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Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Fair trade policy has consistently been the one thing on which I agree with the Trump presidency.

It hasn't been enough to outweigh all the other absolutely horrible stuff, but it is one thing.

I am concerned that Biden will return us to the old days of "free" trade that allows corporations to import totalitarianism via near-slave or even actual slave (see Uyghur prisoners and forced labor) wage arbitrage to crush domestic wages and liquidate the middle class. This isn't even getting into the export of environmental destruction ("out of sight out of mind") or the export of American technological expertise to unfriendly totalitarian states.

H1B programs can be shady this way too. It's not as shady as actual slave labor or near-slave sweatshops, but there is certainly a serious power imbalance when your employer can pay you sub-standard wages and threaten to cause you to be deported if you don't keep your head down.

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This undecided voter would appreciate the gesture of you sharing with me some examples of the “other absolutely horrible stuff”.

The three worst are: normalization of racism after 50 years of steadily decreasing racism in America, terrible COVID response responsible for 100,000+ deaths in excess of what average countries have achieved, and vast corruption that has destroyed hundreds-of-years-old norms on presidential conduct (Secret Service forced to buy rooms at Mar A Lago, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs participating in a political stunt in uniform, political campaign letter included in food boxes, etc).

The election is basically that of a homeowner deciding whether he wants the guy who is spraying a flamethrower into every corner of his house, or an empty cardboard box. If you loathe your house and want it destroyed, the flamethrower guy is who you want. Just be careful, there’s no insurance check when the house burns to the ground.

* Separated families at the border fleeing violence * Installs government officials with conflicts of interest or intentions of undermining their goals (EPA, Post Office, Dept Education) * Asks foreign nations to dig up dirt on his opponents * Cosies up to authoritarians while insulting our allies (NATO anyone?) * Undermined the free press by calling everything he doesn't like fake news regardless of its validity * literally trying to call the next election into question so he can bring it to the supreme court by not agreeing to a peaceful transition of power and stoking fears about mail-in ballots o__0

But his trade policies are ineffective and scattershot. Literally nothing he's done on trade has improved anyone in the US's wages, net profits, or way of life, nor has any of it set up the conditions for that to happen in the future.

It's all bullshit posturing.

I see posturing as an improvement over the wholesale selloff and export of the entire economic and industrial basis of the US middle class to totalitarian regimes.

That being said, I agree that Trump has only been marginally effective here and generally has no coherent plan... for this or much of anything else. Donald doesn't plan. He blusters and postures.

Median U.S. household income rises 6.8% to $68,700 in 2019, poverty rate falls for fifth year

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/15/u-s-median-h...

If he had spent four years on trade instead of being a moron on Twitter I might be voting for him this month.

> I am concerned that Biden will return us to the old days of "free" trade

Based on his latest rhetoric, he seems to have adopted Sanders's views on trade, which is mostly protectionist.

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