Opinion: What history teaches us about who wins in trade wars

[bronxiteforever]

By Charles Hankla
Published: Mar 2, 2018
MarketWatch

Before the 1930s, America’s trade policy was generally set unilaterally by Congress — that is, without the international negotiations used today.Lawmakers, already in a protectionist mood, responded to the pain of the Great Depression by passing the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised duties on hundreds of imports. Meant in part to ease the effects of the Depression by protecting American industry and agriculture from foreign competition, the act instead helped prolong the downturn. Many U.S. trading partners reacted by raising their own tariffs, which contributed significantly to shutting down world trade.
...
The dangers of ignoring history are only beginning to manifest themselves, but they can be seen in several recent developments that bode ill for us all. One of the Trump administration’s first actions was to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This agreement, which was a major initiative of the Obama administration, would have created the largest economic bloc in the world by linking America’s economy with those of 11 other Pacific nations. It would also have created an American-led, liberal bulwark in Asia against any Chinese challenge to the regional economic order. Withdrawing from the agreement denied American exporters enhanced access to foreign markets and was a gift to Chinese influence in Asia. But we are only now beginning to see the longer-term repercussions of President Trump’s decision.

President Trump assumes the U.S. can act unilaterally without consequences. Economic history shows this doesn’t work. The world’s economies are far more interdependent than they were during the Great Depression, so the impact of governments all following a “my country first” trade policy — as the president said he expected world leaders to do — could have disastrous consequences....If the U.S. abdicates as champion of the international trading system, China may be the only country that can take the reins. The question is, what would that mean for the current system of open and free markets?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-history-teaches-us-about-who-wins-in-trade-wars-2018-03-02

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Nobody wins trade wars. The best that happens is someone rises from the ashes some day...

And that's even if we don't get into a world war.

I remember a lot of squealing around here about the TPP, too. Both the hard left and the hard right were/are dead wrong about it

[bronxiteforever]

2. Totally agree. Getting out of TPP is an epic failure.

China wins and we get no benefit.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

4. The TPP

was hammered on this website with numerous reasons why it wasn't good for America. Now it is?

[Igel]

6. Yup.

Same with NAFTA, which had progressives out in the streets protesting. It was the bane of Mexico's existence, and it needed to be undone to protect the Mexican economy.

Trump frowns at something and lots of people say, "If Trump doesn't like it, it's my new bestest friend."

Same with TPP. Trump dissed it, and immediately from the top of the ticket to the bottom of the food chain support for the TPP grew at about the same rate as cosmic inflation must have. I liked NAFTA; TPP ... not so much, but better something I don't much like than circumstances I actively despise.

Gone or forgotten or newly seen as fallacious were the arguments against NAFTA and the TPP. We're spared having Trump citing those arguments back at us because they're couched in Trump-inappropriate language as opposed to his arguments in inappropriate Trump-language. They're fundamentally similar arguments, though. Protecting Mexico's economy isn't a talking point, that's the wrong kind of protectionism for Trump to concede might be valid; instead, it's protecting the US' economy that he harps on about.

But it's worse. We hate tariffs; they'll lead to a trade war. But Obama imposed steeper tariffs on a lot of Chinese steel back in 2016. Tariffs were cool back then, even as some of the sharpest progressive knives against Obama were drawn over the TPP. It's just that the anti-Chinese tariffs didn't create any turmoil so it didn't get recorded in our collective long-term memory; that means many can sleep soundly knowing that as good solid progressives, neither we nor Obama ever supported tariffs. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/02/if-trump-thinks-hes-taking-steel-tariff-war-to-china-hes-wrong.html

I will snark and say that if we were imposing tariffs on Russia there'd be

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

7. Please tell me in average lingo

And terms why this would benefit the working American.

[raccoon]

3. The Dotard don't know much about history, don't know much geography.. Nt