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The ultimate problem is, Reagan and the free traders were just wrong. Free trade destroyed our ability to manufacture physical goods, offshoring is forcing American workers to compete with every person in the world and making software far more attractive since software companies can hire thousands of Indians to work for pennies.
Ultimately I think Trump should just accept that fact and say hey Reagan was wrong. But then again I'm not a politician.
I strongly urge you to read this article by Hanania. It's a stock narrative in American populism that neoliberal policies in general (and NAFTA in particular) resulted in all of the manufacturing jobs being offshored and the demise of the Midwest, but Hanania quite rightly points out that, as a consequence of more efficient technologies, the proportion of the US population employed in manufacturing had been in steady decline for decades prior to Reagan's election. The graph illustrating this is really striking (Ctrl-F "continuation of a long run process"): there are literally no shocks, spikes or sudden drops visible from about 1977 onwards, it's a smooth, continuous decline.
If an Indian can do the same job as an American for half the price, it would be foolish not to hire the Indian. This is also known as "economic efficiency".
If you want a job as a cashier that will pay €75k a year, no one would hire you. If you whined that you can't get a job because of all the scab workers/immigrants who'll work for peanuts (i.e. €25k a year), everyone would laugh at you. I truthfully do not understand why this complaint is illegitimate for an unemployed cashier with delusions of grandeur, but why I'm supposed to take it seriously when an unemployed software dev makes it. Because software dev is "skilled labour"? Too bad: your salary is in part a reflection of your skillset's scarcity in the jobs market. If lots of people invested in learning the same skillset as you, and some of them want to live within their means, you will be outcompeted. Better luck next time.
One thing that always interests me with these takes is why the other countries engage in counter tariffs. If tariff-free trade relations are such an amazing boon, why even engage in such a retaliation? If US wants to produce cheap aluminum and cars and timber and brandy then why did let's say Canada impose tariffs as some part of trade war? Are they not foolish for not taking nicely subsidized goods for cheap from USA and just produce something else?
Cooperate-cooperate is better for everyone, but if one party defects, the other party must punish them by defecting in turn. Tit-for-tat outcompetes DefectBot and CooperateBot.
That is not the claim of anti-tariff people. Their claim is that tariffs damage local economy. Unless they have some savior complex where they enact tariffs in order to save poor people of country they are in trade war with? It does not make sense.
Also where is the limit, what is the end game? Free trade is not truly free and effective unless literally every single country on planet Earth including Iran, Russia and North Korea "cooperates" - and until such a time we need harsh regime of aggressive trade wars to the last man? There is a list of countries by tariff rate here - USA with 3.3% is among the best - better than Canada or Switzerland or Norway and much better than almost any African countries. Why focus on USA and not some other much more "unfree" country?
Certainly it is. No tariff/no tariff is the best, followed by tariff/no-tariff -- which is worse for both sides, but more worse for the tariffing side, followed by tariff/tariff, which is worse than tariff/no-tariff for both sides. This is not a prisoner's dilemma payoff, and the per-round rational strategy is clearly "no tariff" in all cases. But that's not the end of it, because a rational party will also want to get the other party to not tariff, and if the other party erroneously thinks it's in a prisoners dilemma, some tariffing makes sense to do this.
This game doesn't seem to have a name at least on Wikipedia. The payoffs are like Chicken except the mixed case is reversed (that is, going straight is lower-payoff than chickening out when only one player chickens). It's not a very interesting game because the best move is obvious; it only comes up because the players think they're playing something different, or because of the payoffs being uneven within the countries as I mentioned above.
Oh, so tariffs are bad for target of tariffs. And maybe some nations with large economies that are not as exposed to international trade are to large extent immunized to impact of counter tariffs. It almost seems as if tariffs are quite a nice tool to threaten or even enact in order to bring the other side to the table and make some diplomatic concessions and maybe sometimes it is actually good to experience some pain in order to gain even more good. I'd say Trump would wholeheartedly agree.
I agree with Trump that it could sometimes be good to impose tariffs to get the other guy to back down on their trade barriers. I disagree that this is all that he has been doing. Trump seems to think that overall having some tariffs is better than having no tariffs (hence the 10% global tariff); free trade is not his goal.
Why are you so hyperfocused on trade barriers, he may use them to save puppies or do some other type of good outside of this narrow trade stuff.
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