The Argument Against Absolute Free Trade

Free trade has undeniably improved the material condition of humans.  Lower barriers to trade, along with improved technological efficiency and global supply chains, fuel a robust international economy, and have accounted for untold economic growth since the end of the Second World War.

Coupled with widespread globalization and a frosty cosmopolitanism, however, free trade has reduced those humans to faceless economic inputs, cogs in a massive, borderless machine.  In such a system, are increased efficiency and cheaper knick-knacks worth the toll on national unity and spiritual growth?

The 21st century will be one in which nations will struggle increasingly with this question.  If the concept of the “nation-state” is to endure, societies that wish to maintain their traditional identities will have to pursue a measure of economic nationalism to preserve their borders, languages, and cultures.

Free trade—or at least trade with very low-level tariffs—offers the fastest route to growth for many nations, but for those that wish to maintain their industrial—and moral—cores, a degree of protectionism is prudent and necessary.  High protective tariffs, focused on key industries like steel, and targeted skillfully toward unfair trading partners, protect a nation’s working men, ensuring a stable social order, and safeguarding a country’s vital national security interests.

Targeted Protectionism Benefits American Workers

Since the disastrous Smooth-Hawley Tariff of 1930 (and the resulting retaliatory tariffs that contracted the global economy further in the dark days of the Depression), both major political parties in the United States have eschewed protective tariffs.  A cornerstone of Republican economic policy dating back to Lincoln (and to Henry Clay of the Whigs before him), tariffs lost political and economic cache to the free-trade advocates of Bretton Woods.  That order fueled a major post-war economic expansion in the United States and the world, but also left many Americans in the dust.

President Trump has brought the old argument over tariffs back to the forefront.  While running for the presidency, then-candidate Donald Trump often spoke of the “hollowing out” of America’s industrial heartland, as good wages fled abroad.  While it is only natural for large companies to maximize their profitability, the moral toll of shipping jobs overseas has been devastating.

Men who once could support themselves and their families on factory wages found themselves struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing economy.  Entire communities sank into economic and moral privation, or disappeared.  Coupled with the influx of low-paid illegal immigrants, American workers lost jobs or wages, and national wealth fled abroad.

To an extent, such disruption is the price to pay for new technology and better efficiency.  Surely, many Americans have benefitted from cheaper consumer goods.  But efficiency is a soulless god.  Could we not pay a few more dollars or cents for a washing machine, if it means keeping Americans employed and their families fed?

Some will argue that economics operates independently of national borders.  True, comparative advantage of the David Ricardo and Adam Smith school of economic philosophy does benefit trading nations, but only if such trade is fair.  American trade with Britain, for example, is trade between two nations with relatively similar legal and economic frameworks that ensure and enforce certain quality and labor standards.  As such, grommets traded for widgets between those countries should be both free and fair.

American trade with China and the Third World, on the other hand, is a far more uneven prospect.  How can American workers compete with near-slave labor in China or other Third World nations?  Perhaps American workers enjoy overly indulgent labor protections, but a nation of free workingmen that must compete with poorly paid child labor will never enjoy a fair, even footing.

A man who understood that a good wage is key to a good life.

Historical Parallel – Lincoln and Slavery

This situation was the root of Abraham Lincoln’s objection to slavery:  while Lincoln came to abhor the institution for its own social ills, he and other members of the young Republican Party primarily opposed slavery because of its deleterious effect on the wages of free workingmen.  Why pay a man a living wage when one could force a slave to work for nothing?

Further, the “wage-slave” of Northern factories—factories that were quite brutal compared to the free-labor of preindustrial America—had the prospect of earning his way to economic freedom, just as a young Lincoln had liberated himself from drudgery through work and education.

With slavery, at least, the United States could address the situation domestically, albeit violently.  How do we force Third World nations to give up slave or child labor?

The only plausible answer, at least in the short-term, is through trade protectionism.  The United States remains the largest economy in the world—and, thanks to Trump, one that is growing rapidly once again.  The sheer economic hegemony of the United States allows it to gain immensely from the judicious use of targeted protectionism.

The proposition is simple—if you want to do business with the United States on equal footing, stop putting the screws to our workers and to your own.

The Paradox of Free Trade

Aside from America’s ability to throw its weight in the global economy, there exists a moral hazard to the full-scale worship of efficiency for its own sake.

A key paradox of overly-rapid economic expansion is that material excess breeds social and cultural decadence.  As the fight for survival morphs gradually into the fight for the next iPhone, the inherent virtue instilled in men through a struggle against Nature is, at least partially, lost.  This faded virtue—a turning toward the excessive indulgence of men’s vices—is at the crux of my argument that a “New Homestead Act” would prompt the rise of a more virtuous, masculine civil society.  Striving against Nature and toward something greater than themselves and their material realm is crucial for men.

Similarly, focused protectionism could provide the economic framework in which men could sustain themselves and their families productively, while also preserving those communities ravaged by globalization’s insatiable appetite for efficiency.  A nation is more than an economy; it is a collection of people bound together by shared history, common values, and stable institutions.

Conclusion

In driving through my beloved rural South, I frequently come across small towns that cling uncertainly to life since the mills left for Mexico or Vietnam.  Perhaps these towns could innovate to attract new industry or tourism dollars, but their worn facades and decrepit main streets speak to the devastation of putting sheer efficiency ahead of human life.

While I am, ultimately, an advocate for freer trade (non-scientifically, I would say I am 85% a free trader, 15% a protectionist), Trump’s ascension has caused many Americans to reexamine the long-held orthodoxy that free trade is an unalloyed good.  The globalists’ worship of efficiency-at-all-costs has gutted American communities and deprived workingmen of, to quote Gavin McInness, their “economic libido.”

We need not abandon free trade entirely—nor would we want to do so—but targeted protective tariffs, designed to protect key industries related to national security, are a prudent step toward ensuring a fairer, freer world, and a more prosperous United States.

Read More:  The USA Needs A Trade Policy Benefiting Americans And Not Globalist Billionaires

120 thoughts on “The Argument Against Absolute Free Trade”

    1. If there were 100s (if not 100s of 1000s) of small operations buying and selling locally, then totally free trade would work.
      Five to ten big corporations running everything and then no trade will really work because there is no competition and the inevitable price fixing.

