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Comment by foxglacier | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone explain the reversal of positions on free trade between left and right since the 2000s? Back then, the biggest bogeyman of leftists was globalization and they would protest against free trade agreements and wanted to boycott imports from poor countries because it was exploiting workers there and taking jobs from poor people in rich countries. At the same time rightists loved free trade because it was good for economic growth everywhere. Since Trump 1 when he cancelled some trade agreements, that somehow turned upside-down and leftists since then love free trade while rightists (or at least Trump) oppose it. Trump seems to be like part of a 2000's leftist dressed up as a rightist.

I wonder if the change in leftists is just a reaction to Trump who they didn't like because of his personality. Now everybody's making economic arguments which is nothing like what the older type of leftist would do.

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I don't think the positions have reversed as much as you're thinking. Trump began this round of trade wars with a series of indefensible attacks on free trade with Canada, which is clearly good for American workers and has never been unpopular in the US. If Trump had done everything else he's doing here, but used a sensible formula and avoided pointlessly antagonizing Canada, you would see significant crossover support from the left.

because the constituencies have been largely reversed.

Any time one party focuses their attention on one thing, the other will generally greatly oppose it.

Republicans weren't the antivaxxers - that was largely hippie type democrats - prior to 2020, and weren't really even until the government mandates, just to give one example. Hell, it isn't even an idea but look what happened to Elon Musk. Liberals loved him until he started publicly sharing some conservative ideas, which made them waffle a bit, and now they absolutely loathe him.

This is going to sound like peak HN head-up-own-assery, but I've come to realize that 90% of the population has basically no capacity for nuance, at least politically.

> Hell, it isn't even an idea but look what happened to Elon Musk. Liberals loved him until he started publicly sharing some conservative ideas, which made them waffle a bit, and now they absolutely loathe him.

I mean, this one is just being reasonable. Liberals were for a person X as long as that person pretended to favor the same policies and ideologies. When that person turn out to be conservative, well actually far right political player, they changed opinion on the person. Both Trump and Musk dabbling in the democratic politics and then being rejected by them is a sign of more consistent politics of that side.

When liberals were antivaxxers, issue was not much political. And democrats and other liberals largely criticized these. Politically, liberal antivaxers were minority that lost the political fight in their own party. They were not putting in anti-vaccers into power.

The tariffs aren't a "right-wing" position.

They're a Trump position.

They have no basis in principle, ideology, or logic.

They are purely something he wants because he misunderstands what they are and do, and thinks that they will punish other countries more than they will punish the US.

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