I am going to make two comments, one specific, one general.
Specifically, it is very much the case that many nations–I think the exact number is most or all of the world–enact trade barriers to segments of US commerce. We allow them to export to the US with no tariffs, but when we try to export to them, they tax us so we become either less competitive, or completely out of the market. Japan and China are obvious examples, but I think most of Europe, presumably Canada (given Trump’s public spat with Eyebrows McGee), and even South America would need to be included in a full list.
How do you alter the status quo? It would seem to me, the first step is altering the status quo. You fuck up the cozy relationship in which one partner is getting fucked continually. This would be threatening equivalent or maybe even higher tariffs. This puts both sets of tariffs on the table: those which HAVE been in place in, say, China, and those which MAY go into place if nothing changes, which is those we will levy on foreign nations.
The point people seem to miss is that Trump wants free trade, but free trade on all sides, multilateral free trade. We don’t have that, and haven’t had that for a long time.
The free trade purists, rightly, point out that every incremental increase in free trade helps all parties, so every incremental decrease hurts someone, and probably everyone.
HOWEVER, short term measures designed to increase free trade even further, in the long run, are CLEARLY the best choice, if the end aim is in fact achieved. The proof is in the pudding.
But my God we don’t need to run around like Chicken Little crying the sky is falling in when Trump says: stop doing that shit, or I’ll do the same thing to you.
General Comment. I was thinking today how both Trump and Reagan are very effective leaders, even though neither can be construed as intellectually curious, much less erudite.
And it occurs to me that Complex Systems, seem formally, can often ONLY be grappled with intuitively. They are too complex for linear intelligence and linear logic. This makes someone with good instincts superior to a person with superior book learning, but weak intuition.
Academics continually bemoan how much the rest of us fail to be as smart and superior as them. This is because they are mostly useless, but HATE that idea. That is why they make shit, like Communism, up.
Please forgive me if I am being flippant. I had a 15 hour day I am calming down from, and I’m a bit tipsy.