      1. The real madman marz
        My story,
        I’m a fellow white man. Blacks are low iq white men are hillbilly idiots and Asians have small peni.
        Joo’s on the other hand are wonderful business smart people that work hard make the world a better place and have large Coks.
        Anyone who criticizes the poor victim joo is just a tinfoil hat wearing loser that is clearly inferior to the master race.
        Il be back later to flood the board with more BS stories to distract and misdirect you all from real Red-pill knowledge. Especially those concerning the JQ. Oh and Detroit.

        1. Madshill
          In my day all the conspiracies surrounded the shooting of JFK by unemployed theorists like yourself.
          The J thing was sort of after my time to be honest. So I don’t know.
          I’m not even going to bother debating the J thing because if were not the ruling class the Chinese or the Brahmin would enter US society and replace them-to some degree the liberality of the J and their firm occupation of key institutions has kept the Brahmin and Chinese and Iranians or whichever corrupt members of ancient civilizations run by mercantilism and Kleptos at bay.

      2. REAL
        And start writing about how you go to the same club on Ladies night every Thursday or playing “backstroke lover” with your pornos.

        1. Wow Eminem (also from detroit same initials & always talks bout him)
          You really put me in my place, old man. But Id rather jack off to porn than have genital warts freezed offa my penis from a van buren prostitute or fight off gangs of crack smokin blacks in detroit or run away from methed out aztecs in phoenix or hide in the sewer from gooks in vietnam to avoid paying my petty debts to Bangkok Sally who can suck a golfball through a garden hose…

        2. “Old man?”
          I was born in 1974. Well you must be young.
          Anyhow, I bet you live at home and have screwed two girls in your entire 19 or 17 or 21 years on earth.
          So all of this talk about paying for sex is not relevant to you.
          You’ve never been anywhere.
          Probably not even out of your house or down the street.

        3. THE REAL
          Well what was my choice, kid?
          Sit around a city in post-industrial decline and end up 40 and still living in a trailer or shitty efficiency apartment?
          Unlike you, who is 17 or 19, my parents were not going to let me live at home forever.
          I did not have any choices that you have, like simply lying around all day in the bedroom in my parent’s house.
          Also, my city was in such a bad state of post-industrial decline that I would not have even gotten a job there.
          Because you are a teenager (Though maybe as old as 21 on a birth certificate) you would not know what it is like to move to a new city with enough money in your pocket for a month’s rent and then have to find a job.
          You live at home. Your parents will let you continue living at home. In fact, they will pass on and leave you the house and you will still live at home.

        4. (No option to reply on your most recent post so im using this one)
          Im just rippin on you cuz every friggin article you post a gauntlet of stories of the same ass sh1t! Its getting lame is all. & like EE said, its not helping anyone ‘cept for your need to pontificate and hear yourself ramble. Sounds like you have cool travels I guess, not knockin that. Just give your poor keyboard a breather maybe??

  1. Didn’t Mussolini solve the above problem?
    What about these “social credit” people, I’ve heard about them, but don’t know much. A strong society with good, competent people is far more important to me than anything else. Whatever achieves that is godly.

    1. Distributism is a concept worth examining as well. The short version is that it’s about making small, family-owned businesses the backbone of the economy again.

  2. This is why you need ‘fuck you’ money.
    They exported your job…”Fuck you!”
    The Chinese are manipulating their currency again…”Fuck you!”
    Investors making a killing say you are broke because you didn’t adapt fast enough…”Fuck you!”
    When you have ‘fuck you’ money none of this affects you. When every day is Saturday, you don’t care that the alarm on your clock made in China or Taiwan or where ever it was made doesn’t work.
    Somebody tells you get a job…”Fuck you!”
    This article is okay. I get the feeling the writer did not take much time gathering his information before writing it. That’s okay. If he doesn’t like what I write he can say to me…”Fuck you!”
    Anyway, IMHO, I find it is better to get your ‘fuck you’ money as fast as you can, decide what lifestyle you want to live, and where you want to live.
    How much will all that cost?
    For how long?
    And I see good, third world countries as legitimate options for singles and families.
    Forget free trade, tariffs, and all that. Tell Wall Street “Fuck you!”
    See you all next month gents.

    1. Great comment EE.
      I’ve started building up the FU fund at 21. A strong FU fund gives one freedom that many guys can only dream of.

      1. AutomaticSlim
        “A strong FU fund gives one freedom that many guys can only dream of.”
        And that, my friend, is what it’s all about.
        See you in June. Enjoy Memorial Day. Heading to Mexico!

        1. Edward, so we will miss you for 1+ Weeks 🤔
          But we wish you a Pleasant time @ Mexico 😀

      2. “I’ve started building up the FU fund at 21. A strong FU fund gives one freedom that many guys can only dream of.”
        You’re the best poster here

      1. JOHN
        Here’s an irony. I’m actually better off overseas than a great deal of people my age back home.
        And they never got to go anywhere.
        No messy divorce. No skirmishes with law enforcement. No blaming the J. Nothing.
        Just lived overseas and got paid okay money and fucked a bunch of hookers of various nationalities (And maybe one or two free) and traveled to some interesting places.
        What the fuck would I HAVE GOTTEN out of being in the US?
        Kids going to shitty public schools. Living in some dump one-story house with a sagging front porch made of wood going to work in the cold mornings?
        Living through the Great Recession?
        Missed out on all of it.

        1. Blaming the J when the J is to blame is honorable. Hardly compares with a messy divorce and brushes with the law, blaming the J doesn’t suck at all. Not being able to blame the J for fear of arrest, job loss, ect. does suck.

    2. Certainly. Yet, the reality here is many readers are in the midst of getting their “fuck-You” $$ plans in order and executed… before they get fucked by the random black swan event that ends up fucking them first. 9/11 really fucked up my life, and created chain of events that weren’t based on bad decisions, but rather very shitty timing. Kind of ironic the World Trade Centers are what got hit. This nation has never been the same since that occurred.

      1. G ROCK
        Expat impression.
        I left the US in the late 90’s and did not return but for a week’s business to Los Angeles.
        I was shocked out of my mind completely at how second worldish the US looked in the 8 years since I had gone overseas.

      2. G ROCK
        I saw the BEFORE and AFTER.
        In 1999 when I lived in the US there was a bit of poverty and some homelessness-the meth craze was at it height with white trash at that time-but when I came back in 2007 I was shocked at how tawdry and broke the US seemed.
        There were many more whites out on the street too.

