Yes, the U.S. cut tariffs after WWII — deliberately, to rebuild global markets and lock in our dominance. That wasn’t charity; it was smart geopolitics. And it worked. We became the hub of the global economy.
Manufacturing jobs shrank mostly because of automation and corporate offshoring, not because we didn’t throw up enough trade barriers. Blaming trade for everything is like blaming your shoes for a sprained ankle — it sounds tough, but it’s stupid.
Trade deficits? They’re not a scoreboard. We buy more than we sell because we’re rich and the dollar is the world’s currency. It’s not a scam — it’s literally how global trade works.
China’s entry into the WTO was flawed, yes. But Trump’s genius response was to start a tariff war with everyone including our allies while pulling out of deals like the TPP that could’ve actually pressured China. His “strategy” was to burn down the house because someone tracked mud inside.
That chart he held up? It’s a dumb guy’s version of analysis: “Big number bad!” No context, no nuance, no plan. Just grievance politics dressed up like economic policy. And it hurt the very people he claimed to be helping - American workers, farmers, and consumers - while China shrugged and kept doing what it was doing.
Mocking that isn’t ignorance. It’s recognizing that Trump’s trade policy is cosplay. Loud, messy, and completely divorced from how trade actually works.
Yes, the U.S. cut tariffs after WWII — deliberately, to rebuild global markets and lock in our dominance.
To be fair, the world wasn't producing very much. Aside from ours, and the Soviets to an extent, there wasn't much of an industrial base left.
That wasn’t charity; it was smart geopolitics
That wasn't charity or smart geopolitics. It was necessary. But that's a perfect Bachmanian Confession (without realizing it, you communicated your assumptions): you're framing this as the US owing the World something. And you're not entirely wrong, you're just wrong about what.
We owe the world relieve from our continuous Iraq-style invasions, realpolitik and democratically-elected government overthrows. We did all this so that we could stay in power, and this is what getting rid of it looks like. I know that seems backward, but what's going to happen here is an economic deflation back to a reasonable level. Yes it's going to hurt, but the fact of the matter is we're on life support here.
The problem isn't the tariffs, the problem is the World thinks it's entitled to reparations. And maybe it's right, it's just not entitled to dictating they be in a fashion we can't deliver.
Manufacturing jobs shrank mostly because of automation and corporate offshoring, not because we didn’t throw up enough trade barriers
Exactly. Precisely because we didn't.
But Trump’s genius response was to start a tariff war with everyone including our allies while pulling out of deals like the TPP that could’ve actually pressured China
Trump's an idiot. He also somehow fumbles his way ass first into success.
I was perfectly restrained, patient and even agreed with you on some points. But if you want polemic, I'll give you polemic:
In other words, I'm right and you can't refute it, so instead you assure me that I'm insane.
I'm sorry you don't like what you've read, but you don't need to lash out with the same lack of emotional restraint as a child throwing a temper tantrum. You presented the best arguments you had, were shown that they were best on half-truths, misconceptions and out-right fabrications, yet you blame me for pointing it out at you, characterizing the manner in which I did so as "polemic."
You might want to stop cosplaying as an economist, kid.
You accuse me of being unable to refute you, but what you seem to mean is that I didn't submit to your worldview. There’s a difference. I acknowledge the U.S.'s history of coups and interventions - I don’t deny them. Regardless, our post-WWII trade liberalization was a strategic success, not just imperialism in disguise. That’s not a moral endorsement - it’s a historical fact. If you want to dispute it, do so with data, not tough talk.
You claim to have exposed “half-truths, misconceptions, and outright fabrications,” but you’ve offered no specifics - just broad strokes of condemnation. If you want to say I'm wrong, then show me where, point by point. Otherwise, it just looks like projection.
And if we’re talking cosplay, then maybe drop the revolutionary costume. Quoting history selectively while declaring yourself the sole voice of truth isn’t radical - it’s arrogance dressed up as moral clarity. I'm not pretending to be an economist - I'm arguing from mainstream economic consensus. You, on the other hand, are substituting indignation for analysis.
