I (European) can’t understand how American right is more aligned with this tariffs that work against the free market and all the core values of the capitalism.
I honestly think these policies are more aligned with a socialist than with a capitalist country, how is possible that American conservative people are supporting this? Is not any libertarian faction in the republican party?
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I appreciate your question asked in good faith, but the first thing that comes to mind is, oh, so now the left loves the free market?
It’s kind of complicated. First of all, conservatives aren’t all completely free market. Conservatives to some extent want to go back to a time or conserve the good times of the past so to speak. That’s why they’re called conservatives. In the past, America was economically strong because we didn’t outsource all of our labor overseas. The Rich could still get rich but they had to do it by paying a living wage or no one would work for them. This added up to wealth redistribution through the free market and nobody had to take the rich people’s money by force.
But once the rich people figured out that they could take advantage of low wages overseas and not have to pay the American workers, that was kind of the beginning of the end. There were many other issues going on of course. But that definitely was a big factor.
The Neo liberal ideas of free trade were kind of new and brought on by people like Bill Clinton. But we were already dealing with things like manufacturing in Japan China etc. NAFTA just meant that US corporations could take advantage of things being made in Mexico rather than overseas. But same difference.
Economists will tell us that free trade is the most efficient, including the free movement of labor such as immigration, but efficient isn’t necessarily best for the only thing. Efficiency these days means wealth for a small segment of Americans and not for the rest.
If we open the door to overseas manufacturing or labor coming to the United States through immigration, that will benefit the whole world on average, by making foreign workers more wealthy, even if that simply means going from poverty to lower middle class. Same with allowing workers to come here. It will increase their income, but it does it by allowing them to come here and work for wages more than they get in their country but less than a living wage to an American. And all this does benefit Americans, but more and more it benefits the wealthy Americans and at the expense of poor Americans .
Point being, outsourcing of jobs and immigration are both factors that by free market standards, should be something encouraged. But conservatives aren’t strictly speaking always free marketers.
Most conservatives have simply decided that the time has come to revisit and rethink the free market. If that means doing things that will discourage manufacturers from having things made overseas, or discourage employers from hiring illegal immigrants or other low wage immigrants, so be it. I have no problem with that .
I don’t think anybody knows how this tariff thing will all shake out. I’m taking a wait and see approach.
When I first learned about isolationism I felt like that was ideal. I think that tariffs will put us more towards a self sufficient country, especially in regards to manufacturing.
I have been exposed to the opinions of Americans expressed by people from other countries my entire life, and quite frankly, they don’t like Americans. They don’t appreciate what they get from us and they shit on anything about us that they possibly can. This only further drove me towards thinking “fuck them, then”. I do not have the energy to set my life towards proving these people wrong. I just don’t want anything to do with them anymore.
Yall been biting the hand that feeds you and I’m perfectly fine with letting you starve because of it. You made this bed, now you get to lay in it.
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You do understand that most nations use tariffs to artificially raise the cost of USA goods? These tariffs collected are used instead of taxing their citizens. The USA is for free trade, it is a two way street.
The only way I support it is if reciprocal or to address trade discrepancy.
Us is the biggest buyer and we have a ton of our own reasources. If anyone throws their weight around it should be us
Conservatives are not a monolith, and the libertarian conservatives like myself do not approve of tariffs. But Trump is more of a right wing populist than he is an economic conservative.
free markets are unrelated to conservatism as a belief system, it was neocons who adopted that and ran with it and neocons were a bane on conservatism and only succeeded in discrediting that brand of conservatism and losing ground on every single issue important to conservatives.
Tariffs’ can be a useful policy like many others. But that doesn’t mean that Trump’s tariffs are useful. Frankly, I doubt they will be helpful to Americans in the ways that more thoughtful economic policy could be.
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To put it in simple language, other countries love America. Until America stands up for herself.
As others have pointed out, supporting the free market isn’t inherently conservative. Go back far enough and it’s not even really right wing. Globalisation, and neoliberal economics in general, has brought about the depression of wages of American workers, the de-industrialization of huge swaths of the country and the further erosion of regional cultures. I value these things far more than a pseudo-religious zeal for the free market.