By running their ship aground in the Suez Canal, the owners of the Ever Given, Japanese firm Shoei Kisen KK, unilaterally realized the dream of Peter Navarro and other radical protectionists. For seven glorious days over $9 billion dollars worth of goods per day were stopped from flowing through the Suez Canal. Much of that was headed to the United States and would have added to the “trade deficit,” thus (allegedly) wrecking havoc on the United States. Many hundreds of ships loaded with hundreds of thousands of containers full of all kinds of exports are still backed up. The impact on supply chains will continue to be felt long after the forces of free trade got the ship back on its way. According to Lars Jensen, chief executive of Denmark-based SeaIntelligence Consulting, “The effect is not only going to be the simple, immediate one with cargo being delayed over the next few weeks, but will actually have repercussions several months down the line for the supply chain.”
The doctrine of the balance of trade has been around for centuries. It has also been refuted for centuries.
The protectionists should award the captain of the Ever Given a medal for – literally – blocking trade. Protectionists seek to block trade. And that’s what the Ever Given has done. (Free traders argue that protectionism isn’t a useful descriptive term, because blocking trade doesn’t protect a country, although it does protect special interests from competition.)
Of course, no serious person would propose an award to the captain of the Ever Given, but there’s really no economic difference between the bulk of a gigantic ship physically blocking trade and the armed police of the Customs and Border Patrol coercively blocking trade.
Women don’t often leave abusive husbands because they would rather take the physical or emotional hit than the economic one. Yet no serious person would suggest an abused spouse stay with their abuser for the sake of the money.
Free trade is in general good. There are, of course, exceptions and caveats just like most things that are good.
1. Trade policy should be like any other policy – used for the benefit of the country implementing the policy, which in the case of trade policy generally means free trade but not always
2. National security
3. Jobs are more valuable than only their economic value, there is enormous cultural and social benefits of people having jobs, including family formation, personal happiness, societal stability, mental wellbeing, social cohesion, etc
Which more often than not means policies benefiting large politically well connected incumbent businesses to the detriment of consumers (I hate that word).
Perry,
Unfortunately, you are correct about this.
I suspect we agree that trade policies that favor “large politically well connected incumbent businesses” should be done away with. But yes, I am in favor of the USA having a trade policy. And I think America’s trade policy should include tariffs on certain foreign goods for national security reasons and to protect American jobs to an extent.
Both Shlomo and Perry make valid points, and unfortunately i do not know how to find a “Hegelian synthesis” between them.
Police seek to arrest people. (Yeah, there might be a bit more to it.)
I love that word. It’s one of the greatest sneak insults I can imagine.
I’m not sure the example is particularly fair. Protectionists don’t seek to block trade per se, they seek to block trade asymmetrically in their favor. The Ever Given blocked trade symmetrically, so it might have impacted trade totals but not so much balance of payments (as a percentage anyway) because trade out was blocked just as much as trade in. So this is one of those things that I want to believe is clever because I like its conclusion, but I think it isn’t clever, it is misleading.
@Shlomo Maistre
Free trade is in general good. There are, of course, exceptions and caveats just like most things that are good.
But this is the big mistake, what Harry Browne used to call the “If I Were King” delusion. Certainly if the people on this group got to chose what the “exceptions and caveats” were it would all be very good, and beneficial. (At first anyway, one must never forget that aphorism “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies even to the pure angelic souls who inhabit these parts.)
Unfortunately, the people who define these “exceptions and caveats” will not be you or I. In fact they will not be even slightly interested in what you or I think. Rather they will set the “exceptions and caveats” in such as way as to best benefit their sectional interests. Even the best people tend to do this. However, unfortunately, it will not be the best people who decide, in fact it will be among the worst.
Nobody would suggest that unadulterated free trade produces some economic optimum, it is just that if you allow even one “exception and caveat” it isn’t long before the camel’s whose nose was poking in your tent has taken up residence.