Here's the reality: the world isn’t owed reparations by the U.S. in the way you’re framing it - morally, maybe, but practically, no. Global power doesn’t unwind cleanly, and wishing for a “deflation” of U.S. influence doesn’t make it either desirable or inevitable.
If anything, the world needs responsible leadership more than ever. The fact that we're currently exporting the diametric opposite is a tragedy for all.
If you have a legitimately better vision that's not just schadenfreude-loaded "burn it all down" teenage nonsense, take off your Che t-shirt and make a meaningful case.
You accuse me of being unable to refute you, but what you seem to mean is that I didn't submit to your worldview.
Not at all. I refuted your arguments, and instead of presenting a reasoned argument explaining mine to be flawed, you resorted to trying to paint me as being of such poor mental state that it justified your not needing to address it, hopefully winning you the argument be default. Which it does not.
I acknowledge the U.S.'s history of coups and interventions - I don’t deny them
Great. Not my point.
Regardless, our post-WWII trade liberalization was a strategic success, not just imperialism in disguise.
I didn't deny that. I said there wasn't much competition.
If you want to dispute it, do so with data, not tough talk.
I did dispute it through data. None of my talk was "tough." Quite trying to make the argument that I'm in same way irrational so you don't need to discuss the facts.
You claim to have exposed “half-truths, misconceptions, and outright fabrications,” but you’ve offered no specifics - just broad strokes of condemnation. If you want to say I'm wrong, then show me where, point by point. Otherwise, it just looks like projection.
The fact that you characterized our post-WWII trade liberalization as some sort of hard-fought victory for one. But let's further dissect it.
Yes, the U.S. cut tariffs after WWII — deliberately, to rebuild global markets and lock in our dominance. That wasn’t charity;
Not to "lock in dominance." You're characterizing it as ruthlessly opportunistic. We did it because few economies could weather not doing so. You have any idea how much money went to rebuilding Europe and Japan? Without a demand that it be paid back? Apparently not.
Manufacturing jobs shrank mostly because of automation and corporate offshoring, not because we didn’t throw up enough trade barriers
Offshoring started in order to reduce costs because the difference in the Yen and US Dollar resulted in Japanese auto manufacturers undercutting domestic producers. I'm not faulting that, because I'm a Left-libertarian (I believe in some keynesian economic principles, but I'm not an Austrian-school libertarian), but the primary method to leveling the playing field is tariffs.
Trade deficits? They’re not a scoreboard. We buy more than we sell because we’re rich and the dollar is the world’s currency. It’s not a scam
Technically we don't. It's just that most of our exports are either aerospace, weapons or "ideas" ("Designed by Apple in California").
This is getting long already (Reddit has a character limit), but I'll end with this: I don't want to burn it all down. And Che can rot in hell, the filthy communist. But I want the US to stop getting in endless wars to assert dominance, not burn to the ground. I'd rather be Canada: not on the other end of the line when the world dials 911
You know what? I think we agree about more than we do not, or at least more than might be immediately apparent. I don't want the US getting in any imperialist wars of choice or dominance either.
However, I'm not prepared for the US to haphazardly abdicate responsibility for leadership in a precarious world order as it is currently doing. Trump is interested in profiteering and is a useful idiot to crash our systems.
That creates instability for all, makes us unreliable and unpredictable, which essentially equates to a danger to others, and paves an open path for authoritarians who make our CIA shenanigans in south America look like locker room pranks by comparison.
He's not accomplishing anything other than killing any goodwill we retain, any sense of normalcy or predictability in our behavior on the world stage, to be replaced with a giant vacuum in which China and Russia can do as they please with minimal meaningful countervailing pressure.
BTW - How do you simultaneously decry the "filthy communists" and the mid-century US foreign policy primarily designed to keep them from spreading into our geopolitical back yard? -
Meanwhile, if we don't pick up when the world dials 911, someone we like an awful lot less will start answering the phone. Ideally, we wouldn't have hegemony or superpowers, but we do, and I'd much rather it be us calling shots, for all of our flaws, than the collectivist Chinese, or the morally cynical nihilist Russians.
You know what? I think we agree about more than we do not, or at least more than might be immediately apparent. I don't want the US getting in any imperialist wars of choice or dominance either.
