We can look at a 50+ year history of every major U.S. trade partner increasing their protectionist policies, largely targeting the U.S., while the U.S. allowed trade deficits to balloon out of control. I don't see evidence that this "good faith" approach you speak of has any viability at all. The global economy can't say with a straight face that it has been a fair trade partner with the United States. For the past 50+ years the U.S. market has been open for business for all global producers, but the same has been far from true for pretty much every major U.S. trade partner. You can't even operate a company in China without 50% Chinese ownership, for example. The global stance on trade has all but made this an inevitable outcome.
A more charitable explanation is that the U.S. has been all in on globalization and free trade since the 1970s and the rest of the world took a protectionist stance in response. I'm sure the rest of the world had their reasons. But the U.S. does now, too. Globalization and free trade that only substantially flows in one direction simply is not sustainable.
Oh yes the hell we did. I was running an ecommerce store when this happened, it's been a disaster for US entrepreneurs who have any model other than dropship from China - https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2011/pr11_037....
> A more charitable explanation is that the U.S. has been all in on globalization and free trade since the 1970s and the rest of the world took a protectionist stance in response. I'm sure the rest of the world had their reasons. But the U.S. does now, too. Globalization and free trade that only substantially flows in one direction simply is not sustainable.
We negotiated those free trade agreements. Stop acting like we were being taken advantage of. Now, if you want to argue that American labor has been hosed, then I agree with that too, but China didn't do that - Nike did. None of these idiotic tariffs are going to help the American worker either - what remains of accessible opportunity for the masses has already become more like sharecropping with huge corporations owning the plantation, and it's only going to get worse under these policies.
Good faith negotiations with our allies and trading partners that creates a balance of trade and reduces wealth inequality in the west. I'm not opposed to the actual ideas being floated, but the people doing are are completely unserious and it's being implemented in a stupid nonsense way.