> the likelihood of them being propaganda Welp, that dead-ends conversations. As a personal disclosure, I neither consider myself complicit with propagandists

> the likelihood of them being propaganda Welp, that dead-ends conversations. As a personal disclosure, I neither consider myself complicit with propagandists nor a total sucker. A partial sucker maybe... I tossed three citations out there because I'm familiar with research on the topic and found those results fairly typical. But I get it, you don't find any of them particularly persuasive. You may not be inclined to listen to any countervailing evidence at this time. That's fine. If you ever want to poke around at this topic again but are seriously skeptical about finding information you can trust, consider Googling the IGM forum. The forum surveys economists across the political spectrum on various issues of economic policy. You'll find massive splits on all sorts of issues, vast disagreements on how to best organize the economy. If you read the bios or works of the participants, the ideological differences of opinion will become fairly stark. You might find that variety of opinions more reliable in and of itself, or you might simply find some individual you consider reputable on the forum. From there you may find someone with interesting things to say that you'll trust more than me. I don't expect you'll find a radically different view on trade, since there's fairly broad agreement that freer trade helps the average citizen, and helps society more than it hurts. But who knows. Maybe I'm wrong. Best of luck either way.