Free Trade vs Protectionism

[Jason]

As much as nationalists like it, it doesn't seem to lead to the most prosperity. Well, looking at the UK and Ireland, Ireland is rich and the British are falling back, I'd say cause of Brexit.

 

[Arantor]

You really can’t distill it down to a one liner, especially over something as complex as Brexit (which in reality is nothing whatsoever to do with either free trade or protectionism, but necessarily impacts both on the UK mainland, on the mainland/NI border and the NI/ROI border), and unless you’ve really been following events, it’s really hard to speak to any of that.

There are legitimate cases of protectionism when local/domestic specialities are under threat from being supplanted by imported knockoffs, for example Champagne is, in many places, a protected name (along with Bordeaux) in that it cannot call itself that if it wasn’t produced there. Same with Cornish pasties, or Melton Mowbray pork pies, they can’t call themselves that if not produced there.

As a result a lot of locally produced goods have that going on (not even just in the food category).

Free trade is one of those things that sounds good but it relies very much on a market being able to withstand cheaper, worse products being imported. Much fuss here about importing chlorinated chicken from America for example because while it would be cheaper, it is considered a significantly inferior product and there are the competing interests of those who want profit at anyone else’s expense and those who want to pay a fair price for a quality good.

 

[Empire]

The thing is, the industries didn't magically decide to teleport to countries with so called low cost of operation. The reality is that the cost of operating at low scale was removed in America first, before the industry left the country, by way of environmental and other regulations. The US had always made the lowest costing goods and services at scale for the whole world, while also paying the highest in history for its workers. There are other factors besides cost that go into maintaining a manufacturing business. With cost of business going up, the cost aspect caught up and eventually everyone had to move abroad to stay afloat.

 

[Arantor]

The US had always made the lowest costing goods and services at scale for the whole world

China and India say hello and have done for decades.

 

[Jason]

The thing is, the industries didn't magically decide to teleport to countries with so called low cost of operation. The reality is that the cost of operating at low scale was removed in America first, before the industry left the country, by way of environmental and other regulations. The US had always made the lowest costing goods and services at scale for the whole world, while also paying the highest in history for its workers. There are other factors besides cost that go into maintaining a manufacturing business. With cost of business going up, the cost aspect caught up and eventually everyone had to move abroad to stay afloat.

Why do you think it's more expensive to run businesses as time goes on? For instance, in the US, textiles were based in New England, then they moved the south USA, and then next, outside the US.