    3. “The Chinese are manipulating their currency again”
      Learn how the Federal Reserve works…they are the real currency manipulators. China wants to protect its currency against them.
      People who repeat this and the other classic line about the “massive trade imbalance between China and the US” are ignorant.
      Wow! So a country with 80% of its population making $6 a day or less does not buy as much from the US as the US buys from them.
      Why could that be?
      Even the average Trump voter might be able to figure that one out.
      Stop whining about macroeconomic TV Republic/Democrat talking points that you have no control over and man up and take advantage of the ability to earn a living on your own terms instead of fantasizing about living in some post-World War II fantasy.

      1. “So a country with 80% of its population making $6 a day or less does not buy as much from the US as the US buys from them”
        That kind of income was common in China at least 10-12 years ago, the median is now around 400 $$ (after taxes)

        1. AJ
          At $2000 a month in the average U.S. city you would be in continual danger/annoyance that no Chinese person making $400 a month would cope with.
          Your apartment would be total shit with huge rats and the toilet flooding.
          Someone would be selling crack, junkies would be flowing in out of the building.
          The building would look and smell like shit.
          Cops who patrolled the neighborhood would be pissed off and irritated and genuinely abusive.
          Blacks or Mexicans or both would be committing crimes in the street all the time. There’d be a shooting every so often.

      2. “Wow! So a country with 80% of its population making $6 a day or less does not buy as much from the US as the US buys from them.”
        Probably because the US doesn’t make much of anything. My last purchase from the USA, Dickerson’s Witch Hazel (via IHerb). About the only item still made there. I have about 15 orders a month from China (via AliExpress), because they make everything and at great prices.

    4. The only way to get it these days is fraud / embezzlement / other less easy to pull off white collar crime but that window is closing very very quickly.
      In Europe getting fuck you money through legit work is next to impossible and a tech worker in the gay area will pay most of his earnings for a shoebox surrounded by homeless encampments.
      Not advocating getting yourself locked up, just saying…

  3. It’s kind of myoptic to hold the premise that “supporting free trade“ (meaning, you don’t want the government meddling in micromanagement specifics and burden some regulation)… Is somehow contradictory to “supporting tariffs“ (which is a foreign policy issue more than a domestic one)

  4. David Ricardo’s argument for free trade is bullshit.
    Ricardo pulled some figures out of his ass about how much labor went into producing cloth and wine in both England and Portugal, then he argued that both countries would be better off if England gave up making wine and Portugal gave up making cloth, and each traded for what the other country produced.
    Of course, this means that Portugal would have to increase wine production, which shows ignorance of how wine making works. The Portuguese would have to cultivate more land for vineyards, but where does that land come from? And what if it’s unsuitable for vineyards because of the various environmental conditions like soil quality, elevation, rainfall and so forth that the French call “terroir”?
    Also you can’t just create a new vineyard in one season. They take several years to reach their maturity and full production. So what do Portuguese workers do in the meantime for an income while they’re waiting for more wine production to become feasible?
    It’s much more likely that the Portuguese had already discovered through their own trial and error in the market process just about the right mix of uses for their land. Following Ricardo’s advice from his office in the stock exchange over in London would have made them worse off.

  5. Free trade? What free trade?
    Corporate capitalism (West) and state capitalism (East) is all we have now.
    And governments around the world are getting more and more intrusive.

    1. PZ,
      “and state capitalism (East) is all we have now.”
      You should take a look at ‘AliExpress’, thousands of Chinese selling ‘whatever’ from their apartments. ZERO state interference, I buy all my small junk from them at half the price of Amazon. This ‘big state’ nonsense is just propaganda, the East is freer now, than the West has ever been. You should take a trip out there and have a look for yourself.

      1. They are being given a temporary free pass to trade until there is substantial accumulation of wealth to grab afterwards – similar to the West just after the war.
        But the state control is being tightened as we speak – social credit system, face recognition, implants, internet trolls, self driving cars, etc, etc.
        Welcome to Brave New China!

      2. “the East is freer now,”
        Amen to that ! Not only in the 2 Asian countries I lived taxes are ridiculously low comparing to shitstain Italy ( admittedly a very modest bar to clear) but i’ve also enjoyed a sense of freedom I definitely didn’t expect in Asia.
        Nobody gives two bits of a limp fuck about my ideas and worldview, I’m respected for being an ambitious and moderately succesful foreigner who bring money into the country, nobody calls me a fascist or a capitalist pig because of my job, nobody takes out their frustrations on me (specifically being stuck at 35-40-45 with a crap job paying 1200-1400 euros a month after taxes, an all too familiar scenario in Shitaly), nobody cares if I use or not racial slurs in my everyday convos, nobody cares if me and wife like the occasional 3way once in a while etc.
        Asia is the land of opportunities and the land of I don’t give a fuck about anything except money, sometimes it can be frustating but for the most part it’s positively refreshing…
        Fuck the West and all the scummy, pathetic, semi-commie (including a lot of pseudo-right wingers) dumbasses living in it.
        I’m 1/4 ((())) so before you might think I’m anti-white or anything: fuck the Joos and their idiotic lunacy too. High verbal IQ my ass, I grew up around every kind of conceivable Levantine crap in Italy and I want nothing of it anymore, madman said he would be suicidal if he had to go back to the US, I fell the same about my native country.
        Asia saved my life

        1. AJ
          I see white women in Asia and think “In the US I would be thirsty enough to fuck her” whereas here I’d cross the street to get away from their bony, pale, tattooed asses. Italian Etruscan women are a little more hot than the average Anglo woman but in general in Asia when I see a white woman I think “There was a time when I used to fuck goats like that.”
          I work in my field overseas, not that my what I do is impressive. In the US I don’t know that I would ever have been employed in my actual degree. So what is left is doing some job that you hate to pay the rent-fine if it pays well, but when it is a shit job and you never get any experience in your field because nobody ever hired you one day you wake up at 45 and wonder where your life went.
          Do these guys think being Jewish is really just an instant security code to cash? Like you shove your J ID into the ATM and it simply starts shitting out money?
          They’ve never seen Jewish drug addicts pleading with the Rabbi to be let into a Temple on a freezing cold night and the Rabbi steps around them in disgust.

