COVID-19 is the climax to this 4T

[David Horn]

(04-07-2020, 09:41 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(04-07-2020, 04:02 PM)David Horn Wrote: What may change, and must if sanity is to rule, is the practice of off-shoring critical production.  We're seeing how smart that was right now.  Trade is good; mercantilism isn't.

Certainly we should reinstate the requirement that defense goods be entirely produced domestically.  Maybe some medical goods too, but we need to change the pharmaceutical rules to prevent pharmaceutical companies from saddling Americans with 100% of the R&D costs, selling drugs overseas cheaply while keeping prices high in the US.

Not sure what that has to do with mercantilism.  Mercantilism involves keeping all production domestic, and getting only raw materials from the empire.  That's not the kind of empire the US has.

Mercantilism is also a private sector idea, where the "producer" makes all the decisions to best profit the business, and the country be damned.  In the 18th century, that was a purely domestic mandate. When the idea of optimum markets arrived, the idea morphed.  It was bad then and it's still bad today.