Recommendable! Food for thought!
"... The U.S. economy produces about $28 to $29 trillion a year—roughly the same size as all the world's exports combined. Our GDP is one quarter of all the world's output. Imports might add variety at the margins or bring in goods that foreign producers are especially good at producing, but they aren't crucial to bringing quality products to American consumers.
Free-trade theory says countries should stick to what they have a "comparative advantage" in—coffee for Colombia, wine for France, cars for Germany. That tidy model might work for small, specialized economies. It doesn't fit America.
The U.S. is a continental economy with every climate, resource, and skill base. We grow olives and cranberries—crops that never overlap anywhere else on earth. We make semiconductors and soybeans, airplanes and avocados. That's not comparative advantage. It's comprehensive advantage. Our economy is so large and diverse that the neat Ricardian trade story collapses. We have the domestic capital and labor to make quality products at a scale and variety unknown to history or the rest of the world. We don't need to specialize in one niche to be efficient. ..."
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