I had multiple things to do, and appointments to keep yesterday, so I didn't get to this article by J. B. Shurk. The article, at the American Thinker entitled There's Nothing Free About 'Free Trade,' that points to some criticisms of the direction America has taken since WWI and, that need correcting if we are ever to be the truly exceptional country we were.
Back then there were people who decried the removal of the United States from the gold standard. The general consensus was that these "gold bugs" were old fashioned, stuck in the mud, and probably luddites at that. Most of the "gold bugs" were economists, and their concerns were economic. What Shurk brings to the table is a historical look at what happened after the creature from Jekyll Island came into existence.
President Trump, Treasury secretary Bessent, and Commerce secretary Lutnick are effectively teaching a course right now on the fundamentals of international trade. How many Americans previously understood that nations around the world use tariffs and other economic tools to keep American-made products from reaching their markets? Hasn’t the United States been spreading the gospel of “free trade” for centuries? Doesn’t commitment to “free markets” separate the civilizational West from more authoritarian countries with “closed” economies? Shouldn’t a “rules-based international order” ensure that the rules are the same for all participating countries?
Or asked another way: How “free” can international trade be if its proponents depend upon a labyrinthine system of rules that requires thousand-page treaties and guidance from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, central banks galore, the Bank for International Settlements, international standards organizations, law firms specializing in commercial and maritime law, more law firms specializing in the administrative law of specific nations, even more law firms specializing in the labor and environmental laws of each nation, and an ever-increasing number of national and international regulatory bodies to tell producers what they can and cannot produce, how and when to produce what they are permitted to produce, and whom to pay for the “privilege” of producing it — all while restricting which domestic consumers around the world are permitted to purchase what the aforementioned producers end up producing?
Answer, not very free, or fair for that matter. But it gets so much worse:
There is a strange — and perhaps quite dangerous — disconnect between the way most Americans see their country and the way the U.S. government actually operates. A reasonable, patriotic American believes that the United States is a great and powerful country with unique influence on the world stage. Yet citizens still see it as a nation with distinct borders, a distinct culture, distinct interests, and a distinct Constitution that limits federal powers while ensuring that the American people are ably represented in their government. The U.S. government, on the other hand, sees itself as the international headquarters of a global empire that has no borders; includes all cultures; pursues competing interests; acts without constitutional constraint; and represents international banks, corporations, and institutions with no allegiance to the political culture, historical inheritance, or territorial sovereignty of the United States.
The result of this disconnect is striking: While the American people expect their government to do what’s best for them and their country, the U.S. government does what’s best for itself and the expansion of its empire. If international companies can profit from illegal immigration, then the federal government will ignore its own immigration laws and even fly illegal aliens into the United States. If international banks can profit from slave labor manufacturing in communist China, then the federal government will outsource entire industries to its geopolitical enemy. If the European Union and the World Economic Forum can use U.S. military and economic support to create totalitarian systems of control across the continent, then the federal government will spend itself to financial death in order to sustain the “New World Order’s” globalist hegemony.
Americans didn’t vote for open borders, endless wars, forty trillion dollars of debt, or a hollowed out economy dependent on overseas slave labor. The U.S. government ignored their wishes and the limits of its constitutional powers and constructed a global empire anyway.
No, we did not. This, I think, is what Trump is trying to correct. Let us pray he succeeds.
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