Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began implementing Neo-conservative / Neo-liberal policies in the 80s. This shifted the UK and US economies to high margin things like pharma, finance, technology, and services. Those things stayed in the US. Everything was outsourced to developing countries.
It sounded great. Through free-trade, developing countries would improve their standard of living. Also, democratic countries didn't go to war with each other. So, this led to the conclusion that improved trade between wealthy nations and developing nations would lead to global harmony. Everyone's standards of living would increase, and we'd all be one happy globe.
The US kept trying to push democracy, often through force and by destabilizing governments. But, for some reason countries weren't adopting it. The reason was that academics and political leaders didn't account for the impact of culture. That is, a lot of countries didn't want democracy and free-trade.
A lot of areas of the US eventually got wiped out economically. But, for a long time, they didn't notice. Things stayed relatively stable for a few decades because prices kept falling from all of the incoming cheap goods. Meanwhile, they faced 'brain drain' - the next generation started getting college degrees and moving to the wealthy cities. Some areas became wealthy - the rest became poor.
The US became a powerhouse of tech, services, and finance. But, they didn't have enough skilled labor in the cities. So, the US opened the door to immigration. As GDP increased, salaries went up. People started flocking to the US both for high-end jobs and also low-end jobs to support all of the urban areas. The poor areas of the US became enraged - new immigrants had more money than them, and they had less.
Trump (and I assume the think tanks behind him) believes these tariffs are a last ditch attempt to fix the system. Otherwise, the US dissolves.
What is the missing bit between your last story paragraph (before the summary) and the country dissolving?
I'm not arguing I just need help connecting the dots from "poor rural people don't want to compete with immigrants for the high or low paying jobs" to total country collapse.
It's just what Trump and his circle allude to. They believe globalism is an existential threat and that without a swift and powerful shift, the US will sink.
Oh come on, everybody knew what was going on since the 90s but greed was just too strong. The next quarter's results were just too good to walk away from all of it.
Everyone who needed to know, knew exactly what was happening, but they were getting rich in the process, so they didn’t care.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began implementing Neo-conservative / Neo-liberal policies in the 80s. This shifted the UK and US economies to high margin things like pharma, finance, technology, and services. Those things stayed in the US. Everything was outsourced to developing countries.
It sounded great. Through free-trade, developing countries would improve their standard of living. Also, democratic countries didn't go to war with each other. So, this led to the conclusion that improved trade between wealthy nations and developing nations would lead to global harmony. Everyone's standards of living would increase, and we'd all be one happy globe.
The US kept trying to push democracy, often through force and by destabilizing governments. But, for some reason countries weren't adopting it. The reason was that academics and political leaders didn't account for the impact of culture. That is, a lot of countries didn't want democracy and free-trade.
A lot of areas of the US eventually got wiped out economically. But, for a long time, they didn't notice. Things stayed relatively stable for a few decades because prices kept falling from all of the incoming cheap goods. Meanwhile, they faced 'brain drain' - the next generation started getting college degrees and moving to the wealthy cities. Some areas became wealthy - the rest became poor.
The US became a powerhouse of tech, services, and finance. But, they didn't have enough skilled labor in the cities. So, the US opened the door to immigration. As GDP increased, salaries went up. People started flocking to the US both for high-end jobs and also low-end jobs to support all of the urban areas. The poor areas of the US became enraged - new immigrants had more money than them, and they had less.
Trump (and I assume the think tanks behind him) believes these tariffs are a last ditch attempt to fix the system. Otherwise, the US dissolves.