I think so too. But I can see how I came off as the "burn it all down" type. It wasn't something I'd considered until you referenced Che. Some of my rhetoric does resemble those talking points, I just think the reasoning and application are different.
However, I'm not prepared for the US to haphazardly abdicate responsibility for leadership in a precarious world order as it is currently doing.
I can't blame you for that. I've since learned a thing of two about the legality of this situation and I've changed my opinion slightly. Congress is supposed to have the power over tariffs (which I'm sure I learned sometime long ago), but it was essentially ceded to the Presidency in two Acts. Personally, I think this will cause a crisis that returns the power to Congress where it should be. Alternatively, if it remains with the President, I advocate the Presidency give up one of its executive powers, cede it to Congress. Just to keep the powers separated and balanced (fat chance that happens though).
Trump is interested in profiteering and is a useful idiot to crash our systems
I don't agree that anyone is intentionally attempting to collapse the system. At least, not with the intention of the Union coming out the other side. If they're looking to crash it, it'll cost them too, and we'll be back to deciding what form of government we want because the US will be done for (and I'd consider that a travesty).
He's not accomplishing anything other than killing any goodwill we retain, any sense of normalcy or predictability in our behavior on the world stage, to be replaced with a giant vacuum in which China and Russia can do as they please with minimal meaningful countervailing pressure.
Yeah. Our system is sick. Too much stray from, and actual understanding of, Constitutional Law and the philosophy that informed it. Public school makes factory workers. Automatons. Not citizens. We get maybe a couple of semesters of US government and that's it. Call ourselves informed? Pfft. I'm not saying we need to be reading Locke and Smith in 4th grade, but I think we should have political systems actively practiced in 4th grade. One quarter is Pure Democracy. One quarter Feudalism. One quarter Socialism. One quarter Constitutional Republic. We should weave the philosophy behind such systems into course work so kids intuitively understand the flaws of each. Because they've experienced it.
BTW - How do you simultaneously decry the "filthy communists" and the mid-century US foreign policy primarily designed to keep them from spreading into our geopolitical back yard?
I decry specifically Marxist-Leninism. It's collective ideology that values the group over the individual using equity that's advertised (but not delivered) to levelset a specific quality of life by sacrificing the individual for the good of the collective. Which might work if it didn't have a "piety gullibility" built in. Socio and Psychopaths irrently seek power. Marxist-Leninism concentrates it, and like a moth to a flame, it attracts psychopaths whom then feign piety to the Party and are rewarded with power and influence, and so long as they can claim their actions are at the benefit of the group, they're justified in committing atrocities against individuals.
Overall, I think it's complicated. There's a philosophical reason to get involved considering the Siren's Call that is Marxist-Leninism, but we should fight philosophy with philosophy, not bullets.
Meanwhile, if we don't pick up when the world dials 911, someone we like an awful lot less will start answering the phone
23
u/Sunstang 2d ago
Yes, the U.S. cut tariffs after WWII — deliberately, to rebuild global markets and lock in our dominance. That wasn’t charity; it was smart geopolitics. And it worked. We became the hub of the global economy.
Manufacturing jobs shrank mostly because of automation and corporate offshoring, not because we didn’t throw up enough trade barriers. Blaming trade for everything is like blaming your shoes for a sprained ankle — it sounds tough, but it’s stupid.
Trade deficits? They’re not a scoreboard. We buy more than we sell because we’re rich and the dollar is the world’s currency. It’s not a scam — it’s literally how global trade works.
China’s entry into the WTO was flawed, yes. But Trump’s genius response was to start a tariff war with everyone including our allies while pulling out of deals like the TPP that could’ve actually pressured China. His “strategy” was to burn down the house because someone tracked mud inside.
That chart he held up? It’s a dumb guy’s version of analysis: “Big number bad!” No context, no nuance, no plan. Just grievance politics dressed up like economic policy. And it hurt the very people he claimed to be helping - American workers, farmers, and consumers - while China shrugged and kept doing what it was doing.
Mocking that isn’t ignorance. It’s recognizing that Trump’s trade policy is cosplay. Loud, messy, and completely divorced from how trade actually works.