Fraser Orr,
Where did I say that I would get to choose what the exceptions and caveats are? You are delusional if you think one needs to have the power to implement a policy in order to advocate for said policy.
Yep all of this is obvious and I agree. And none of this contradicts anything I said.
You sure about that?
Cool.
I’m in favor of free trade with exceptions and caveats for national security and protecting American jobs to an extent.
I’m struggling to find the relevance of this analogy. Genuine question, can somebody help me out?
Excellent comment from Tom Palmer. A “teachable moment” for the protectionists out there.
Not hard to understand at all. The object of protectionism is to reduce international trade (yes, it really is). Blocking the Suez canal sure as hell did that. He is making a very effective and intentionally facetious analogy.
I disagree. The teachable moment ( year actually ) for the free traders is when the West couldn’t source PPE from China, ( Local individuals sprang up to meet the demand ). Because an educated technically competent entrepreneur is better than pressed labour producing sub standard product for the benefit of a totalitarian state.
Or come to that, when the Chinese government tacitly accommodates and assists theft of Intellectual property and permits copyright abuse and product fraud.
But there is none so blind as refuse to see.
What does any of that have to do with protectionism? Nothing whatsoever. “Don’t buy shit products” is an entirely different message, one called a market opening for non-shit non-Chinese products that non-Chinese entrepreneurs could capitalise on easier if their costs were not so high due to all the regulatory bollox so loved by so many people in the Western world.
I don’t think you can have “free trade” with a mercantilist power which refuses to allow you the access to their market which you give to it to yours. Massive levels of industrial espionage allied to the use of slave labour doesn’t help much either.
In recent years there has been a systematic distortion of Free Trade economics – and Tom Palmer is, here guilty of the same distortion.
None of the great Free Trade economists (not Sir Dudley North, not Tucker Dean of Gloucester, not Adam Smith, not A.L. Perry – NONE of them) supported what is now called “Free Trade” – i.e. a situation where hundred of Billions of Dollars is created (from nothing) every year and then borrowed to finance the import of consumption goods.
The idea that Adam Smith or any of the Free Trade economists would have supported the current situation as “Free Trade” is a lie – it is a total falsehood. The current situation of dying cities and towns and endless consumption of imported goods being financed by printing and borrowing, is not what they wanted – it has no connection at all with what they wanted.
It is like saying “free migration is good – therefore we should support amnesty for illegal immigrants and giving them all free education and free “emergency” healthcare, after all RONALD REAGAN went along with this”.
A more certain way to utterly destroy a country is hard to think of – and it is the same with the present, utterly false, understanding of the term “Free Trade”.
What Free Trade economists actually wanted was not endless printing and borrowing to finance consumption of imported goods – they wanted HARD WORK to produce goods to EXPORT in order to finance the import of goods (not endless trade deficits financed by creating money from nothing and then borrowing it).
Just as mass immigration of government aid seekers has helped destroy California (once the most prosperous society in the history of humanity) – so has the present utterly twisted understanding of the term Free Trade helped destroy so many towns and cities across the United States and elsewhere.
What is needed is what every great Free Trade economist from Sir Dudley North, Tucker Dean of Gloucester, Frederick Bastiat, the Say family, A.L. Perry and so on ACTUALLY WANTED.
Hard money (gold, silver or some other real commodity) and imports financed by HARD WORK – the actual creating and exporting of goods, not endless borrowing and imports of consumption goods financed by Credit Bubble finance.
The import of consumption goods should be financed by the export of goods (whether mined, manufactured or grown), not financed by printing and borrowing. Every great Free Trade economist of the past understood that – and the present “just create the money from nothing and use it to import everything” Credit Bubble (“Finance Capital”) establishment do not have a clue about it.
No more than they have a clue when the think the mass immigration to the United States in the 19th century and early 20th century is the same as the mass immigration after the 1965 Act and the 1986 Amnesty. The two mass immigrations are totally different – and have wildly different effects.
Chanting “Protectionist” and “Racist” does not alter the truth of the above.
