politics

I wonder why Trump didn’t just appoint Bernie as his VP? They have the same understanding of trade, which is to say, they don’t understand it at all.

this whole line of thought that trade was free and somehow the current admin closed them off is more than misunderstood. 

if you throw a jab, let it be good.

It was more free than it is now. Never in my life did i think the US would embrace Soviet style central planning.

if doors to exit a theatre are open and doors to enter are closed you wouldn't say the theatre is 'more open' or 'kind of open'. trade that's not free on both side is not 'more free'. 

don't be disingenuous. if you jab let it be good.

You don’t need an analogy for this.

It costs more to trade with the rest of the world today than 2 months ago. IE less free trade.

that's not what free trade is 

and that's what i mean by being disingenuous 
or simply misunderstood 
hopefully the latter

the trade 2 months ago wasn't free
if you can't grasp why, that's where the analogy might've helped

more specifically: 

george, mises and friedman don't think free trade is a spectrum, they think it's a binary. so the 'more free' thing doesn't apply to them. 

rothbard wasn't pro retaliatory tariffs but also didn't really fit in the 'free trade spectrum' camp

afaik robinson wasn't even pro-free trade so, not sure what she doing n this iamge (not too familiar with her work tho)

i personally don't think smith and keynes would've called the pre US tariff era 'free trade' even if they believed in spectrums

looking at what you posted here, regardless of what i agree and not, i think only krugman and marx would agree with you

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secondly, 
the hypothetical argument you make is on the right track
but your counterpoints are low effort and surface level -- they don't consider that those were done for second order impacts on the primary argument you put forth yourself

Free trade is about reducing barriers to trade - not increasing them, which is what we’re doing. We can’t control other countries policy, except through coercion of our own people. 

You could make the argument that we’re just trying to get other countries to reduce tariffs but we’ve gone after countries who have no tariffs against us. Countries where we also have a trade surplus. And hardly any of these countries have universal tariffs - but instead have tariffs on particular industries. 

There is less free trade today than there was 2 months ago. Full stop.