To make it clearer, imagine if an iPhone were built in the US. People have speculated that it would cost over $2000 for the $600 iPhone 5. Now, are Americans better off that 200 million can't buy iPhones but that 60,000 of them have jobs? In fact, _would_ the 200 million buy iPhones to keep the 60,000 employed? Or would they just buy the Samsung that costs $600? Then you'd lose the employment of the 60,000 too.
Subsidies aren't free. Tariffs aren't free. They are a tax twice over on every fellow citizen who isn't subsidized or protected by tariff.
I'd rather have a job than a cheap iPhone.
I also seriously doubt that build costs would rocket from $200 to $2000 simply by moving production to the US.
It seems like maintaining a free market in such a market would lead to a race to the bottom with regards to wages and quality of life. Why should we allow that to happen just to maximize profits?
Maybe at this point China will be the ones exporting manufacturing to poorer less industrialized countries.
The issue really is just with countries that don't provide a quality of life that the US offers, like Mexico.
"letting jobs freely flow to the cheapest place in the world, and products to flow tariff free across borders" will happen, no matter what? Does the free will of human beings to choose and pursue their own destiny have something to do with it?
> There is no way to have wages in US 5-10 times bigger than in other countries only because politicians can do such a thing (if they would).
Not higher than everyone of course, but this assumption that everything is going to even out across all countries perfectly evenly seems like a rather extraordinary belief that at least ignores the ability and willingness of humans to go collectively insane periodically.
Does the human nature/culture aspect of this situation not bother you at all? For example, I hope we can agree that certain cultures are better than others at certain things, for whatever reason. For example, the US at innovation, the Japanese at perfecting things, the Chinese at mass production and working incredibly hard (so far, what's next we shall see). Do you think it is absolutely not possible at all that some cultures on earth might lack certain strengths required to compete on a tariff-free global marketplace, or the social cohesion to govern society successfully under these new conditions?
The latter, which includes American steel consumers.
A few decades ago some people were seriously arguing that open source software was bad for the software industry because it made it harder to have a business selling compilers or web servers.