        2. Fuck the J*ws and their lunacy
          The rich Jews actually do greatest harm to the Rosanne types that are not as successful and have to live in “integrated cities” of the US or some Paris suburb.
          They get it the absolute worst of any of the whites because they have to live in inner-cities.
          Also, it says something that US cities are so bad that people want to move to a Levantine second world country just because it is that bad for working-class J in the US.

  6. It’s ok, a more involving command economy like we had in WWII is the key to success. During those good old days we sent all industry titans to Washington to run the country straight out of DC in close collaboration with the government.
    We put the depression behind us, won a world war, and started a new era.
    Nuff said

    1. It was also unsustainable, so we had to naturally move away from that. War Economies are very expensive and typically result in lots of debt. It did create a lot of innovation, and many new industries/companies were formed from it which helped the economy down the road.

      1. We still have a command economy, and never did we stop having one.
        The Pentagon is essentially the centralized planning bureaucracy–a place where industry and government meet to plan out our economic future.
        Military “defence” is just a very distant secondary consideration. It’s all the commercial spin offs which are the life blood of our economy. Whether or not the F-35 actually works is irrelevant, but you got as many corporate interests as possible digging into that tax-payer funded free pie of innovation.
        This military industrial complex gave us things like computers (good luck getting a myopic corporation to fund that R&D), internet, lasers, GPS, and many other things which give the US a competitive edge.
        It’s also why we need to be having constant war all the fucking time. The politicians will read their cheesy scripts, the soldiers will invade, and Clint Eastwood will film some heroic epic about it. But behind the scenes this war fuels and gives structure to our economy.
        Without it we’d be more like Bulgaria.

        1. JOHN
          Bush plunged the US straight into the shitter with the cost of the US military budget.
          I left in 1999 and when I returned in 2007 I was surprised how worn out and half-Second World the streets looked. The infrastructure was aging.
          The 90’s was a much more prosperous time in the US than the 2000’s and this is not really Clinton, who was a Junior Jimmy Carter, but because there was no war between the Fall of the Wall and World Trade Center to even justify military expense on and Somalia and Haiti were skirmishes that went so badly that the US public just did not want to think about non-domestic affairs anymore.
          The War in Iraq more or less bankrupted the US and the one in Afghanistan that has now been going on for nearly 17 years has continued to keep the US surplus in the Red.
          You Gen Y dickheads on this site were sitting in a corner playing with Barney the Dinosaur in the 90’s in preschool while your Dad watched X-Files so you would not remember this I am sure.
          Laden actually succeeded in putting the US into the red with a few box cutters, $20,000 in pilot’s lessons and some airline tickets.
          He knew Bush was a moron who would attempt to use it ultimately as an excuse to try and suck oil out of Iraq and piss away the surplus budget the US had managed to aggregate during the Clinton Era.
          It worked.

        2. While some of the people here will blame the J this could be one reason why as a last resort to take Iran off the map between Europe and China that the old landlord pulled out of the Iran deal.
          You cannot bomb free trade agreements and obviously everything East of the Prague will turn to China.

        3. You had plenty of wars happening in the 90s.
          Bombing Iraq still, Somalia, the Balkans…
          Clinton was more discreet about it, and war was one area where he actually managed to be discreet, unlike other things.
          Just coz I’m young doesn’t automatically invalidate what I bring to the table. What sort of pseudo-intellectual reasoning is that?
          9/11 was an obvious government conspiracy, oddly enough predicted by the stupidly-named (((Project for the New American Century))) think tank.

        4. JOHN
          Let a guy who was born in 1974 tell you how it actually was, since your 1960’s born parents were doubtlessly playing you Barnie the Purple Dinosaur cartoons back then.
          “Somalia” lasted 2 weeks. This was because the US public was tired of wars abroad after Gulf War 1 and had voted for Clinton as a result. In any even Black Hawk Down was a humiliation. About 10 soldiers died.
          “Balkans”
          I was actually IN the Michigan National Guard Reserves at this time and your parents were putting you in bed so they could watch X-Files.
          Peace-keeping troops did get sent to Former Yugoslavia but there were few casualties and this was because the Serbs did not want a full-scale Allied invasion. There were almost no casualties in Former Yugoslavia.
          Iraq was bombed once or twice. No casualties at all.
          In the Clinton era altogether I’d be surprised of 50 soldiers were KIA.
          This was because the US public was sick of the bankruptcy that inevitably accompanies a Republic Administration run by someone named Bush and once the Cold War ended the public was just tired of interventionist policy.

        5. JOHN
          9-11 was an obvious conspiracy…
          Clinton was simply lackadaisical about Al Quaeda.
          Clinton was dealing with Ken Starr and all the rest of it and the public at that time would not have been interested in invading Afghanistan.
          During the distractions of Yugoslavia and Somalia and Haiti Laden was simply able to organize.
          That is the non-conspiratorial viewpoint.
          Do I believe Bush invaded Iraq for oil? Sure, everyone does.

        6. KIETH
          Canada would have had to fairly brutally enforce border security if US did not exist because Mexicans would love to enjoy their social safety net. In fact they do. Canada makes it well-nigh impossible for Mexicans to enter.
          Korea? Japan? Well China would disagree with about what Japan did during the Cold War.

        7. KEITH
          You’re a middle-class white guy who knows nothing about the US prison system.
          Put Korean, Japanese and Chinese run-of-the-mill gang members in a jail cell. The US has to segregate Asian street gangs.
          A Filipino friend of mine was insulted by a Korean gas station owner when he was in Los Angeles.
          He beat the man up at the pump and then urinated on him which led to a short stint of some weeks in LA county.
          He tried to hang around the Chinese gang members and they beat him up. Eventually, he managed to fit in with the Mexicans (Culturally more similar to the Filipinos than any Asian race).
          But he told me that LA country then was a non-stop gang war between Japanese, Korean, Chinese street gang members.
          This gets little reportage.

        8. Canadian Immigration is totally strict on Mexicans. They don’t have an immigration problem they don’t want with Latin America.
          As for Japanese brutality, the Chinese seem to accuse of them of it.

        9. Keith,
          East Asian governments have huge ministries for economic planning. Their governments just invest directly into the economy according to careful planning and forecasting with the private sector.
          They bypass military investment and it makes their economies more efficient and dynamic.
          However, the US military industrial complex provides a special benefit; global military supremacy.
          And about Canada… lol who cares about a leaf?

    2. JOHN
      This was true to a degree with Dow Jones and some of the other manufacturing giants.
      But not really after World War II.

