June 23, 2025
The Failure of "Free Trade"
Timothy Birdnow
Glenn Beck pens a piece about the failure of "free trade" and tthe success and promise of Trump's use of tariffs.
Trump’s tariffs take a flamethrower to the free trade lie
Beck rightly observes that what we call "free trade" is anything but, and the promises made by those who supported it have not come to fruition. All it has done is make the rich richer and Middle America poorer.
I would add that Pat Buchanan predicted this at the time and everyone laughed at him. They aren't laughing now; Buchanan was right.
FTA:
The old saying "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" never seemed to occur to the Ruling Class in America, which was continually suckered by other countries and taken advantage of by them. It is why Donald Trump ran for President in the first place. He saw just how stupid our policies were.
Adam Smith thought reciprocal tariffs were a good thing. So has every other "free trader" except for Milton Friedman, a brilliant guy but his views on the subject were just wrong and he's been so proven.
Friendman gave the Internationalists a powerful tool to argue for the anschluss of international economies. And it has all been carried on the backs of the American working and middle class.
As I have argued previously, a look at tariffs and economic condtions do not show any link between higher tariffs and economic stagnation EXCEPT Smoot Hawley which came at a time when all manner of economic disaster was in the wind. Correlation is not causality and the tariffs may not have helped but I do not believe they were the cause of the Great Depression as so many claim. Warren Harding raised tariffs during the Depression of 1921 (which was as bad as the Great Depression at the beginning) and the economy blossomed into the Roaring Twenties.
(BTW from May 1920 to July 1921, automobile production declined by 60% and total industrial production by 30% and yet this was reversed quickly even while Harding raised the tariffs.)
There are any number of other such examples. This doesn't prove tariffs are always good, but they aren't always bad either. In fact they are probably pretty neutral. We have no real evidence of any inflation caused by them except in specific markets (usuazlly offset by declining prices elsewhere in the economy.)
But this upends the whole globalist scheme of economic anschluss and world government. I have stated before that the European Union was born by the conscious effort to tie the French and German economies together so they wouldn't be able to go to war again. It started as a steel and coal entente and kept growing. The Internationalists wanted to create a world system where nations dared not make war on each-other and where the poor nations got a slice of the industrial pie. This was carried out almost entirel at the expense of American workers and small business owners.
And what of the "service economy" that was supposeed to replace industry? It never materialized, at least not in the numbers needed to provide good livings for the blue collar or lower management white collar Americans.
So Trump is restoring the natural order and the One World types are frantic; he's taking money out of THEIR pockets and wrecking a scheme that is decades, perhaps even a century, old.
We created our competitors, I might add; China didn't have a pot to urinate in until we forced all our companies to relocate there, and to buy almost everything from there. At the same time we imposed draconian schemes on our businesses, OSHA, EPA and other regulatory cords of strangulation killed our businesses. Minimum wage laws forced many companies to lay off employees, and an invasion of illegal aliens (at the behest of the Democratic Party) undercut wages and benefits. WE bound ourselves in chains and funded other countries to do "the work Americans just won't do" and then our elites are shocked that America elected a guy like Trump, who wants to just return us to the Bill Clinton days. Amazing.
Glenn Beck pens a piece about the failure of "free trade" and tthe success and promise of Trump's use of tariffs.
Trump’s tariffs take a flamethrower to the free trade lie
Beck rightly observes that what we call "free trade" is anything but, and the promises made by those who supported it have not come to fruition. All it has done is make the rich richer and Middle America poorer.
I would add that Pat Buchanan predicted this at the time and everyone laughed at him. They aren't laughing now; Buchanan was right.
FTA:
Instead, they wring their hands in confusion when working-class Americans turn to a leader like Donald Trump. "Why are they so angry?” they ask, while standing atop the wreckage of towns they helped dismantle.
About that wreckage
In Galesburg, Illinois, Maytag once employed 5,000 workers. The last refrigerator rolled off the line in 2004. The site is now rubble and weeds.
Youngstown, Ohio — once a titan of American steel — has lost 60% of its population since the 1970s. Gary, Indiana, once home to U.S. Steel’s largest mill, has over 10,000 abandoned buildings. In Flint, Michigan, over 80,000 GM jobs vanished. By 2016, over half of men ages 25 to 54 in Flint were unemployed. Buick City, once a symbol of industrial might, was demolished in 2002.
Detroit, once richer than Boston, is now 40% poorer. The U.S. auto parts industry lost 419,000 jobs in the decade after China joined the WTO.
