You can see the effects of the free market in many industries which have been decimated by globalization.
We used to be able to get a manufacturing job which would provide for a family, but decided it was okay to allow big corps to use slave labor on the other side of the planet and just ship everything across the world (not great for carbon emissions). Just look at the rust belt.
It’s not a bad idea to say that we should have the free market stop at our border. Other countries don’t play by the same rules that we do and can even have entire industries propped up by a foreign government in order to take up market share.
We are the richest nation on the planet. The reason the rust belt exists is because we decided it was better to have the most billionaires than to invest and care for our people. It’s entirely possible to help raise other countries out of poverty, which globalism has, and take care of your people. We just didn’t.
I'm not sure what you mean by "care for our own people". I would say that providing an abundance of meaningful work that can feed a family is one of the best ways we can care for our own people. We have unions and high wages, and having good paying jobs for people who don't want to or can't afford to attend University means that people from all walks of life can have some prosperity.
Removing industry from an area brings nothing but misery to the people who live there. Are you suggesting that some sort of communism should have been implemented in the rust belt where we give these people free money or something?
The Chinese market is way larger than the US one, they have everything they need to lift themselves out of poverty by building things for themselves. The US became the richest country in the world by building everything here and reaping the rewards with greatly increased prosperity.
There is no reason to send all our good paying jobs to the other side of the world, and ship all goods across literally the entire planet, the process of which emits and insane amount of C02, just so that the owners of mega corporations can make a few extra dollars per unit.
The "rules based order" is just an American invention to give our government something to talk about besides international law, which the US has basically always ignored.
no, you cannot enforce rules based order on the whole world when it suits you (to force everyone use USD for reserves and global trade, allowing USA to borrow unlimited money for free and export inflation to entire world), but the moment it doesnt suit you - just abandon it.
why would anyone trust usa's word if any agreement/word/promise can be torn unilaterally?
I agree with you, I'm trying to add color to the situation by pointing out that America has benefited from this invention stemming from the conditions of pax americana where the alternative is international law via the UN and ICC and other institutions that are perhaps more independent than the US would like.
> china can't just do whatever and tariff american companies to hell, right?
In general, the US would introduce retaliatory tariffs in that scenario; the game theory of the situation basically requires that.
Despite popular belief, the CCP is also not actually completely immune to public discontent (it often seems to be really quite scared of it), and would likely be willing to kick off a major trade war, as it would cause price increases.