For example, Proposition 187 in California had no mention of biological race – it just said that government benefits and services should not go to people who had just shown up and had never paid into these services. All the free migration thinkers of the 19th century would have SUPPORTED Proposition 187.
The entire “liberal” establishment went crazy over Prop 187 – demanding the courts (unconstitutionally) strike it down, which the intellectually corrupt judges did. This doomed California – and, perhaps (eventually), all of the United States.
This exposed what the POST 1965 Act and post 1986 Amnesty (foolishly signed into law by a very elderly Ronald Reagan) was really about – importing (legally and illegally) a massive (and ever growing) class of people, dependent on government and voting for the Democratic Party. If need be illegally voting for the Democratic Party – as illegal immigrants are not supposed to be voting.
Not “huddled masses yearning to breath free” – but rather “masses” yearning for services and benefits, and willing to vote to get rid of the “reactionary” and “outdated” United States of America.
But do not worry – just create money from nothing and use it to buy endless imported goods. And use it to finance endless services and benefits for an unending influx of people.
If anyone thinks that this is what Adam Smith and the others wanted – then I have a nice bridge to sell them.
Trump’s anti-China policy managed to combine serving national security (and jobs) with annoying some entrenched politically well-connected incumbent businesses. That seemed to me about as good a synthesis as you will ever get in the real world. (It is, of course, part of why some large corporations are today so very woke and so very against secure voting laws.)
As for the specific case of the People’s Republic of China.
Let us say that the present FAKE “Free Trade” with China was in the economic interests of the West – it is NOT, but let us pretend (for the sake of argument) that it is.
Again Tom Palmer shows he has not really read (or understood) what Adam Smith and the others actually believed – it was Adam Smith who wrote “defence is more important than opulence”.
To become dependent on an enemy (and the PRC is an enemy) for basic goods is insane – utterly insane.
Yes Donald John Trump went to Wharton Business School – founded in the 19th century by Mr Wharton the “Protectionist” Republican for the purpose of pushing his beliefs (although I doubt the place was still teaching that in the 1960s), but Adam Smith, A.L. Perry and the other real Free Trade economists would have had exactly the same view of trade with the PRC.
Thinking that “free trade with People’s Republic of China” is the same as, say, free trade with Canada, is absurd. And it is NOTHING to do with biological race – as Japan and Taiwan (and so on) are, basically, the same biological race as mainland China.
You do not put the hand of your enemy on your own throat.
No more than Israel could allow the “free migration” of its enemies into the land of Israel – and still be Israel. Again not biological race – as most Jews in Israel now have much in common genetically with the other Semitic people of the Middle East (the mass explosion of Jews from Arab countries is part of the reason for this).
The same is true of Poland – or any other nation.
When much of Roman Britain had a influx of the Germanic tribes that we call the Anglo Saxons (the Angels, Saxons and Jutes) these areas ceased to be Britain and became what was eventually “England” – Angleland (the football fans are actually correct, without knowing it, when they chant “En g land” as a three syllable word).
Now one can argue that this was a good thing, or a bad thing – but it was certainly the end of one county and putting another country in its place (on the same land). Just as the inflex of “Anglos” into Texas and other areas in the 19th century, made these places no longer part of Mexico (a situation that many now seek to reverse – although the situation is complicated by many people of old Hispanic families identifying with Texas NOT Mexico).
If the Germans had been successful in replacing the Polish people with themselves – then it would not have been Poland any more. Even though, genetically, there is little difference between Germans and Poles. There are cultural and historical differences – they are different nations, historically (culturally).
Just as Kaliningrad is not Koenigsberg – Russian people live there now, not German people.
And before the chants of “racist” start – biologically Russians, Poles and Germans are the SAME race. They are all Indo Europeans who evolved in what is now Southern Russia and the Ukraine many thousands of years ago. Different cultural nations have emerged (over many centuries) from a, basically, common biological stock.
When the Indo Europeans reached the British Isles there was at least a 90% population replacement – at least on the male line (harder to tell with the female line).