  7. From my read of history Free Trade has been debated and rejected by every generation since Cyrus the Great. Yes, free trade does make commodities and goods cheaper but the trade off is a nation’s independence and by extension a corresponding loss in the said nation’s moral character. In addition, the winner in the free trade wars are not the nations that make the best and most efficient goods but the nation with the deepest credit markets. However, fools love the word “Free”…

    1. Free trade works best when a country is already self-sufficient and doesn’t exceed incredibly past it’s use of goods and services domestically available. For instance, oil wars. People are incredibly wasteful of everything now. I see bitches leaving their cars running the entire time they’re in the grocery store w/V8 engines… in warm weather, for what? To keep the fucking cars cool? In the 80s and 90s you’d have another citizen bitching that person out for being so wasteful and causing extra air pollution. The gluttony free trade has enabled is a definite downside. The key is learning survival and living with amenities beneath gluttonous demands. It’s to live abundantly, but another to live – en masse – gluttonous.

      1. G ROCK
        “Oil Wars”
        The price of oil increased by 5 x during the Bush admin because of the Iraq War. So if that war was “for oil” it failed miserably.
        I was in Dubai during the Iraq War and knew a few oil contractors there and that industry never got off the ground-it probably never will.
        We got better prices with Saddam running the place.

        1. > implying an oil war would be for your benefit.
          As you said, under Bush oil prices increased.
          The oil interests got what they wanted.
          Mission accomplished.

        2. JOHN
          “Mission accomplished”
          I came back to the US after leaving at the tail-end of the Clinton era.
          And indeed while the “interests” might have profited from the way the US overall had slid straight into 2 world shabbiness.
          So if anything, this dissolved the middle-class entirely.

        3. I don’t dispute that.
          But the middle class was always expendable.
          I think that overrated cynic George Carlin put it best when he said something about America being purely run for the benefit of the people who own it.

  8. Free trade – means the factory owner can use slave labor in another country.
    And then import without import duty…
    win win for them.
    There has laws been import duty of some kind.
    Income tax – mostly 100 years…
    Although I banged a few women last week – they are older -they were fun – and they were enthusiastic and skinny – but….
    Really want to break out of this matrix. Have been watching videos of gogo bars in Pattaya today – specifically Saphire

    – Like amercian strip clubs – but with takeaway service…and much cheaper venues/options…
    Fuck you fund needs to be high

      1. AUTOMATIC
        Don’t mess with the bar girls if you do not have to.
        Look for the freelancers.
        By the way for a brief encounter $50 is a bit expensive.
        I’d say $30 is fairer.

    1. Sapphire is extremely overpriced.
      Plenty of places with nicer looking girls and better prices.
      You can do ‘take out’ all over Asia (Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam).
      My last ‘take out’ was my waitress from my local restaurant in Saigon.
      Even 7-11 staff are available for ‘take out’.

      1. JOHN
        I would not bar fine girls in these Pattaya bars. They’re the most hardened whores of the bunch.
        I use “free lancers”
        Now granted you have to have a discerning eye with the free lancers.

    2. It’s high quality video of a typical Pattaya gogo venue.
      Great contrast to the fucked up situation in the west.
      As I said there are “much cheaper venues/options” as well…
      Basically, IMO in order of cost and quality:
      Massage – and anything else you want.
      Beer Bars – cheaper – sporadic young sweeties – but mostly oldies IMO
      GogoBars – loaded with higher end women.
      Nightclubs – full of Freelancers – some actual freelancers, but also mostly massage/beerbar/gogo workers after finishing up a few customers…
      All good for different reasons and cost benefit analysis./
      Last time I was in Phuket in December I did mostly massage girls – if she was cute – I would go in and get the full service. Didn’t go out at night too much at all, was not in the mood…No matter what, takes time, and effort, and dodging bullshit.
      Other trips I would get freelancers from Nightclubs – however inside is dark and loud – and I cannot see or hear…So I camp out at the entrance and poach them on the way in…my preferred method.
      But, all depends on time and experience and patience to walk around…
      Gogos have the option of plenty of attractive women ready to go and fun atmosphere -but, expensive…and hassles with ladies drinks etc…and many of them are far too experienced and only good at ceiling fan inspections, and extracting Baht.
      I spent most nights of last trip with simple, sweet, little massage girl…
      A place such as Pattaya has dozens of each type of venue within a small walkable area – literally thousands of women… it’s all good…
      In any case minimum $30 – $50 for a night with a sweetie – and much more for capricious, mercurial, mercenary showgirl….who will most likely want only short time – if you are lucky…I reckon there are more lucrative cons available with girl drinks etc. that soon she will have no incentive to leave at all…
      try them all at different times of the night…

      1. @ JD
        $5o/hr?
        Is that what you previously quoted?
        Damn near free as far as I am concerned.

        1. AUTOMATIC
          $50 will more or less buy you the night.
          But beware it adds up. Most hardcore whoremongers in Asia use at least one $50 a day so that is a $50 habit + the associated alcohol (Which is not much).
          If you are going to be a whoremonger in Asia you should read my posts.
          I am a man who can impart great wisdom on the subject.

        1. Yeah, you liked it too, didn’t you?
          You liked that cock up your butt, didn’t you?
          I bet it gave you a big old boner…gay.

    1. CAPTAIN
      In Southeast Asia it is better to use the freelancers. These are the most hardened hookers with penis-breath.
      The average free lancer does not fuck 3 guys EVERY DAY.
      I’m more discerning.

  9. It is all about trade specialization, this is ECO 101. If trade specialization benefits both nations than it is great. Usually trade specialization revolves around geologically and environmentally control industries, like mining and food. Trade specialization can also revolve around niche industries, like Japan’s semiconductor industry or whatever. THE PROBLEM is when you have nations with BILLIONS of poor willing to work 6 days a week for slave wages, while also having hardly any regulations regarding the environment or worker safety, then free trade becomes bullshit. Tariffs need to be based on making the playing field fair. If our industries have to abide by environmental regulations and worker safety laws than the people we “free trade” with should as well, or they get a tariff that just tries to compensate for it. That is it. Every nation should try to be as self sufficient as possible. Self sufficiency also increases innovation and makes your country stronger in the long run, it also keeps the globalist lobbying at bay (since our economies don’t become economically addicted to international trade). Before ww2 and even during ww1, resource poor Germany wanted to become as self sufficient as possible and they invented many technologies that are not only better than the alternative, but are still widely used today. Synthetic rubber was produced because rubber imports became less accessible. The synthetic nitrogen fixation process (Haber process) was invented to make gunpowder and explosives without the need for mining saltpeter, and it is extensively used in fertilizer manufacturing to this day. So, placing incentives on self sufficiency can go a long way. Don’t let libertarians convince you that “free trade” is always good.

