also food

*You* being the country.

cuz we'll be investing in ourselves

Your fellow citizens.

instead of making shitty trade deals

What? ...

the only imports we *need* are precious metals

where we get the shit end of the stick and factories close and etc

By '08 do you mean the financial crisis? I think you have the causality backwards. Because of some really stupid moved in our mortgage securities *we* had a crisis and because the rest of the world is so dependent on US fiscal markets *they* had a crisis.

great depression too

yea you just dont know what your talking about cooper

america first

Yes, even the financial crisis showed how other countries impact you and the world economy.

the great depression in the US caused a depression worldwide

Which you are a member of and which harmed you as a result.

time to put america first

No you really have the causality backwards here.

doesnt mean we wont still do other things with other countries

you are being foolish

the truth is weve been bending over backwards for the rest of the world for a long time

especially one particular country

America spends 648 billion dollars alone on importing consumer goods @Machinimal

in the middle east

you act as if just naming a figure means you are right

most consumer goods we can produce ourselves

SO I mean if Merkle makes an angry face it doesn't matter. What is best for other places is that we remain strong and financially stable. Because you lesser nations do not have any replacement for us.

At a higher cost.

you have no evidence to suggest what percentage of that will go away

only because of labor standards

Because you do not have the manufacturing capabilities of say for example, China.

you are just speculating and being fearful

we do, but china has no labor standards

So you want to drop your standards down to China-tier? @Machinimal

To compete?

we need to get rid of minimum wage at the very least

Is that the "America first!" you're championing?

648B is such a small number on this scale. And again 2/3rds of our trade is *on the same continent* as us.

we dont need free trade. or to bend to the will of china

648B is a huge number, considering you import 3.1 Trillion per year...

Are you deliberately being obtuse?

we need to reinvest the money we spend on chinese goods on ourselves, incentivize new businesses in the us