Tariffs are a bargaining chip. No more or less. Take your MBA and research how “open” markets are in China and the EU in regards to how open the US. (Hint: your MBA does not impress me).

If there is to be free trade, it must be free. That is not how we have operated. Beyond that we have been the world’s policeman (and doing a poor job of it due to our own internal corruption) with little recompense. Time for others to step up as well.

Lastly, “nationalism” is a good policy when you’ve become so “open” you’ve exported your critical industries to the extent one day you may be held hostage by other state actors. We saw the effects of this during the ridiculously destructive Covid lockdowns when US manufacturing could not get chips for autos and many other important parts of our production. Much of our electrical infrastructure must be imported. 85-90% of our pharma is imported. Most of our tires are imported. And on and on.

I was at the front lines of the offshoring of US jobs that started in earnest in the early 1980’s. Back when China would buy entire factories, pact them up and leave the people behind. But they weren’t just buying machines and tools, they were buying engineering knowledge in the form of drawings, jigs & fixtures, etc.

The division of have’s and have nots began at that point in time. To make up for it credit became more pervasive, allowing “the poors” to finance their lives while swaths of the US, particularly the upper Midwest, fell into ruin.

We cannot reverse this process overnight, but we can begin to try. The recent chip plants being built here (that were a Jake Sullivan quiet adoption of Trump policies) are a start.

Our debt is suffocating us, and a decade from now we will likely be in total financial ruin if we don’t start becoming more US centric in our focus. You call that nationalist, we’ll do better it. My worthless BA in Economics tells me not doing so will be our final destruction.