    1. Free trade doesn’t make things more efficient either. In many ways it allows companies to take the easy way out of innovation by using cheaper labor instead of building better factories and more efficient processes.

    2. WES
      The problem with free trade and specialization is two-fold-
      The highly-skilled intellectual labor goes overseas. Indian engineers will work for $20 a day.
      The low-killed GED labor will also go overseas.
      Visit areas of the rust belt or US interior-all that is left are the jobs requiring physical capitol. Like cops, plumbers, electricians. Anything that requires the person to be there that day.
      Then, in addition to this, the US has a third-world country on its Southern Border. So the low-paying service sector jobs go.

    3. WES
      No the big problem, which happened in your lifetime, was the internet.
      This split off the intellectual labor from the physical so that engineer and other jobs went overseas as well as the factory jobs.
      The only thing remaining are the physical labor jobs that are skilled.
      That is one reason the US is a “police state”. Many people have no options but to become police officers because it is job that cannot be outsourced.
      Worse yet, the remaining service-sector is flooded with Indians from below the Rio Grande fleeing the “white Supremacy” of Latin America where 5 or 10 European Spanish families own everything.
      So there are not even service-sector jobs to do.
      Mexicans send all their money home (As do Filipinos, Indians in the tech sector etc) so there is not even the money in the economy that local American workers would spend.
      As a result of globalization + immigration = less money in the local economy you are then left with a consumer society whose citizens produce nothing.

      1. MM,
        “That is one reason the US is a “police state”. Many people have no options but to become police officers because it is job that cannot be outsourced.”
        ………. and military.

        1. JOHN
          Friend Mark, one example-
          My friend Mark was a graphic arts student whose roommate in Arts College was selling cocaine out of their dormitory.
          He was busted, only 18.
          His Dad intervened and convinced the judge to let his son join the Marines.
          Mark was a probationary Marine which meant, in effect, that he ended up in the worst infantry tour of duty patrolling the Kuwait oil fires.
          Finally, his tour of duty completed he was off probation and after 3 years he was out of the Marines.
          When I met Mark in 1994 he was 25 and looked 50.
          He would trudge back and forth to the VA clinic trying to get treatment for the oil fires and chemical warfare that injured him.
          Then, and this funny, he was caught with a bag of marijuana by a cop.
          He had gone back to smoking pot to cope with the pain of his health and a cop who had probably spent the Gulf War writing speeding tickets busted him for pot.
          Mark never got anything out of his service actually. I’m not sure he even received benefits because there was no missing limbs. The health damage was internal.

        2. JOHN
          Mark had the misfortune to have a roommate busted for selling drugs in his dormitory like 2 years before the Gulf War.
          Under US laws, the fact that Mark was the kid’s roommate meant he was staring at prison under the drug laws.
          Mark’s Dad, apparently a friend of the judge, managed to convince him to let Mark join the Marines as a “probationary Marine” which meant that if he fucked up he went to prison.
          It also meant that Mark was going into infantry recon because this was a shit dangerous division that no recruit would volunteer for at all.
          He ended up putting out the chemical fires in Kuwait and getting neurological damage.
          I met Mark because he had started smoking marijuana to cope with the health problems he had. He was 25 in 1995 and looked 50.
          At first he would go to the VA hospital but they did not want to acknowledge the neurological damage done by exposure to chemicals in Kuwait publicly because the amount of money required to treat soldiers would have been a fiscal disaster. Also, the damage was kind of on the border of disabling.
          Anyhow Mark just gave up going down to the VA hospital altogether and smoked weed after that.
          Then, and imagine this, a cop busted him for 5 grams.
          Because of his previous record of arrest at 18, some seven years earlier and the seriousness of that charge, Mark went to jail for a bag of marijuana he was smoking for legitimate medical reasons.

        3. JOHN
          87%
          I joined the Michigan National Guard Reserve 1st infantry division to make some college money and for something to do.
          I’d always known I was half-deaf in my right ear but I got past the physical. However, what got me discharged was a heart murmur at which time the doctor discovered I’d been LYING about being half-deaf in my right ear and as a result I received a General Discharge instead of an honorable one. I could have faced felony charges for lying to the government.
          Another guy in my same platoon lied about never seeing a psychiatrist-he was a squad leader, too. He had seen on during his parent’s divorce at 13 and he got kicked out too on a general.
          But what is funny is my entire platoon division went to Former Yugoslavia as “Peacekeepers” when Blair and Clinton decided, ironically now, that something had to be done for the Muslims.
          Again, they were exposed to chemical warfare because retreating forces will always set everything potentially toxic in flames and everyone single one of them came back with respiratory problems.
          So I was glad to have sat that one out although a “General” is not a good thing to have on you record because it is less than honorable in the US.

        4. JOHN
          Claire & Becky RIP
          I knew Claire and Becky in college. They were both cocaine whores who were of recruitment age when the US military started accepting women.
          Claire was the saddest story, I think.
          Her father had been a professor at the university I attended and she began moving in student circles at 15 smoking pot. She graduated to cocaine at some point in high school and had a child by 18 with a dealer. When I knew her she was a waitress of 20.
          One day, a bunch of the male lowlifes that orbited her apartment using coke came in and gang-raped her. They knew with all the cocaine present that she would not call the police and so while she was not harmed they simply held her down under the influence of cocaine and rammed penises into her bodily orifices. I know this because she was glumly sitting outside afterwords and told me she had just been raped.
          A guy named Jason was a college student who became an informer around our campus after HE was busted selling pot and began busting the local druggies.
          I was graduated and then and moved to Arizona.
          Claire, however, went into the recruiter and joined the army.
          “That’s all she could do,” a mutual acquaintance would tell me when I rung up from Dubai 2 years later curious about who had gone on to do what.
          I later got a memorial e mail telling me Claire had been killed in Iraq.

