{"id":1530138,"date":"2025-04-13T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1530138"},"modified":"2025-04-13T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T23:00:00","slug":"theres-nothing-free-about-free-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/theres-nothing-free-about-free-trade\/1530138\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s Nothing Free About ‘Free Trade’"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s Nothing Free About ‘Free Trade’<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by J.B.Shurkc via American Thinker,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

President Trump, Treasury secretary Bessent, and Commerce secretary Lutnick are effectively\u00a0teaching<\/a>\u00a0a course right now on the fundamentals of international trade.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

How many Americans previously understood that nations around the world use tariffs and other economic tools to keep American-made products from reaching their markets?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Hasn\u2019t the United States been spreading the gospel of \u201cfree trade\u201d for centuries?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t commitment to \u201cfree markets\u201d separate the civilizational West from more authoritarian countries with \u201cclosed\u201d economies?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Shouldn\u2019t a \u201crules-based international order\u201d ensure that the\u00a0rules\u00a0are the same for all participating countries?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Or asked another way: How \u201cfree\u201d can international trade be if its proponents depend upon a labyrinthine system of rules that requires thousand-page treaties and guidance<\/strong> from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, central banks galore, the Bank for International Settlements, international standards organizations, law firms specializing in commercial and maritime law, more law firms specializing in the administrative law of specific nations, even more law firms specializing in the labor and environmental laws of each nation, and an ever-increasing number of national and international regulatory bodies to tell producers what they can and cannot produce, how and when to produce what they are permitted to produce, and whom to pay for the \u201cprivilege\u201d of producing it \u2014 all while restricting which domestic consumers around the world are permitted to purchase what the aforementioned producers end up producing?<\/p>\n

That long question only scratches the surface of the sheer complexity of international trade, yet even in its oversimplification, it smacks of coercion, extortion, overbearing micromanagement, government corruption, and blatant racketeering<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0It oozes the \u201ccommand and control\u201d odor we associate with a Soviet-type, socialist, or similarly centrally planned economy.\u00a0\u00a0Nothing about \u201cfree trade\u201d in practice sounds remotely\u00a0free<\/em>.<\/p>\n

With the Trump\/Bessent\/Lutnick tariff tutorial currently being broadcast from the White House, millions of Americans are learning for the first time that the United States operates within an international market system that does not impose reciprocal entry costs.\u00a0\u00a0That is to say, countries around the world collect fees from American producers before they are allowed to sell their goods in those markets, while the U.S. typically charges foreign producers much less \u2014 or nothing at all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since the conclusion of WWII, the United States has\u00a0directly subsidized Europe<\/a>\u00a0through various forms of a Marshall Plan, originally meant to help Europe rebuild after the war by restricting American competitors from selling in Europe while encouraging European producers to sell in the United States.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Was the Marshall Plan necessary to resurrect Europe\u2019s economy?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Perhaps \u2014 although many economists have argued that it so distorted market incentives that Europe\u2019s economy is\u00a0much less strong<\/a>\u00a0today than it otherwise would be.\u00a0\u00a0Regardless, most Americans have been intentionally kept in the dark that this two-tiered system of trans-Atlantic trade has persisted for eighty years.<\/p>\n

Europe is not alone in benefiting from \u201crules-based\u201d trade advantages with the United States.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0The U.S. handcuffs its producers in numerous ways.\u00a0\u00a0If some country within America\u2019s sphere of influence depends upon a particular agricultural crop or mineral export to sustain its national standard of living, then there is almost certainly a paragraph tucked away in the thirteenth section of the fifty-ninth chapter of some fourteen-hundred-page international treaty making it more difficult for American producers to grow, mine, ship, or sell that product to the other country\u2019s detriment.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s one form of what foreign policy snobs like to call \u201csoft power.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a way for the United States to exert influence by effectively saying, \u201cIf you do what we say, we\u2019ll prop up your nation\u2019s economy.\u00a0\u00a0And if you\u2019re really obedient, the\u00a0U.S. Agency for International Development<\/a>\u00a0or the National Endowment for Democracy will throw a little cold, hard cash at your political leaders.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Now, if you\u2019re building empires, that might be a splendid tactic.\u00a0\u00a0It is an inexpensive way to expand American power around the world.\u00a0\u00a0It fosters the image that the United States respects the sovereignty of individual nation-states while creating the conditions for the U.S. government to hold a nation\u2019s economic future in its hands.\u00a0\u00a0No doubt many of the countries that have flourished under America\u2019s security umbrella are far better off today than they would have been had they become vassal states to the Soviet Union last century or communist China this century.\u00a0\u00a0Nonetheless, this kind of manipulation of international trade comes at a cost to any American farmer or entrepreneur who is hamstrung due to the State Department\u2019s \u201csoft power\u201d games.<\/p>\n