This is why when BBC people (and others) talk about “our ancestors” building Stonehenge and so on – they are in error.
The left has a project of “decolonising” the history (and literature – and so on) of these islands – as they believe that the present population are the descendants of evil invaders and have no right to live in these islands. But it is not really about physical appearance (in spite of the nonsense trotted out about “Cheddar Man” and so on). After all the Sardinians are largely a pre Indo European population – and they do not really look different to other people.
Get a few Sardinians into a room with other Italians – mix them all up in the room and then try and tell who is a Sardinian (i.e. a pre Indo European) by how they look.
I bet you can NOT do it.
I repeat – the Sardinian population is largely pre Indo European, if the pre Indo Europeans looked radically different then the population of Sardinia should look radically different.
They do NOT.
Niall – yes the “Wokeness” of the Corporations is extreme.
Their support of endless election fraud would not have bothered “Stalin” (after all it was “Uncle Joe” who said that it does not matter how people vote, what matters is who COUNTS the votes – something the Democratic Party and the corrupt Corporations agree with), but he would have drawn the line at the sexual mutilation of children. And, indeed, the entire “Woke” agenda of destroying the family and destroying all the cultural traditions of civilisation.
“Stalin” was a mass murderer – but he was NOT Frankfurt School, indeed he explicitly condemned the Frankfurt School, condemned it as a total perversion of Marxism. And it is – after all, according to the Frankfurt School, a billionaire black women is “exploited” and “oppressed” by a white, male heterosexual factory worker or coal miner – that turns Marxism on its head (it takes out the economic side of Marxism – and makes it all about race-gender-and-sexual orientation), there is no way that Karl Marx or Frederick Engels would have supported this.
Joseph Biden supports “Trans Rights” for eight year old children, and the “Woke” (i.e. Frankfurt School) Corporations do was well – “Stalin” would have been disgusted, indeed he would had them all shot.
Deep down underneath the Marxist “Stalin”, the son of a Georgian shoemaker still existed. But as I say above – does anyone really believe that Karl Marx or Frederick Engels would have gone along with “Trans Rights” for eight year old children (as that vile creature Joseph Biden does) – or supported the Frankfurt School “Black Lives Matter” movement?
The Soviet Union was a terrible Marxist dictatorship (a tyranny) – but it was not Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School was too extreme – even for the Soviet Union.
The Corporations have gone too far – they are supporting policies that even the Soviet Union (even long after Stalin’s death) never supported – it is impossible for anyone who supports the traditions of Western civilisation (indeed of any civilisation) to support the “Woke” Corporations.
“But Paul – you DEFENDED the Corporations for years against the attacks of Dr Gabb, Mr Ed and others”.
Yes I know I did – and it is a bitter thing to have to eat my own words.
Before the “better Putin than Biden” types appear.
I refuse to accept that the only choice the world has is between different types of parasite.
Even I am not that gloomy.
When the Ever Given went aground, it was under the command and control of Egyptian pilots. When a car veers off the road and into a crowd, do we blame the crowd for being there, the car maker for selling the car, the pub for selling the beer to the driver, or the driver?
Free trade does not exist, and maybe never did. Instead of longing for a mythical utopia, we need to formulate rational guidelines (not based on political bribery) for setting up trade restrictions and tariffs to strengthen our own economy. The measure of economic strength is not low prices at Walmart, but Gross National Product. Product means production, which means useful work for citizens and independence from foreign influence for the nation. Trade is useful, but only for increasing domestic industry.
Yeah good luck with that 🤣 So, who are these wise incorruptible and perspicacious people who will pick the domestic winners, the ones everyone must be forced to trade with in this planned system to ‘strengthen our own economy’?
” But yes, I am in favor of the USA having a trade policy. ”
“The USA” doesn’t exist.
What exist are 300 plus million individuals – who all have their own trade policies.