        5. MARK
          “Becky’s Story”
          I knew Becky in college and she was another cocaine whore. She had been a cheerful pot-smoking hippie girl that we all know in college until a Frat guy laid some cocaine on her.
          I don’t what it is about cocaine. I don’t really get into it but some people are slaves after the first whiff.
          Becky went downhill real, real fast. She dropped out of college.
          One day I went to my college dealer Chad to see if he had any pot and he told me that Becky might have some.
          “But careful, she’s a real coke whore,” he told me. I went over to her apartment and there were real lowlifes there and I bought my bag of dope and left.
          Later, another girl who’d worked as a waitress with her told me that Becky had hooked up with some Mexicans and been busted riding in Texas in a stolen car and jailed there.
          She was 21 then.
          Somehow, again, she convinced the judge to let her join the army.
          I don’t know what happened to her.

  10. Don’t fall for the free trade bullshit. In Australia they have been pro free trade for the last 40 years. In that time it has virtually destroyed our manufacturing base, and given it to countries that still subsidize/protect their own industries. Even so called home grown industries have gone off shore for cheaper labour, non existant work benefits ,health, and superannuation. The products come back a little cheaper, but most name brands are still the same price high as they were before they went offshore, because the market is used to paying a high price.
    In regard to farming. A free trade approach directs the farmers focus on export rather than servicing your local community. Overseas buyers get the premium produce and locals get the second rate stuff.

    1. WILLIAM
      Blame the US.
      Vietnam war firstly caused an enormous refugee migration to Australia. Secondly, it opened Australia up to the heroin markets and opened the door to the Vietnamese mafia. Thirdly it brought cheap labor flooding into Australia.
      The US was responsible for that war but apart from some fisherman in Texas the Vietnamese did not really do much to the US. It was Australia that soaked up the pure results of that Vietnam war.
      Australia was always so close to Indonesia and other Southeast Asian labor pools that certain outsourcing was going to happen unless the government made it punishable by death.
      There was no way it could not happen.

        1. WILLIAM
          Let us be fair in saying that the Italians and Greeks were always going to have some organized crime in Melbourne and of course the Bulgarians and Lebanese too.
          But Australia would get the ripple-effect over 20 years.
          “Romper Stomper” took place in the early 90’s.
          The same thing happened in Europe with the refugee crisis.
          The US by dint of proximity did not really get impacted-it is hard for refugees to sail the Atlantic and Vietnamese cannot get to the US although a few of them.
          I’d also say Trump was a great deal like Paula except Paula had nowhere to go in Australian politics because she lacked the money and you have a parliament that was never going to let somebody buy their way into office.

    1. I would try reporting it to the police at Punta Cana. I doubt the Durham police have jurisdiction over incidents happening in the Dominican Republic.

    2. I don’t really understand you Christine, you were raped in your Cunta Puta, or you Arsa Canalla?
      Did by chance you orgasm, as I hear that can be quite common in rape victums?

      1. WILLIAM
        Not unless it was blacks on the down-low.
        These younger posters are sad young men with no jobs and no prospects and nothing to do outside their basement so they go slowly nuts in front of the computer screen.
        What you are reading is that generation that can literally do nothing in a Free Trade Corporate controlled market. They cannot get a job. They cannot get laid. They cannot leave home. They cannot afford a car. They literally can do nothing but troll sites like this and elicit the sympathy of middle-aged men like me who shudder with relief that we came of age at a time when it was still possible for a young man to simply leave home and do what he wanted.
        These guys are the same age as I was when I moved to Dubai-about 25. But they have never been anywhere or lived outside their parent’s residence.
        Also, many of them were raised by divorced slutty-acting mothers so they are searching for some substitute paternal approval from other males.
        The come on this site for Freudian reasons. They grew up without a male in the home and need some masculine role-model interaction.

  11. Somethng the small government, libertarian/conservative crowd forgets is that the surplus dollars accumulated by foreign nations with whom we run a trade deficit are usually invested in US Treasury bonds. In other words, the trade deficit finances the big government they detest so much.

  12. One argument that libertarians often make to defend trade deficits arising from free trade is to point out that everyone runs a “trade deficit”with their grocery store. While that is true, it is only possible because you run a “trade surplus” with your employer.

    1. JOHN
      I’m the American here to give you the rundown on the reality-I grew up in the Rust belt and spent some time in the military albeit the National Guard reserves which active duty veterans here will scoff at.
      But I know. I know the truth about the downside of US life in capitalism’s dank basement.
      And the funny thing is that I am not from the ghetto. My father was a biologist and my mother worked in construction. So I was not deprived. But the reality of the US is the rust belt. I know it because I got a degree that was worthless and rather redundant.
      I’m always talking about blacks and Mestizos but they are probably some of the worst people on earth. You have to get away from them or you will be a victim. Your Jamaicans are a fucking joke compared to a US ghetto black and so are South Asians who imitate Eminem who is a white boy imitating Mexicans.
      I know the real deal. My parents divorced and I was in the US wasteland of working middle class transient labor pool by 23.
      Don’t believe these assholes. The Americans who know the real deal are the ones like me who never had any attachment to mainstream society-rust-belt refugees whose parents divorced who came of age in post-industrial cities and actually lived in efficiency apartments where black pimps are trying to push stables of white trash whores on their neighbors and Mexican psychopathic jailbirds kill or die on impulse and increment.
      If I put you, Dodds, on the street with the sort of money that the average working class white can earn in any US city you would fast realize just how dangerous it is.
      Every account I give here is absolutely true. These other Americans have not lived. They were either fortunate enough to be born in small US towns with no crime or rough element to a Dad who owned a local business or they are so uneducated that they unblinkingly believe that their situation is the best in the world even if they are 60 and live in the ghetto with 30 year old bosses on crack barking orders at them whose Dad owns the company.
      But what I say here is the truth.
      There are reasons that I don’t want to live in America.

  13. SOME ECONOMIC GENIUS HELP ME HERE
    America was not a perfect place in the 1990’s. Not by a long shot.
    But why was the economy SO MUCH BETTER then than now?
    Why has the middle class shrunk by 50%?
    Why is their so much homelessness in the United States?
    Why is crime a problem now more than in the 1990’s?

