Downside of Free Trade

Free trade is not always the best strategy:

• From an energy-conservation, greenhouse gas point of view, it is always best to manufacture goods as close as possible to where they are used.
• If other countries put up tariffs to your exports, you cut your own throat if you refuse to extract tariffs on imports from their countries.
• Fledgling industries have no chance without protective tariffs. Toyota would never have become a major automaker without 50 years of protectionist help from the Japanese government.
• Industries in the third world have no chance to compete on a free trade basis with behemoths like the China and the USA.
• On a security basis, every country should maintain the ability to grow subsistence food and manufacture basic goods should the supply from abroad be cut off.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)