For ‘the USA’ to have a trade policy means, by definition – and it can mean no other – is that a politically powerful few use their power and violence to force everyone else to have *their* trade policy rather than the one the masses want. After all, if everyone thought, for example, that trade with China was bad then there’d be no need to put tariffs or bans in place. The very existence of a ban or tariff is admission that some people are benefiting and you do not want them to.
‘Free trade’ is a trade policy. ‘I won’t shoot you in the face if you trade with people I don’t like’ is just as much a trade policy as ‘I will shoot you in the face if you don’t do what I tell you to.’
We don’t have to agree on whether or not unilateral free trade is a net positive for a country – we just need to acknowledge that not having that policy is a small group of people perpetuating violence against people they are ostensibly comrades with in order to protect other people.
And its not even consistent. If its bad for one American to trade with China then its also bad for one Mexican to do so – yet we don’t threaten violence against Mexicans for this.
@Craig
Instead of longing for a mythical utopia, we need to formulate rational guidelines
Who is “we”? They sure as heck aren’t going to ask you or me. “We” means politicians who are serving their own political agenda which has as its primary objective getting politicians re-elected and government more money and control. Which is to say the “we” you are referring to are in fact among the worst people in society.
(not based on political bribery)
And you do this with your magic wand, correct? It seems ironic that you chastise some for “longing for a mythical utopia”.
The measure of economic strength is not low prices at Walmart, but Gross National Product. Product means production, which means useful work for citizens and independence from foreign influence for the nation. Trade is useful, but only for increasing domestic industry.
I think that is exactly wrong. The purpose of the economy is to provide goods and services to people not provide jobs to people. The purpose of making things is to have them to use, not just for the intrinsic benefit of their existence. If, for example, there was an economy that allowed everyone to produce goods and services for free in home (because we all had a holodeck and a replicator) allowing people to follow what interests them rather than what economic necessity requires of them, would you not agree that such an economy would be better than what we have today?
‘Free trade does not exist, and maybe never did.’
Because we decided it would not exist. We could have decided otherwise.
Dear Fraser, who would supply the ‘free’ holodeck and replicator? Who would supply the raw materials for the replicator to replicate something. Who would supply the energy for all this? And, if you get sick (from a really determined computer virus?), who, or what, would be compelled to service you back to health? I think that our economy is progressing so that we have more and more leisure time (so that we can catch up on all those Star Trek episodes), but I am not sure that we will ever get to having zero hours work.
I was going to respond to APL’s conflation of China’s conduct with the protectionist issue, but Perry did a better job than I could of squashing it.
The comment involving a gorilla is a thread winner.
Tom Janiček The object of protectionism is to reduce international trade (yes, it really is). Blocking the Suez canal sure as hell did that.
The object of protectionism is to adjust the terms of trade in favour of your nation’s producers. Thus not all reductions in international trade are equal in the eyes of protectionists. This is even more true of those, who I shall call retaliators, who seek to use trade policy to coerce another polity into reducing its own protectionism. And of those, who I shall call muscle flexers, who seek to coerce another polity into changing some other aspect of its policy – eg apartheid, slave labour, recognition of same sex marriage, making war on neighbours etc.
None of these – protectionists, retaliators and muscle flexers – seek indiscriminate reductions in international trade.
It would be an interesting exercise to compute the discriminating effects of the Suez Canal blockage. At first blush it seems unlikely that it would have had a great effect, at least directly, on the US. Much more likely to have affected Asia-Europe trade, and the Gulf-Europe oil trade (though I believe a secondary effect has been to push up tanker rates for Gulf to China oil shipments.)
I would be rather shocked and appalled if US military planners had not tried to calculate who would be hurt most by a long term Suez Canal blockage – the US or China. My money would be on China. And indirectly there might even be a benefit for US exporters to Europe, since shipments from China to Europe being rerouted round the Cape would add a bit to the cost.
I was struck a few days ago by references by some people that the Suez Canal blockage proved the “dangers” of globalisation and why we should be far less exposed to global trade. Taken to the point of absurdity, one might state that the fact of plumbing breakdowns proves the need for people to be less reliant on their lavatories and take a shit on the lawn instead.
