Rand Paul Advocates for Peace Through Free Trade

I’m in favor of a blocked currency like India has.

The Russians selling oil to India can take their pick of Indian products and services.

The problem is it is one way free trade. Our goods are blocked or high taxed and theirs get in free or low tax.

BS

America still makes and sells all kinds of stuff all around the world. American salesmen knock on doors everywhere in the world to sell stuff you can’t even imagine exists.

Americans are the real, the actual global force transmitting our culture and values around the globe. Most importantly, the world runs currently on American software that homogenizes the business world enabling it to function smoothly.

We have delegated the manufacture of paint brushes and ball point pens and keyboards to others so we can concentrate on more profitable and technical matters.

The problem is it is one way free trade. Our goods are blocked or high taxed and theirs get in free or low tax.

Agreed.

If you believe in free trade, be careful with the definition. An American company paying its workers $25 an hour competing with a German company paying its workers $25 an hour … that’s free trade.

But that’s not what we have now. We have Chinese companies paying their workers $2 an hour competing with American companies paying their workers $25 an hour.

That’s not free trade. It’s China turning America into its economic colony.

You make a very good point. But we need those paint brush and ball point pen factories here in America - if for no other reason than unskilled people need the work.

As it is now, we have huge numbers of people on the dole, doing nothing. Many of them just don’t have the ability to be an engineer or a dentist. But they would thrive in a factory setting. Unfortunately, there are no factories. So they just sit around. And idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

Ah, but here’s the problem. If a $2 paint brush were made in America, it would cost $8. Inflation would explode. I don’t know the solution to that. Maybe there isn’t one.

Rand Paul Advocates for Peace Through Free Trade.

If we impose the same tariffs, taxes and restrictions that foreign nations impose on us AND IN ADDITION impose on foreign nations the cost that U.S businesses and industry pays to the U.S. government, e.g., minimum wage, environmental costs, union requirements/costs, regulation costs - when these things are done, THEN we might have fair trade.

Until then, tariff foreign nations to compensate American and U.S businesses and industry for the inequities between us and our foreign competition.

Well, we tried that theory with China, and the reality is that some people can not get along no matter how hard they try. China is more than willing to steal the intellectual property of others, while satisfying labor needs through forced cheap labor. The only one that benefits from the “free trade” is China.

Again, I must remind folks here that companies do not do business to provide jobs. The only reason for the existence of any American business is to make a profit.

I know for a fact that the Italian made machines that manufactured thousands of paint brushes were shipped to China was because the Tennessee factory operating the machines could not sell the product an make a profit. The capital required to own the factory, support the administrative organization and labor force could be used elsewhere and earn a return.

Providing jobs for unskilled people is not a function of American free enterprise. Unskilled people must get off their lazy asses and develop salable skills