google, Uber,
Amazon…all American. What the United States has needed for the past
thirty years is not protective tariffs for the industries that are becoming
obsolete in any case, but a massive Manhattan Project-like national and
international effort to discover what is necessary to create jobs and industry
in the coming decades. It is a national security issue as well.
National Security Implications of Job
Creation
The world’s population is now 7.5
billion people. This means, roughly,
that the world is going to need to create 100 million jobs a year for the next
few decades. Furthermore, because of sex selection in the patriarchal societies
primarily in Asia, there is an excess of men to women. There are about five young men to every four
young women, and one-third of the population is under twenty years old. Let’s do the math. In Asia alone there are 160
million males under the age of 20 for whom the ability to marry is already
virtually impossible. Globally, this figure could be as much as 300 million
given that the number of boys born exceed the number
of girls and they are favored in many societies outside Asia. They better all
be gay, or at least have jobs, because if they have neither compatible sexual
companionship nor productive employment, terrorism and suicide bombing might
appear to be a reasonable goal in life, especially with the easy availability
of automatic weapons, thanks to the Second Amendment fanatics. [Note: the Asian
sexual imbalance is correcting itself, but there is this bulge of the past two
decades or so.]
So, creating good jobs that enable people to support
themselves should be the number one priority. Trump’s plan is to take back from
the developing world with its excess of unemployed young males these jobs that
are on the way out anyway, and to levy strict border security to keep the
suicide bombers out. It is s a dead end
policy.
Along with the disaster at Chernobyl, this is what
destroyed the Soviet Union. The Soviets
kept investing money in steel mills and stealing their computer software from
the West. Eventually, they discovered that their weaponry would always be inferior
to the West’s unless they had their own computer software industry. But
computer software requires an open society, not subject to political
manipulation.
Furthermore, Trump is personally
modeling the most politically incorrect behavior for the future. One man with
three wives is exactly what is not needed for peace and prosperity in the
future. As mentioned elsewhere, Trump was elected to rebuild the
infrastructure, period. Hold on to your hats.