  14. QUESTION
    Everyone here goes on about Clinton, who was really just a sleazy cocaine-sniffing pussy hound.
    Yet why was the middle-class so much better off in the 1990’s?
    I have not BEEN in the United States, barring maybe one week in 2007, in nineteen years.
    But when I left in 1999 things were fairly okay for the white middle class.
    Sure, crystal meth was still doing its little number on the stupid white trash because mini-thins were available and the blacks were still going crazy on crack but in general life was like a Walker episode for the average middle class American.
    I mean watch old episodes of the Sopranos. They lived in a McMansion. Or Beavis & Butthead episodes. Those kids were not living in absolute poverty. They even held jobs at age 15.
    What happened to cause the United States to disintegrate.
    Now don’t get me wrong. There were places in the US that looked like a third world country in the 1990’s.
    And there were Cholos back then as well.
    But today the problems with Mestizo crime seem much worse and white people who in 1999 would have been living in relative middle-class comfort are now on the verge of being homeless.
    What happened to the US.
    Since all you guys WERE THERE and came of age when I was already gone, pray tell?

    1. BIG QUESTION: BEGGING A RESPONSE
      Why was life so much better in the 1990’s?
      Okay, it was far from perfect.
      But watch an old episode of FRIENDS. Young people were able to live in decent apartments, not at home. Even Ethan Hawke, in REALITY BITES, who had no real job, or Brad Pitt’s stoner character in TRUE ROMANCE, were NOT LIVING AT HOME AT AGE 23!
      I mean do tell.
      President Clinton was a sleazy, lying, cocaine-addicted pussyhound who serviced the mouths of J sluts. We know that.
      Yet, he did not run the country INTO THE GROUND.
      Why was it when I came back in 2007 the infrastructure was so shitty, there were more homeless white proles without a single prayer of not being homeless, more blacks were in the street behaving ominously etc.
      Now don’t get me wrong. The 90’s were not a great time to be young. I’d say that was the eighties.
      But the US seems much more bankrupt, second-world and with a vanishing middle-class than did the 1990’s.
      Let us look at the old television shows. Meadow Soprano would not be living in McMansion and I suspect that Anthony would really be little more than homeless.
      Why are 25 year old males living at home today and they were not in 1994. Even though unlike Ethan Hawke or Brad Pitt they are not just jobless potheads who cannot put the bong down or take a bath in order to get a white-collar cubicle job and making a statement of sorts?
      Some genius on this website with the answer who is always talking about old Lady Macbeth “Killary” explain why, when her sleazy husband was getting sucked off in the Oval Office the economy was better and so was the infrastructure and the middle-class was enjoying an opulence unseen since.
      If you look at the middle-class back in 1995 just about every young person could have a house, a nice car, a job, a leather couch.
      Now they live in mother’s basement.
      This did not quite apply to me. I had a rough start to adulthood, what with the divorce and our parents house being sold and me being on my own.
      But in general, middle class was better in the 1990’s/

      1. AUTOMATIC
        The FU Guide to Mongering
        SPAIN
        The girls in Madrid take it up the ass. Ordinarily I don’t get into anal but to be honest they do it quite well and is part of the price. Forty Euros.
        Its the only place worth going in Europe.
        AMSTERDAM
        I used to frequent whores back when they were South American Indians and Asian but now apparently the gypsies replaced them. So I’d avoid it.
        DUBAI
        Dubai is an excellent destination for prostitutes.
        I got heavy into the Middle Eastern women here and for 50 dollars Iranian and Turk women are available.
        However, these whores are Muslim so no blowjobs.
        Also Chinese women are available. African women to.
        SOUTH ASIA
        There are some entertainingly sick Indian girls. Goa is the best, I’d avoid the Red Light areas.
        Vasco beach for $30.
        Punjabi girls are the call girls too. They are available at 100 dollars a throw.
        I’d say India is the cheapest place for whoremongers just because the hotel and shit costs nothing.
        SOUTHEAST ASIA
        We’ve gone over this ad nausea.

  15. F.U. Warnings & Dangers
    I’d avoid the African prostitutes.
    They are riddled with HIV. Even if you use a rubber and come in their mouths it is risky.
    Also, they are really bad tempered, a great deal of them.

  16. Public Service Announcement
    I come to this site to talk to other men such as Mr. Dodds and Automatic and Edward who are adults who do not live at home with their mother.
    The teenagers here have no business communicating with men. You are virgins who live at home and even if some of you are 19 or 20 on birth certificate you have no business communicating with men who have had careers and lived overseas and passed the stage of wanking in their bedroom with the door locked so their mothers do not walk in.
    When you leave your homes that you were born in and travel to other cities or countries to hold a job and can actually put your penis in a woman instead of jerking off to porn then you can talk to men.
    I may be an old man at 44, by the way, but by 25 I was not still living in the home I was born in.

    1. The truth does not fear investigation.
      If ur scared of what a bunch of manchilds have to say, then what does that say about you?
      Judging an argument according to some person’s character is the very definition of the ad hominem. It’s what women do.
      Men deal with substance and principles, not petty bullshit like style and personality.
      You do not think like a man.

  17. Free Trade & Iran
    Was Trump withdrawing from Iran on the grounds of some lunatic fringe of J neocons in New York or was he trying to prevent the inevitable trade between China and Europe that would result from such an agreement taking place?
    Was it a Z puppeteer or a last-gasp by Republicans to try to slow trade down from Eastern Europe clear to Beijing?
    Admittedly Iran has been funding a war in Yemen, a godforsaken country I once visited, and Saudi has been pressuring Israel to back their play because they have been fighting this war.
    But possibly, the real motivation for withdrawing was one that white Republicans might have liked. The fact that China was prepared to turn Iran into part of transnational highway to the heart of European consumers at which point the US would be well and truly screwed.

  18. Nice article. And I believe it’s articles like this that triggered the campaign against this site and it’s owner. If this site is to blossom, we need more grown-up stuff.

  19. Free trade won’t work. Why? The same reason why a ‘free society’ won’t work or other concepts of being ‘free’, like open borders.
    The moment you have a free society all the retards get a free pass to do their degenerate stuff and will fuck up society as a whole. Just look at Western countries.
    The moment you have open borders all the parasites of the world will come to your country to leech from the benefits they can have. Especially if the country has welfare. Just look at Western countries.
    Free trade is more complex. It’s goal was to let the market forces decide what happens and that countries should focus on the things they are good at. This won’t work, because some countries have nothing special to offer, which means they can’t compete with other countries. Also, people are greedy as fuck, so they will turn to slavery, child labour etc. to compete in the free markets.

  20. Free Trade with any nation that doesn’t have Free Trade reciprocity
    is not considered Free Trade, but subterfuge.

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