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When did isolationism become cool? Isn't this why we declared independence in the first place? To get away from the British restricting free trade?

margorczynski 2y ago
> When did isolationism become cool? Ask maybe China.
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  China's economic power is certainly not rooted in their isolationist social policies. They're just as bullish about foreign investment as the US was at the height of the free trade era.
lenerdenator 2y ago
When the people with the money decided it was better spent in places that weren't their own country.
- bootsmann 2y ago
  Having access to cheap oversea steel allows Americans to focus on building companies with significantly higher value-add. Onshoring low-value industries is a massive human capital waste and an easy way to depress wages.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    It allows a very small portion of Americans to build companies with significantly higher value-add. It destroyed the futures of a larger number of Americans. Then again, why do we make the distinction "American"? If you have people who became unfathomably wealthy by shipping off strategic industries to the lowest bidder regardless of geopolitical implications, does nationality matter anymore?
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Here's another idea: tax those people appropriately and pump that money back into the economy... Way easier and more globally optimal than just saying we're going to do absolutely everything (even the shitty jobs) here in the US.
      - lenerdenator 2y ago
        If there's one thing those people hate more than paying Americans to do labor, it's paying taxes.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        And...? Everyone hates paying taxes. Normal Americans pay them anyway.
        cmdrk 2y ago
        Indeed, but the hallowed Job Creators have the means to influence the people in power to make the taxes go away.
        t-3 2y ago
        Do "normal Americans" pay taxes? From the numbers I've seen, ~1/3 - ~1/2 of tax filers receive more money from the government than they pay. To them, "refund season" is a cause for celebration rather than a stressful event.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        I'm a normal American and owe 6000 this year to the Feds, so yes. W-2 get refunds because the Feds took out too much from their paycheck beforehand.
        t-3 2y ago
        I'm a normal American and have only once paid more than I've received for federal taxes. Withholding has nothing to do with it.
  - tycho-newman 2y ago
    I get the value add argument, but lots of people just need income to pay for living expenses. Without an income, those people become disaffected and sometimes violent. Then they embrace right-wing protectionism because, while their gadgets are cheaper, they have no income to buy cheap gadgets. Nor can they move to these offshore places (where the cost of living is lower) because immigration laws exist in part to control worker mobility.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Onshoring low-value industries is a massive human capital waste and an easy way to depress wages. Compared to now where there's just no full time jobs and also wage suppression?
  - palmotea 2y ago
    > Having access to cheap oversea steel allows Americans to focus on building companies with significantly higher value-add. Onshoring low-value industries is a massive human capital waste and an easy way to depress wages. That's the talking point, but it's bullshit. A lot of those "low-value industries" are fundamental capabilities, and China sure as hell isn't going to let the US own the "higher value-add" areas. They dominate those next, and the US free-trade business elites will be fine with it as long as they get to make some money for themselves.
    - bootsmann 2y ago
      Being a high value-add area is endogenous to how hard it is for others i.e. China to reproduce. In other words, if it were easy to make GPUs they wouldn't be so damn expensive.
      - palmotea 2y ago
        > Being a high value-add area is endogenous to how hard it is for others i.e. China to reproduce. In other words, if it were easy to make GPUs they wouldn't be so damn expensive. China's going to put the money into making GPUs, and they're going to get it right, probably sooner than later. Then they'll drive the American manufacturers out of business, like they've done in many areas before. Their government isn't beholden to the profit-focused capitalist attitude that is one of the West's biggest vulnerabilities. Also, it's pretty foolish to 1) forget power and security doesn't come from rarefied high value-add stuff, 2) that there are a lot of people that can't be employed doing stuff like making GPUs.
rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> Isn't this why we declared independence in the first place? To get away from the British restricting free trade? No. I'm not sure where you got that idea. If you look at something like the Boston Tea Party, it wasn't high taxes on tea that were being protested against, it was lowered taxes on tea that undercut the smuggling operations of people like Sam Adams and John Hancock. "No taxation without representation" makes better press than "No undercutting my smuggling operation" though. In the early years of the US, between 80 and 90 percent of federal revenue came from tariffs. Not exactly free trade.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  > In the early years of the US, between 80 and 90 percent of federal revenue came from tariffs... To be fair, the Federal Budget back then was 2%-ish of GDP. And their political consensus gave the Federal Gov't very few things that it had the power to tax.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    For readers looking for context, Google tells me it was ~24% of GDP as of 2024
    - hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
      That seems impractical and unsustainable.
      - dragonwriter 2y ago
        Based on what? Even adding in state spending, the US government spending share of GDP isn't high by world standards.
        hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
        Govt spending as a share of GDP is probably a good measure of how involved the government is in the economy. There are arguments that too much government involvement leads to stagnation, which considering many of the economies the US regularly out-grows have higher share of govt spending as a % of GDP has some merit. Its an interesting economic question what level that would be which changes depending on how you approach the problem.
rayiner 2y ago
You’re incorrect about history. Mercantilism not only restricted foreign trade, but restricted domestic industrial development by requiring the colonies to sell raw materials to Britain and buy finished goods from the Britain. Tariffs were a core pillar of the Lincoln Republican Party. There’s been an isolationist wing in tech as long as I’ve been in it (early 2000s). I remember chatting with someone at Cisco/Juniper in the late aughts about Huawei ripping off their router designs down to the silk screening. Of course today Huawei makes their own state of the art routers with their own silicon, and some lower-end Cisco/Juniper gear is white boxed foreign equipment. And of course tech folks were complaining about immigration and outsourcing back in the early 2000s when Republicans were enthusiastically supporting both.
luxuryballs 2y ago
I want to say “that’s not what isolationism means”, but I realize it starts to feel vague just like the word “fascism”, used when convenient but varies wildly in rhetorical meaning… to be more specific is better, I like what George Washington had to say about it in his farewell address because it shows the nuance of the topic across the spectrum, it’s not as simple as isolation good vs bad: The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
- hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
  >when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Ironic that as a Canadian, the US is moving from the nation that would be guided by Justice into the belligerent nation in this situation. It also serves as a lesson to us that we should have learned from you and George Washington, and stood on our own first and ensured our own security before cooperating with others. We have a long way to go to get back there now, unfortunately under the position of potentially our closest ally and economic partner being belligerent, untrustworthy and unreliable.
edgyquant 2y ago
The newborn US imposed a ton of tariffs specifically to escape British control of industry
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Indeed. I think we've come very far 250 years later. But we lowered those 90% tarriffs 100 years ago for a reason.
rcpt 2y ago
It's always been cool. It's why you can't buy a Kei truck or a BYD car