Even NPR admitted that "the China Shock created what looked like miniature Great Depressions” in these areas.
From dream to despair
Between 2000 and 2014, America lost 5 million manufacturing jobs — the steepest decline in American history.
Meanwhile, in the same time period, corporate profits soared 600%. CEO pay has ballooned to 290 times that of the average worker. In 1965, it was 21 times. Since 1978, CEO compensation has grown by over 1,000%. Regular worker pay? Just 24%.
They told us the rising tide would lift all boats. Turns out, it mostly lifted yachts. And the rest of the boats? Capsized.
About that wreckage
In Galesburg, Illinois, Maytag once employed 5,000 workers. The last refrigerator rolled off the line in 2004. The site is now rubble and weeds.
Youngstown, Ohio — once a titan of American steel — has lost 60% of its population since the 1970s. Gary, Indiana, once home to U.S. Steel’s largest mill, has over 10,000 abandoned buildings. In Flint, Michigan, over 80,000 GM jobs vanished. By 2016, over half of men ages 25 to 54 in Flint were unemployed. Buick City, once a symbol of industrial might, was demolished in 2002.
Detroit, once richer than Boston, is now 40% poorer. The U.S. auto parts industry lost 419,000 jobs in the decade after China joined the WTO.
Even NPR admitted that "the China Shock created what looked like miniature Great Depressions” in these areas.
From dream to despair
Between 2000 and 2014, America lost 5 million manufacturing jobs — the steepest decline in American history.
Meanwhile, in the same time period, corporate profits soared 600%. CEO pay has ballooned to 290 times that of the average worker. In 1965, it was 21 times. Since 1978, CEO compensation has grown by over 1,000%. Regular worker pay? Just 24%.
They told us the rising tide would lift all boats. Turns out, it mostly lifted yachts. And the rest of the boats? Capsized.
The old saying "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" never seemed to occur to the Ruling Class in America, which was continually suckered by other countries and taken advantage of by them. It is why Donald Trump ran for President in the first place. He saw just how stupid our policies were.
Adam Smith thought reciprocal tariffs were a good thing. So has every other "free trader" except for Milton Friedman, a brilliant guy but his views on the subject were just wrong and he's been so proven.
Friendman gave the Internationalists a powerful tool to argue for the anschluss of international economies. And it has all been carried on the backs of the American working and middle class.
As I have argued previously, a look at tariffs and economic condtions do not show any link between higher tariffs and economic stagnation EXCEPT Smoot Hawley which came at a time when all manner of economic disaster was in the wind. Correlation is not causality and the tariffs may not have helped but I do not believe they were the cause of the Great Depression as so many claim. Warren Harding raised tariffs during the Depression of 1921 (which was as bad as the Great Depression at the beginning) and the economy blossomed into the Roaring Twenties.
(BTW from May 1920 to July 1921, automobile production declined by 60% and total industrial production by 30% and yet this was reversed quickly even while Harding raised the tariffs.)
There are any number of other such examples. This doesn't prove tariffs are always good, but they aren't always bad either. In fact they are probably pretty neutral. We have no real evidence of any inflation caused by them except in specific markets (usuazlly offset by declining prices elsewhere in the economy.)
But this upends the whole globalist scheme of economic anschluss and world government. I have stated before that the European Union was born by the conscious effort to tie the French and German economies together so they wouldn't be able to go to war again. It started as a steel and coal entente and kept growing. The Internationalists wanted to create a world system where nations dared not make war on each-other and where the poor nations got a slice of the industrial pie. This was carried out almost entirel at the expense of American workers and small business owners.
And what of the "service economy" that was supposeed to replace industry? It never materialized, at least not in the numbers needed to provide good livings for the blue collar or lower management white collar Americans.
So Trump is restoring the natural order and the One World types are frantic; he's taking money out of THEIR pockets and wrecking a scheme that is decades, perhaps even a century, old.
We created our competitors, I might add; China didn't have a pot to urinate in until we forced all our companies to relocate there, and to buy almost everything from there. At the same time we imposed draconian schemes on our businesses, OSHA, EPA and other regulatory cords of strangulation killed our businesses. Minimum wage laws forced many companies to lay off employees, and an invasion of illegal aliens (at the behest of the Democratic Party) undercut wages and benefits. WE bound ourselves in chains and funded other countries to do "the work Americans just won't do" and then our elites are shocked that America elected a guy like Trump, who wants to just return us to the Bill Clinton days. Amazing.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
03:53 PM
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