Globalisation and free trade are a good thing as long as everyone involved is doing it with good intentions.
And as you’ve pointed out, not everyone involved is doing with good intentions, therefore it’s not a good thing.
Sure, if you wanna do absolutes, you could probably calculate whether the bad effect of China fucking up the world by giving their companies an infinite money cheat code is worse than the benefits. And you’d arrive at some result.
And clearly liberals have arrived at the conclusion that the bad effects outweigh the benefits, since they are abandoning their previous commitment to open borders and free trade, and moving more toward protectionist policies and reshoring industries.
That’s not my conclusion, no. It’s a good thing, it just needs to be adjusted to weed out the bad parts it wasn’t prepared to handle. But yeah, free trade as implemented currently is not good anymore. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna disappear, it will just evolve.
You could argue that what the US did when they were all for free trade was bad. Using debt traps to impoverish third world countries. Imposing policies that were and are detrimental on weaker nations.
Now that China is doing the same with belt and road it is suddenly evil. The only thing that has changed is who is benefiting.
And as you’ve pointed out, not everyone involved is doing with good intentions, therefore it’s not a good thing.
And clearly liberals have arrived at the conclusion that the bad effects outweigh the benefits, since they are abandoning their previous commitment to open borders and free trade, and moving more toward protectionist policies and reshoring industries.
That’s not my conclusion, no. It’s a good thing, it just needs to be adjusted to weed out the bad parts it wasn’t prepared to handle. But yeah, free trade as implemented currently is not good anymore. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna disappear, it will just evolve.
But free trade only among the “good” countries is not global free trade. So the idea of global free trade has already disappeared.
Yep, I can agree with that.
You could argue that what the US did when they were all for free trade was bad. Using debt traps to impoverish third world countries. Imposing policies that were and are detrimental on weaker nations. Now that China is doing the same with belt and road it is suddenly evil. The only thing that has changed is who is benefiting.