margorczynski 2y ago

> When did isolationism become cool? Ask maybe China.

swiftcoder 2y ago
China's economic power is certainly not rooted in their isolationist social policies. They're just as bullish about foreign investment as the US was at the height of the free trade era.

lenerdenator 2y ago

When the people with the money decided it was better spent in places that weren't their own country.

bootsmann 2y ago
Having access to cheap oversea steel allows Americans to focus on building companies with significantly higher value-add. Onshoring low-value industries is a massive human capital waste and an easy way to depress wages.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  It allows a very small portion of Americans to build companies with significantly higher value-add. It destroyed the futures of a larger number of Americans. Then again, why do we make the distinction "American"? If you have people who became unfathomably wealthy by shipping off strategic industries to the lowest bidder regardless of geopolitical implications, does nationality matter anymore?
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Here's another idea: tax those people appropriately and pump that money back into the economy... Way easier and more globally optimal than just saying we're going to do absolutely everything (even the shitty jobs) here in the US.
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      If there's one thing those people hate more than paying Americans to do labor, it's paying taxes.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        And...? Everyone hates paying taxes. Normal Americans pay them anyway.
        cmdrk 2y ago
        Indeed, but the hallowed Job Creators have the means to influence the people in power to make the taxes go away.
        t-3 2y ago
        Do "normal Americans" pay taxes? From the numbers I've seen, ~1/3 - ~1/2 of tax filers receive more money from the government than they pay. To them, "refund season" is a cause for celebration rather than a stressful event.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        I'm a normal American and owe 6000 this year to the Feds, so yes. W-2 get refunds because the Feds took out too much from their paycheck beforehand.
        t-3 2y ago
        I'm a normal American and have only once paid more than I've received for federal taxes. Withholding has nothing to do with it.
- tycho-newman 2y ago
  I get the value add argument, but lots of people just need income to pay for living expenses. Without an income, those people become disaffected and sometimes violent. Then they embrace right-wing protectionism because, while their gadgets are cheaper, they have no income to buy cheap gadgets. Nor can they move to these offshore places (where the cost of living is lower) because immigration laws exist in part to control worker mobility.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >Onshoring low-value industries is a massive human capital waste and an easy way to depress wages. Compared to now where there's just no full time jobs and also wage suppression?
- palmotea 2y ago
  > Having access to cheap oversea steel allows Americans to focus on building companies with significantly higher value-add. Onshoring low-value industries is a massive human capital waste and an easy way to depress wages. That's the talking point, but it's bullshit. A lot of those "low-value industries" are fundamental capabilities, and China sure as hell isn't going to let the US own the "higher value-add" areas. They dominate those next, and the US free-trade business elites will be fine with it as long as they get to make some money for themselves.
  - bootsmann 2y ago
    Being a high value-add area is endogenous to how hard it is for others i.e. China to reproduce. In other words, if it were easy to make GPUs they wouldn't be so damn expensive.
    - palmotea 2y ago
      > Being a high value-add area is endogenous to how hard it is for others i.e. China to reproduce. In other words, if it were easy to make GPUs they wouldn't be so damn expensive. China's going to put the money into making GPUs, and they're going to get it right, probably sooner than later. Then they'll drive the American manufacturers out of business, like they've done in many areas before. Their government isn't beholden to the profit-focused capitalist attitude that is one of the West's biggest vulnerabilities. Also, it's pretty foolish to 1) forget power and security doesn't come from rarefied high value-add stuff, 2) that there are a lot of people that can't be employed doing stuff like making GPUs.

