it's amazing to me when people on hn (supposed champions of meritocracy and innovation and free markets etc) are so scared of actual free trade. like what are you scared of? equilibration in wages? the only reason to be scared of that is because you're afraid of your purchasing power going down but that means of course your current purchasing power comes at the expense of someone else's. and if you don't buy that argument - "it's not a zero-sum game you communist!" - then you have nothing to be scared of (because your purchasing power will remain high) and you should support truly free trade.
> it is weaponized to destroy a nation-state’s industrial output surreptitiously
are we talking about the US or China or Canda or Mexico here? i can't keep track of who the "bad guys" are that are supposedly weaponizing and who the victims are.