Quote:I've never been a fan of the "everything not mandatory is forbidden" school of policy. Dress shirts are not mandatory where I work, but most of the men wear
I never said anything about "forbidden". Wear what you can afford. If the cost of supporting American industry as opposed to groups of small children in SE Asia is that you decide to start wearing polo shirts, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
Quote:You'll have to explain Air Jordans, whatever they are.
Ludicrously expensive high-top sneakers popular starting in the 80s?
Quote:I haven't tried $20 shirts from Macy's, but based on personal experience, I know that $40 shirts sewn overseas are comparable to $200 shirts made domestically, and far superior to $90 domestic shirts.
There are costs in that $40 shirt that are not reflected in that price tag. This election was about one of them. There are others.
Quote:Edit: as someone (pbrower?) pointed out, bringing back manufacturing jobs is a generally losing proposition with limited upside, anyway.
I question his expertise in this regard. Similarly, I question the claim itself. Most of the richest countries in the world, barring a couple of entrepots and oil-producing countries, got there and stayed there through manufacturing, some of them presently with levels of automation and industrial employment higher than our own. Tariffs and import-substitution were a critical component of almost all developed countries' move up the ladder, including our own. Free trade is something most countries embrace at the top of their development, and financialization and deindustrialization has generally followed in their wake (late Victorian Britain, 18th century Holland, etc.). The claims of new jobs to replace the supposed lower-value added jobs we shed over the last 40 years are wearing a little thin.
Quote:A better path is to exploit comparative advantages that we actually do have, as with the proposed Alibaba deal.
Funnily enough, China has done quite well implementing mercantilist practices for their market, it's how they got to where they are now (employing mercantilism while the reigning hegemon practices free trade worked well for the US in the 19th and early 20th century, too). You mention comparative advantage, you might want to look up what David Ricardo actually said concerning situations where one trading partner has a consistent advantage in all or most goods, what he thought that might do to the other country, and the ridiculous thing that he thought would prevent it.