Trade Wars

Robert Reich makes a lot of sense in this Piece, but of course, I must tear it apart. The American trade deficit will never close under present policies, and will only widen with volume increase. He is only partially correct in his estimate of the loss of Jobs through trade, this coming only under conditions of a widening trade imbalance; still, refer to the previous comment. He does not recognize that current economic policy is specifically directed to switching American Imports from Consumer Goods to Industrial Supplies. This does have the prospect of increasing Business Profits, but only at the Cost of Income levels to Consumers. Robert goes back to the traditional Smoot-Hawley Act to defend Trade policy, an aged economic argument, while actual economic conditions have almost totally reversed. I will not explain the convoluted argument here, but a Tariff War would be a benefit to the American economy, lessen the power of the great International corporations. Trade wars do not always damage everyone, especially when started at high levels of economic development.

I find myself now stuck with explaining the obtuse economic argument that I tried to avoid in the paragraph above. I might as well explain it in terms of the American economy. We have now reached an economic plateau where technological development will not engender greater employment. Mechanized Production has already been introduced, and Software has been developed to a level where new Programming is simply a process of component implant. Energy development will never occur at Present, solely due to the lack of financial funding on a scale leading to massive deployment of labor and resource; in actuality, there must be a Trade War in order to achieve this deployment. The entire Business trend in place ensures that programmed mechanical Production displaces labor faster than any increase in Production could employ additional labor; there being real reasons why Production would not increase in volume even for added Trade (the increase of real Training Costs alter the competitive nature of Trade Provision), if Business has to resort to Hiring additional labor.

A Trade War breaks this planned Schedule of reducing labor roles in Production. It insists on the adoption of alternate options to obtain Product previously supplied by an interrupted Trade. It basically alters the flow of capital formation, and actually increases the volume of that Investment. Additional labor of different, more vibrant Skill levels are required at such times, and urbanization spreads to rural areas; Population concentrations start to disperse, and less Call for government services occur, as qualified applicants decrease in number while under movement. The switch in tax base insists upon disturbance of Tax Impact, and codified Tax rates are broken up with the actuality of higher tax impositions implicit under the economic conditions generated. Trade wars, therefore, themselves potentially generate a technological reform, one which re-employs a currently wasted Skilled Labor. Economists would avoid all this through lack of evaluation of the effects of Trade wars, but it is now Time to search for new Answers. lgl