I am right behind fracking, as you know

However, the free trade rules allowed manufacturers and others to move their work abroad. Not only has this impoverished Western workers, but it has led to other problems. For example, there have been instances of bank frauds performed by workers in India that process bank accounts. The problem is the vast difference between the money they earn and the money they see in the bank accounts the process.
Ideally it would be nice to see a lot less trade, with companies serving the countries in which they are situated. I think the global scale of many operations may just be too large and unstable.
Do you think this would improve things European countries ie Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Greece etc.? What about agricultural products (fruits and vegetables)? Automobiles? You can admit exceptions but I think if you went through everything you will have a much shorter list of non-imports than allowed imports.
Where do you draw the lines? Would things be better in the US if each state didn't trade with other states in the US? European countries formed an economic union for a reason. Is it harmful to grow economic regions beyond a certain size? How big is too big?
My view is that if you limited exports and lost the economies of scale that, for example, make it much cheaper per car to produce 1,000,000 cars than 10,000 cars everything would be more expensive and that would hurt the poor hardest. And a company that makes 10,000 cars has fewer employees than one that makes 1,000,000 cars.
The problem is that while average wealth may be rising, some people are doing terribly out of the present system, and that needs fixing. For example, there are people doing two or even three cleaning jobs.
True, but this is in countries with low economic growth due to government policy. Trump has cut business taxes and regulations a well known and simple recipe for increasing economic growth and unemployment is at historic lows and wages are up here. If government would get out of the way, human ingenuity and energy would raise everyone's standard of living.
If the public wants big government and the resulting slow economic growth, and then they want to compensate by restricting imports, that is their choice. I think people should live under the systems they prefer. But I think their standard of living would be much lower and the poor would be worse off.
Well that sounds fine until you think about loans being made to people to buy things with the near certaintity that the loans would default. I don't know exactly how it is that people can do that and make money, but obviously it fuels bank crashes that hurt a lot of people.
I don't agree this is an inevitable consequence of what I wrote. I am okay with regulating banking if it is done properly. The banking crisis was caused because US banks were forced by law to make bad loans to poor people. Those loans got packaged and sold around the world hiding the fact that they were risky. In the US, Republicans wanted to remedy this before it blew up but Democrats said they were racists who wanted to keep minorities from getting loans (home mortgages).
My view is that most economic problems are caused by bad government. I'm not saying no government would be better, just that good government would avoid problems caused by bad government for which capitalism and free trade are unfairly blamed. Politicians can be just as stupid and evil as executives of multinatioinal corporations, and they will cause problems no matter what type of economic system is operating.
Well some Asian goods would still come in, but with a tariff, This would exert pressure on domestic suppliers, so the urge to compete could be maintained. As we lose control of sectors like electronics, the West becomes the new Third World!
Well to some extent I guess I would out Trump Trump if I were in power!
David