There is a strange \u2014 and perhaps quite dangerous \u2014 disconnect between the way most Americans see their country and the way the U.S. government actually operates.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0A reasonable, patriotic American believes that the United States is a great and powerful country with unique influence on the world stage.\u00a0\u00a0Yet citizens still see it as a nation with distinct borders, a distinct culture, distinct interests, and a distinct Constitution that limits federal powers while ensuring that the American people are ably represented in their government.\u00a0\u00a0The U.S. government, on the other hand, sees itself as the international headquarters of a global empire that has no borders; includes all cultures; pursues competing interests; acts without constitutional constraint; and represents international banks, corporations, and institutions with no allegiance to the political culture, historical inheritance, or territorial sovereignty of the United States.<\/p>\n

The result of this disconnect is striking: While the American people expect their government to do what\u2019s best for them and their country, the U.S. government does what\u2019s best for itself and the expansion of its empire<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0If international companies can profit from illegal immigration, then the federal government will ignore its own immigration laws and even fly illegal aliens into the United States.\u00a0\u00a0If international banks can profit from slave labor manufacturing in communist China, then the federal government will\u00a0outsource entire industries<\/a>\u00a0to its geopolitical enemy.\u00a0\u00a0If the European Union and the World Economic Forum can use U.S. military and economic support to create totalitarian\u00a0systems of control<\/a>\u00a0across the continent, then the federal government will spend itself to financial death in order to sustain the \u201cNew World Order\u2019s\u201d globalist hegemony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Americans didn\u2019t vote for open borders, endless wars, forty trillion dollars of debt, or a hollowed out economy dependent on overseas slave labor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. government ignored their wishes and the limits of its constitutional powers and constructed a global empire anyway.<\/p>\n

In truth, the American empire hasn\u2019t been interested in \u201cfree trade\u201d since at least WWI.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The Great War, coincidentally enough, started roughly six months after the Federal Reserve System was forced upon the American public in a corrupt congressional vote two days before Christmas 1913.\u00a0\u00a0The creation of a \u201ccentral bank\u201d was a dead giveaway that markets would henceforth be\u00a0controlled<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Nothing that is\u00a0centralized<\/em>\u00a0can be said to operate according to Adam Smith\u2019s \u201cinvisible hand.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0From that point on, central bankers chose the \u201cwinners\u201d and \u201closers\u201d in the American economy, and \u201cfree trade\u201d became a euphemism that global oligarchs whispered to the American people while stealing every last cent from their pockets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before the Federal Reserve, Americans had gold-backed currency, owned real property, paid little in taxes, and moved up the social ladder faster than anywhere else in the world.\u00a0\u00a0Since the imposition of a central bank, fiat dollars have lost most of their value, banks own most Americans\u2019 homes, American tax obligations have exploded, and\u00a0indebted workers<\/a>\u00a0are less well off than their parents.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s tariff policy is only the\u00a0beginning<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0He is\u00a0setting the stage<\/a>\u00a0for the end of the income tax, the IRS, and the\u00a0Federal Reserve<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Getting there requires unshackling the American economy and unleashing Americans\u2019 entrepreneurial spirit.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 04\/13\/2025 – 15:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/theres-nothing-free-about-free-trade<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s Nothing Free About ‘Free Trade’ Authored by J.B.Shurkc via American Thinker, President Trump, Treasury secretary Bessent, and Commerce secretary Lutnick are effectively\u00a0teaching\u00a0a course right…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1530139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1530138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1530139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1530138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1530138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1530138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}