rufus_foreman 2y ago

>> Isn't this why we declared independence in the first place? To get away from the British restricting free trade? No. I'm not sure where you got that idea. If you look at something like the Boston Tea Party, it wasn't high taxes on tea that were being protested against, it was lowered taxes on tea that undercut the smuggling operations of people like Sam Adams and John Hancock. "No taxation without representation" makes better press than "No undercutting my smuggling operation" though. In the early years of the US, between 80 and 90 percent of federal revenue came from tariffs. Not exactly free trade.

bell-cot 2y ago
> In the early years of the US, between 80 and 90 percent of federal revenue came from tariffs... To be fair, the Federal Budget back then was 2%-ish of GDP. And their political consensus gave the Federal Gov't very few things that it had the power to tax.
- airstrike 2y ago
  For readers looking for context, Google tells me it was ~24% of GDP as of 2024
  - hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
    That seems impractical and unsustainable.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Based on what? Even adding in state spending, the US government spending share of GDP isn't high by world standards.
      - hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
        Govt spending as a share of GDP is probably a good measure of how involved the government is in the economy. There are arguments that too much government involvement leads to stagnation, which considering many of the economies the US regularly out-grows have higher share of govt spending as a % of GDP has some merit. Its an interesting economic question what level that would be which changes depending on how you approach the problem.

rayiner 2y ago

You’re incorrect about history. Mercantilism not only restricted foreign trade, but restricted domestic industrial development by requiring the colonies to sell raw materials to Britain and buy finished goods from the Britain. Tariffs were a core pillar of the Lincoln Republican Party. There’s been an isolationist wing in tech as long as I’ve been in it (early 2000s). I remember chatting with someone at Cisco/Juniper in the late aughts about Huawei ripping off their router designs down to the silk screening. Of course today Huawei makes their own state of the art routers with their own silicon, and some lower-end Cisco/Juniper gear is white boxed foreign equipment. And of course tech folks were complaining about immigration and outsourcing back in the early 2000s when Republicans were enthusiastically supporting both.

luxuryballs 2y ago

I want to say “that’s not what isolationism means”, but I realize it starts to feel vague just like the word “fascism”, used when convenient but varies wildly in rhetorical meaning… to be more specific is better, I like what George Washington had to say about it in his farewell address because it shows the nuance of the topic across the spectrum, it’s not as simple as isolation good vs bad: The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
>when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Ironic that as a Canadian, the US is moving from the nation that would be guided by Justice into the belligerent nation in this situation. It also serves as a lesson to us that we should have learned from you and George Washington, and stood on our own first and ensured our own security before cooperating with others. We have a long way to go to get back there now, unfortunately under the position of potentially our closest ally and economic partner being belligerent, untrustworthy and unreliable.

edgyquant 2y ago

The newborn US imposed a ton of tariffs specifically to escape British control of industry

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Indeed. I think we've come very far 250 years later. But we lowered those 90% tarriffs 100 years ago for a reason.

rcpt 2y ago

It's always been cool. It's why you can't buy a Kei truck or a BYD car