Niall,
Yep, I agree. There are a LOT of major changes that can be made to current American trade policy that would I think please both myself and Perry – particularly, of course, getting rid of a lot of trade regulations that serve primarily to benefit mega corporations and entrenched corporate interests, to the detriment of small companies and (potential) new entrants. I strongly favor drastic changes to laws and regulations to level the playing field between big corporations and small companies – in trade policy and many other areas of government oversight.
Paul:
You are quite correct in saying that there can be no “free trade” under our present monetary conditions.
The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency, but since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, the USA has been able to create this reserve currency, and buy things with it, for free. It is no wonder that American industry, once the best in the world, has been hollowed out. It is easier to get foreigners to make things for you in return for green coupons which cost you nothing to produce.
The US dollar is 371 1/4 grains of silver. Nothing else is a dollar. Dollar bills are simply debt instruments, issued by the Federal Reserve Board to the US Treasury in return for the “dollars” the Treasury borrows from the Fed. They are termed legal tender, and are accepted as if they were dollars, but they are not dollars. If the USA had to find 371 1/4 grains of silver for each dollar’s worth of tat it buys from China, it would find it could do without the said tat. But so long as the Chinese are willing to accept the green coupons, safe in the knowledge that every coupon accepted makes America weaker, then the con game will continue. But as Colonel Kilgore sagely remarked in “Apocalypse Now”, “Someday this war’s gonna end.”
I agree Shlomo. I am not totally opposed to measures designed to dis-aggrandise China & Russia as they are quite clearly hostile powers. Even a free trader like me would have had no problem arguing in 1938 that having supply chains that included Germany, Italy & Japan might not be a good idea. But unfortunately most protectionists do not have that sort of objective in mind at all.
Paul Marks,
Yes, I strongly agree. This is a very important point.
“A more certain way to utterly destroy a country is hard to think of – and it is the same with the present, utterly false, understanding of the term “Free Trade”.” Yep I think there’s some real truth to this.
Free trade is in general highly beneficial. American monetary policy is leading the USA to engage in a perverse version of free trade based not primarily on the exchange of value but mainly on the systematic printing and borrowing of immense sums of money. I’m frankly not sure how to measure the benefits and detriments of this perverse version of free trade America engages in.
I think that in the absence of modifying American monetary policy, blanket tariffs would probably slow/mitigate the harm done by the (money printing and borrowing fueled) perverse trade America engages in now. The question I have is whether such tariffs (ignoring, for the sake of discussion, the national security and job protection benefits I see) would actually be net-beneficial or not.
I’m not sure, but I suspect that the answer is not binary, but rather yes – to an extent. At which point the question would be: to what extent. In other words, how high should the tariffs be without causing more harm than benefit (while ignoring question of national security and social/cultural benefits of protecting jobs, for the sake of discussion). I don’t know.
Any thoughts anyone? How can we measure the harm being done to the USA by perverse free trade based largely on money printing and borrowing? And how can we measure the extent to which tariffs might mitigate this harm?
@Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray
Dear Fraser, who would supply the ‘free’ holodeck and replicator?
Sure, I am not suggesting that such an economy is possible, the point is to compare an economy with products and no jobs with an economy with jobs and no products. The purpose of the economy is not to produce jobs but to produce products. Jobs are a means to an end, not an end in itself. Which isn’t to say humans don’t need to work, they do. But better to work on what is satisfying rather than digging potatoes in the field to save your kid from starvation.
And you are absolutely right, the economy, with respect to macro trends, is heading in the right direction.
My answer is tentatively: yes, to an extent. But I could change my mind. Maybe any tariff (no matter how minimal) is still not net-beneficial – either because 1. the tariff does not mitigate harm (from money-printing-and-borrowing fueled trade) or because 2. even the tiniest tariff does not mitigate the harm enough to offset the benefit of free trade even at that lowest level of tariff.
