A Michigan auto worker may not be thrilled by jobs moving to Tennessee, but a) at least his countrymen will work those jobs, and b) he can move to Tennessee. His job moving to Ontario does not have these virtues, and no amount of repeating
> It’s economically superior to integrate these three countries and beneficial overall
is going to change this.
But I think you’re accidentally arguing a position it doesn’t sound like you support. Macroeconomics has moved into an abstract region where “homo economicus” is their spherical cow, and actual human behaviour is left by the wayside. Straight up utilitarianism is used to calculate benefit. From your comments I believe you consider that bad — and I do too.
But you ignored the part of my comment that addressed that when you wrote:
> His job moving to Ontario does not have these virtues, and no amount of repeating
> > It’s economically superior to integrate these three countries and beneficial overall
> is going to change this.
My wife is taking some medicine that makes her throw up so she takes another one to counteract that. I said that the US chronically fails to attempt the equivalent, instead assuming that humans are fungible equivalents and that the magic hand of the market would take care of things.
Even where attempts are made to ameliorate economic impact they usually involve trying to tech 50 yo coal miners to code. The actual human nature of humans is ignored.
Whet I didn’t like about your comment is that you deny the global (national in this case) benefit — also received by most of the dislocated — for the short term benefit of the few. That’s is just as abstract, and is like arguing that the automobile should have been suppressed because of all the people whose job was to drive horses.
The right hung to do is to address the disadvantaged, as humans. But that attitude (in more than just macroeconomics policy) is considered anti-American and “socialist”
Again, that Michigan autoworker can move to Tennessee, or wherever else jobs relocate to. Millions of Americans (including, but not just, autoworkers) do. And even if the autoworker does not move, at least he will benefit from the taxes his countrymen who do take those jobs pay. Ontario (or Mexico) is a different story.
>Whet I didn’t like about your comment is that you deny the global (national in this case) benefit — also received by most of the dislocated — for the short term benefit of the few.
I believe that free trade, between countries of comparable development, is overall a net benefit. That is not the same thing as saying that tariffs, even between such countries, are not at times an appropriate tool for geopolitical, economic, and fiscal purposes.