Originally Posted by
GreyGhost
Awe the WTO. What a joke.
The three basic approaches to trade reform are unilateral, multilateral, and bilateral.
For example:
Suppose, for example, that Japan sells bicycles for fifty dollars, Mexico sells them for sixty dollars, and both face a twenty-dollar U.S. tariff. If tariffs are eliminated on Mexican goods, U.S. consumers will shift their purchases from Japanese to Mexican bicycles. The result is that Americans will purchase from a higher-cost source, and the U.S. government receives no tariff revenue. Consumers save ten dollars per bicycle, but the government loses twenty dollars. Economists have shown that if a country enters such a “trade-diverting” customs union, the cost of this trade diversion may exceed the benefits of increased trade with the other members of the customs union. The net result is that the customs union could make the country worse off.
Although free trade provides overall benefits, removing a trade barrier on a particular good hurts the shareholders and employees of the domestic industry that produces that good. Some of the groups that are hurt by foreign competition wield enough political power to obtain protection against imports. Consequently, barriers to trade continue to exist despite their sizable economic costs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, for example, the U.S. gain from removing trade restrictions on textiles and apparel would have been almost twelve billion dollars in 2002 alone. This is a net economic gain after deducting the losses to firms and workers in the domestic industry. Yet, domestic textile producers have been able to persuade Congress to maintain tight restrictions on imports.
The comment about the US and CPUs was in reference to the general comments being made in the rest of this thread. See how misleading general comments can be? Get the point yet?
Silicon Valley does it actually produce the chips from beginning to end from concept to production? The US cannot have total control for the entire process.
