Free Trade vs Protectionism

[dead0man]

People that treat economics emotionally can't comprehend the subtleties of that kind of thing.

[dead0man]

I support free trade because I do not want to pay super high prices for poorly made U.A. goods. I drive a foreign car and wear foreign clothing because they are cheap and they last. Nothing made in America is worth a damn.

We still make some good stuff....especially heavy equipment and very high tech type stuff.  And the American car companies have made great strides in the last 10-20 years (still a lot of crap though).  But yeah, if you want a cheap pair of shoes or whatever (ya know, the kind of stuff regular people buy), it's generally better to go foreign.

[dead0man]

wait wait wait....chickens grown in Europe are cheaper than chickens grown in Africa?  How?  wait wait wait...that's not what you said, you said "chicken parts", I stand by my question though....how?

[dead0man]

Free trade certainly helped with other factors to kill the steel industry in Pittsburgh, which hurt our economy and our population and we didn't even begin to recover for 25 years. So, of course, I'm not going to look at unchecked free trade as a good thing.

Even if everybody else in the country was helped by it?  And anyway, history has proven again and again that cities/regions/whatever shouldn't put all their economic eggs in the same basket.