Is President Donald Trump really all that different from the Democrats on trade? Hardly.
Don’t believe it?
Here is a great compilation of remarks from Democrats and President Trump on the subject:
It makes sense, though. Trump was a Democrat for much of his adult life.
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Tariffs always shift the aggregate supply curve to the left. This is true whether or not there is any retaliation. Any trade restrictions shift the aggregate supply curve to the left by increasing input prices. Hence, any reduction in trade restrictions such as tariffs shift the aggregate supply curve to the right. When the aggregate supply curve shifts to the right, for any particular aggregate demand curve the equilibrium point of intersection occurs at a higher level of output. That is why NAFTA increased real GDP and lowered unemployment in America, Canada and Mexico.
The biggest falsehood promulgated by Trump and many of the (mostly Democrat party) politicians who opposed NAFTA and other trade agreements is that America has entered into terrible trade deals. This is particularly dangerous, because so many people who are now vehemently opposed to Trump appear to have bought into it. The exact opposite is the truth. The USA may not be number one in everything, but we are definitely number one in negotiators and lawyers.
If two foreign countries, say Brazil and Argentina were in a trade related dispute, both sides will usually hire American negotiators and lawyers. One tactic the USA has used to get the upper hand in trade negotiations was to use American women to do the face-to-face negotiation. Many foreign cultures were unused to dealing with women at that level. This gave the USA an additional advantage when negotiating the trade deals, that made America the worlds’ largest and strongest economy.
It is distressing that many leftist protectionists like senators Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) were so quickly able to go from complaining that trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP were examples of corporate America exploiting the workers of the world, to agreeing with Trump’s false assertion that the trade deals were one sided against American business interests…”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205253