Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

Countries aren't Borg ships. Trade between countries have beneficiaries and victims in both countries. The victims usually have zero say in the trade so, no, they can't simply decline a transaction that harms them.

View on HN

Who are the victims when someone buys something from someone in another country?

How is that different from when they buy from someone in the same country?

The typical argument is in a closed market everyone buys something produced locally by local labor. In an open market the lowest cost supplier wins. Which will mean when costs of production are asymmetric, the supplier in the more expensive market loses.

So while a single transaction has occurred, someone loses because of the trade agreement. This is because in a market that’s not theoretical there are actual people losing out. But this is the typical argument against free trade and protectionism - I assume it’s not new?

I’m sympathetic fwiw. But I think maximizing trade is generally good and don’t want to see a reversal. The real issue in my mind is trade allows for environmental, labor, and other regulatory arbitrage. If the benefits in pricing were just market based I’d be down with it no matter the pain. But that’s not really what’s going on. The regulatory arbitrage is a race to the bottom not just in wages or other spaces that in my belief stabilize over time, in irreversible spaces like destruction of the earth.

The USA dumps food and clothes on many poor countries, absolutely destroying their own agriculture and clothing industries.

Millions of people who formerly worked in those factories that lost their jobs to outsourcing and have never economically recovered? How can you ask such a question when we have the answer here in the real world?

They can decline the whole agreement. Thus the agreement has to be a win for them too else there is no reason to sign.

This is assuming that every trade delegation can accurately predict all the impacts into the future. This is especially difficult now because the pace of change in the world is only increasing. In general trade is a good thing. It must be encouraged but everything is not so open and shut.

Inaccurate predictions go “both ways” and applies to both countries.

The benefits and consequences of which are entirely asymmetrical. There’s a reason poor people engage in significantly higher rates of some of the worst “trade decisions” in the form of gambling.

On top of that, when your pool of resources are closer to skim, poor trade decisions result in health-harmful effects, which continue to contribute to poor decision making.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com