Interacting with our global neighbors both generally, or with trade more specifically, is precisely what you want to be doing. Engaging as many of these folks as you can, as positively as you can (which is always the hard part when so many of them can be so inimical to our best ideals).
You do that because positive with the easier neighbors makes everyone stronger because it leverages the efforts of both; and positive, however limited, with the not so easy makes it at least possible to keep talking. If you keep talking (patiently, professionally, and behind the scenes) you can at least let them know a bottom line for us that's expressed a good deal more subtly than a simplistic threat.
The real problem we have here is that, to a very real extent, the kind of trade that Capitalism demands, even of the more general, interactive kind, is absolutely Soulless. It is precisely because it is a product of the age of reason; the age of the onset of the emancipation of knowledge in the form of repeatable type, and the book that type made possible. If it is anything, it is the epitome of cold logic.
As such it calls for things to be produced where that production is the most efficient. Which is certainly not to say for any reasons like, say, where there are the most faithful? The most likeable? The people everyone would agree are simply "cooler" than the rest of us? Or even more basic: the people who simply need a job (because, of course, that's everybody)? Do you think asking for production placement on these kinds of criteria will gain us all fame and fortune?
By the same token, it also calls for the continuous flow of capital; by which is meant that imbalances of currencies shouldn't be allowed to develop. Too much of a particular currency in another country, or group of countries for that matter, will likely spell trouble; especially for the country responsible for that currency. That means, at the end of the day, that where you buy you should also sell; as well as to say, where you sell, you must also buy (because that's how we both get to continue making things).
That last proposition gets trickier these days because it combines with the "efficiency" proposition in ways the rationalists that started it all could not have foreseen:
1. That the information needed to make something would become so easily transferable.
2. That getting things from one dispersed market to another could possibly become so scaled up.
3. That competition would possibly become so intense.
4. that capital itself could come to move about at the blink of an eye.
So. Jobs now go to either the poorest country (which is where the cheapest labor usually is), the robots, or the country that wants to vie with being the poorest again. You can pretend, at least for a while, that you can work Capitalism by betraying the rules I just listed, but in the end it will have its needs met, or you will be out in the cold.
The Communists thought they could betray those rules because they thought their own dogma would solve all (and yes, they were still trying to be Capitalists, just of the centrally planned, the state is primary profit beneficiary, type). Being out in the cold for the old Soviet Union meant complete collapse.
For the Chinese, who have, admittedly, done a lot better, starting out, with their more "state hands off" approach, the picture isn't so rosy anymore either; as even they are now having a great deal of difficulty reconciling both old party dogma, with the rapid realization that growth by cheap labor, and protectionism, can only take you so far. A difficulty exacerbated by the far greater discrepancy between the very many have nots still in their nation, with the still quite limited numbers doing so very much better.
What one is left wondering about with people like Mr. Sessions is that how can you let ideology blind you to the way things actually work in the world. After all, one would assume the guy still believes in Capitalism, even after whatever his theology might be. Does he think America can be "Great Again" by running our economic operating system within a geographic bunker, itself within a fortress? A fortress-bunker with guns bristling at the parapets as our main marketing slogan? Will capital flow as it's supposed to then? Will the idiot Capitalists that still support the crowd behind him take this calmly? And even if our capital holders did, do you think the rest of that lot in the world would?
The thing is here... I understand why Mr. Session's boss would want to pander to the need for people to feel that their jobs can be made safe. There's a lot of worry, and passion, swirling around the issue of jobs. But, as in life, in the world of Capitalism there is no such thing as "safe." And you must either learn to deal with that, or accept the fact that maybe Capitalism has had it's time, and that time is over now. It is, in fact, long past over.
If you really want a more real effect on ensuring the continuance of not only meeting your needs, but of actually prospering as well, maybe you should start considering the possibility that a new way to do things is required. Absolutely Required.
And I ask you. Honestly. Why should that proposition be so hard to even consider at all?
Why should considering that be any more difficult than accepting the fact that your computer needs a new operating system from time to time. It needs it because things keep changing so damned pervasively, and quickly. Not only because there's better hardware available, but because the best way to utilize the hardware is to go about how you use it quite differently. And the best way to work interactively, with all of the others trying to do the same thing, is to do it quite differently.
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