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Comment by schnitzelstoat | Hacker News Reader

Economic nationalism is bad when Trump does it and bad when Europe does it too.

We should have unilateral free trade. Ricardo showed this was better over 200 years ago.

Europe is not a nation, and the boycott is against a single country acting like an adversary. Europeans aren't boycotting Xiaomi or Huawei.

There are EU-wide tariffs though. Like those against Chinese EVs: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

I think some Game Theory 101 might be relevant here. Yes it's good to cooperate initially but after that, tit for tat is the thing to do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

> Economic nationalism is bad when Trump does it and bad when Europe does it too.

Now, now. Because Trump is 'hOrRiBLe' for putting an honest face on fascism and imperialism that always existed in the US and its vassals, we have to have outrage and do the very things we criticize him for doing.

It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. We'd all be better off if nobody started any trade wars, but the moment one party starts becoming hostile, everyone else must respond in kind or they'll be taken advantage of.

I hoped Americans had stopped being stupid and elected better leaders, but Trump's re-election shows that America and its people do not care about being reliable business partners. Ridding ourselves of American dependence will take decades, but with at least four more years of this bullshit ahead of us, we'd better get started soon.

But Ricardo determined the opposite. That unilateral free trade is better even in the face of tariffs. In the end, it's their own consumers that pay the tariffs.

If Trump wants to make Americans poorer then so be it, but we shouldn't follow suit.

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