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Because it's not a barter economy and you would not naturally have equal dollar quantities of goods to buy from and sell to each trading partner individually.

One country may be on the other side of the world, far poorer and mostly exporting say minerals or basic textile goods where their cheap labor gives them an advantage. What goods/services are they going to buy from the US that they cannot get from more local trading partners cheaper? They can import grains more cheaply from nearby neighbors. Southeast Asia is not going to start buying Teslas & Fods, they are driving around in Suzukis and whatever China makes.

You spend $5/week at your baker, does your baker buy $5/week of software from you?

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rayiner 2 days ago | parent [-]

> One country may be on the other side of the world, far poorer and mostly exporting say minerals or basic textile goods where their cheap labor gives them an advantage.

But it’s insane that “cheap labor” is considered a “comparative advantage.” Free trade punishes Americans for their high standards of living, forcing American labor to compete with cheap foreign labor. The whole point of these tariffs is to take that out of the equation.

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maxerickson 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Do you think the US has an infinite supply of labor?

Do you think that people will choose easier high paying jobs over harder lower paying jobs?

If you give the reasonable answers to those questions, who do you think is replacing the $3/hour production that we import?

	▲	steveBK123 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes this is the inherent tension some miss with "we can just tariff them". If it's some dirty industry we outsourced 50 years ago, its probably work no one here wants to do, and is being done for $3/hr. What tariff rate will make comparable say.. $15/hr US labor work? None because even if they get rid of EPA and tariff to 1000%, those jobs are only coming back via 1 guy operating 10 robots.. not as 10 jobs. And then for more advanced industries - look at how much trouble say Intel is having or how long it took TSMC to spin up an AZ fab. You need long lead times with low economic/political volatility in which to plan and implement these 5+ year projects. Look at how slow moving automaker supply chains are, are they bringing back jobs for 2030 production if they have no idea what the world is going to look like then? Oh and don't forget the PHD Trump sane washing explainers favorite fallback - hey it's all just a negotiating trick to get leverage. OK so then, again, what business leader is making investment decisions in that context?
	▲	2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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deeg a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Free trade allows Americans to live a higher standard of living. All the goods we buy from foreign countries are cheaper which lets us spend our money on additional things.

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steveBK123 a day ago | parent [-]

Americans even in the middle are so much richer than even our "rich world" peers they don't even realize it.

If the UK was a state, it would be poorer than.. Mississippi on a per-capita income basis.

Note UK itself is incredibly unequal, so if you remove London from the UK the per-capita is far far worse than Mississippi.

Now thats before we even get into our continental friends like France, Spain, Italy, etc.

	▲	boroboro4 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The issue though it’s very tricky to compare these things. We have very high wealth inequality, and very low house affordability and complicated medical insurance. This all contributes to lower quality of life in the end. And what’s even more important Americans now live worse than Americans in 90s. And this is a problem, and globalism might played some role in it.

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Hamuko 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Don't worry, tariffs will reduce that comparative advantage by lowering Americans' standard of living.

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_DeadFred_ a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So you would support criminal proceedings against American farmers/constructions companies/meat packers for using undocumented immigrant labor and punishing Americans for their high standards of living? If we are going to cause all this pain, funny ZERO policy has been about going after these groups of law violators.

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bigyabai 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

How is it insane? Migrant labor has had a centuries-long stranglehold on the American economy. This is neither a new phenomenon nor a moral crisis.

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