In the case of #1, this could be because there is no harm or because harm would be done anyway through domestic consumption and there’s no difference (partly because we are ignoring national security). But still, what about currency manipulation?
I’m really interested in how others here think about this question.
Even if the PRC was not a totalitarian dictatorship bent on world domination (which it is) – being dependent upon it for most basic goods and paying with endless funny money created from nothing, is not a good idea. Tom Palmer should read (or re read) Adam Smith and the other great economists – and be reminded that economic health is based on WORK, not endless consumption financed by printing and borrowing.
As for immigration – a more recent example occurs to me.
Hispanics going to two different States – California and Florida.
Most of the Hispanics who went to Florida went there to escape socialist dictatorships – in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere, and they certainly do not see Florida as “rightfully” being part of Cuba or Venezuela and so on.
Most of the Hispanics who went to California went there for government benefits and services – after all why else would someone go there (jobs are much less hard to find in other States), and many of them see California as “rightfully” people part of Mexico. The American education system hardly helps here – as its account of the 1840s conflict with Mexico is largely anti American propaganda and disinformation. It is not an exaggeration to say that an American “education” tends to make people anti American.
No where in most modern American schools or universities is it pointed out that MEXICO had expansionist aims in the 1840s – not just the United States. Nor is it pointed out that Mexicans were NOT removed from California, Texas and so on after the war, nor that these places were very thinly populated anyway. As for “land theft” – anyone who has seen a “Spanish land grant” of the sort still waved about in the 1840s knows they are utterly vague, and do not even include grid references.
One of the great problems of many Latin American countries is that land ownership is deeply unclear – and that can not, justly, be blamed on evil “Anglos”. Even T. Roosevelt (a Progressive) understood that vague Spanish land law was one of the principle things holding back many Latin American countries.
It is not “race” – it is ideas.
The Trump supporting Hispanics of Florida came from “Spanish stock” (that massively oversimplifies things – but this is just a comment, not a book) – that did not lead them to be anti Trump. And people of such “stock” have only been seen as a different “race” since the 1970s. When John Wayne (not known for being leftwing) married a Mexican lady, this was not seen as marrying someone of a different race (as it would be now) – it was seen as marrying someone of a different nation, who (by marrying Mr Wayne – Marian Morrison) had chosen to join the American nation.
The American idea of “race” is rather unscientific – for example someone of Spanish heritage is seen as being of Hispanic race, but someone of Portuguese heritage is not seen as such. So it is clearly not based on any physical thing.
“Ah but Paul – many Hispanics are part Indian” – so are many Anglos (such as the former Governor of Texas and the present Governor of South Dakota), so that does not explain anything.
As the saying used to be “the American Eagle look did not come from mating with birds” – intermarriage was a lot more common than people now think it was.
Ideas are the key thing – what someone is loyal to.
A “High Chaparral” episode (of all things) made this point – with the Apache turning out to be a fair skilled man with blue eyes, and the American turning out to be a dark skinned, and dark eyed, man. What mattered is what side they had chosen – what they had chosen to be loyal to.
The American Republic – or something else.
Quick question – who would you rather have as Mayor, the Anglo Democrat who is Mayor of New York, or the Hispanic Republicans who are Mayors of Miami Florida and El Paso Texas?
I think the answer is obvious – and it most certainly is not “Big Bird” (the Castro lover) Mayor of New York City.
What does any of that have to do with Tom Palmer about trade or the article he wrote? Ideally a single paragraph reply would be great 😜
The main point of Palmer’s article (not just the quote) is that the balance of trade is a meaningless metric. We should be overjoyed that other countries are willing to send us their stuff in return for useless pieces of paper. Some of us however believe that if the overall balance shifts too far in either direction, that country is in for a world of hurt, sooner or later. This applies to both the spendthrift (with a weak balance sheet) and the miser (with a strong one). No one is calling for eliminating trade, just to strive for balance.
On the contrary, there’s plenty of Greens and Autarkist on both Left & Right who clearly think everything must be local.