Has someone been reading my blog? Reinstituting Hawley-Smoot: useless now that the 'production horse has left the barn'.
"So, might it work to instead use tariffs to make American goods more competitive in China? Probably not. The problem is that the United States lacks the domestic industry to make many of the things we currently buy from China."
That is a pathetic, and quite true admission. What if, 'possible worlds', one of their many enemies tries to block sea lanes?
US now really, tradewise, economically, and basic materially, a beached whale.
China, and everyone else who is looking on, many with important interests themselves,
knows this, and knows what power, tantamount to strong military power, it implies over Americans' very existence;
China is more powerful politically here than anyone else; no Chinese can vote here.....but that is the last way anyone buys political power here, anymore.
What would a solution look like?
There is not even a mediocre one.
Industrial policy is unamerican, and at this point rendered moot; but that is what Americans will be forced to fall back on, eventually, probably in the context of war preparation or production, as before, rather than as a peacetime reform initiative.
Military force trade control (enslavement of foreign production workers), not doable.
The big lesson here is politics is really not for blinkered amateurs,
really is a life and death thing, and just voting all the time and watching McNeill Lehrer has not been a good use of the average American's time, going forward.
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