America should strive toward self dependency

Rebuttals "Think of employment. Factories will open up in America. People will be employed by these factories. Yes, the banana industry may decrease..... That person was put out of work by a Guatemalan and is now on unemployement." Factories are a bit different than growing banana trees, but I think you miss a key reason why we import and export agricultural products. We do it because it's an efficient reallocation of resources. When we have a lot of one food product, such as oranges, we export them because it is more profitable to the orange farmer to send the oranges overseas than to just sell domestically. It is more efficient to buy bananas from other countries than to make domestically. Both nations do end up better off because greater wealth is generated in both. What you miss in your example of a orange farmer losing their job is the fact you are comparing "bananas and oranges". Economically speaking, the orange farmer is actually better off with international trade because he has the ability to grow more oranges for markets around the world. He won't lose his demand in oranges because some people also want bananas. What would be detrimental to the orange farmer is if we strived toward an isolationist economy. This would crush the orange farmer, because instead of focusing his farms on oranges for both domestic and international trade, he would be forced to either sell less (less demand) or sell other, now more expensive agricultural products. There is no net benefit to this policy. On a broader scale, we mass produce things in America to sell to other countries too. The profit we get from this allows us to buy other mass produced things from these countries. The amount of value-generating employment we would get if this was cut off would be less. This is because people in America would then have to deal with making things that the other countries could make for cheaper, as opposed to focusing on our higher paying jobs. "One of the things you mentioned, nuts and fruits, actually helps my point.... Lowered unemployment(and fresher fruit)." The problem with this is that, if it was more profitable to make it at home, it would have already been done. People make products because they generate profit. The profit they would get doing this would be less than doing other jobs. If importation stopped, the prices would indeed go up on these products, allowing it to be more profitable. Except we then have to sell it for more as it would be more expensive to make here, which hurts consumers. The other problem is the jobs that it would produce would be less productive than other jobs the new nut and fruit farmers might have had if they focused their skills on other things. "While it may be cheaper, the US companies lay off people because Chinese people can work for pennies on the dollar. The US citizens lose their jobs and go on unemployment which causes tax surges. This causes people to have less money to spend on American goods. All this could be solved by simply making America self sufficient." Chinese workers working on pennies on the dollar is the reason we can have so much cheap products in America today. Many of the things that people buy, whether rich or unemployed, are made cheap enough so people could afford them and live better off than they would have been. You bring up the idea that US citizens lose their jobs and go on unemployment. While unemployment is a problem, the worst way to fix it is by making things more expensive for everyone. It would basically be taking money from the rich, middle class and poor (through consumption), and giving it to the unemployed. This is basically equivalent to unemployment benefits, except that it isn't as obvious to people. I will get into this later. "In addition, this will prevent the economic expansion of the competitors of the US. Especially China. The threat of China surpassing us would decrease dramatically when they no longer produce for the US." This is a "what if China didn't exist" scenario. The implications of losing our biggest trading partner is tremendous. A large portion of our economy is dependent on buying and selling between the two countries. For example, "In the United States, 41 percent of our clothing is made in China (57 percent comes from elsewhere around the world, with only 2 percent made domestically)"(1). Imagine the amount of extra money everyone in America would have to spend on clothing if we didn't trade in China. Instead of paying a few dollars on shirts and pants, poor individuals may have to spend over $100. We simply don't have the ability to compete realistically with China when it comes to some industries. We'd also lose a major buyer from the USA as well. In 2011, About $103.9 billion in products were exported to China(2). If this wasn't allowed, there would be huge losses to people all over America. It would cause a lot of unemployment as well, as companies would need to scale down their production to remain profitable. Less demand would mean the business would have to either lower the price of the product, or make less of it. If the company can't afford to make the prices so low, it is bound to reduce supply, and in turn fire unneeded workers. This graph shows how this works(3). Arguments Unemployment: "Again, think of employment opportunities for an Iron industry in America versus somewhere in Asia." I would argue that employment is easy to solve. It's the generation of wealth that's the problem. The government could do various things to decrease unemployment, such as making government job creation programs, or increasing tax rates on imports. What you would advocate for is to shelter American industries from outside industries. In either case, the result is less money, as government doesn't create wealth, it uses it. For an example of how government fails to create good jobs, see the video above. http://www.youtube.com... One point that Professor Horwitz brings up is that "the story of human progress has been our ability to eliminate jobs by economizing on the scarcest resources of all, human labor, in order to make the things that we want." Another is "all technological innovation means that workers have to learn new skills and some are likely to be unemployed for a period of time. And while that unemployment is bad, the alternatives are worse. These labor transitions are the price we pay for economic progress. To prevent them would be to halt growth, innovation, and the reduction of poverty." While much of his arguments were in defense of technology, all of them could be said the same for cheaper labor in other countries. Cheap labor and technology have the equivalent benefit in our society. Limiting either hinders our growth. Since the 19th century, we've gone from agricultural jobs, to industrial jobs, to service jobs, to knowledge jobs. Market signals indicate what skills people should be investing in and where the new jobs of the future will be. To prevent our progress forward as a developed nation, by hindering our ability to have free trade, would be a horrible mistake. Previous Arguments: As Pro never responded to my other arguments, such as individual freedom, innovation and competition, and dissemination of democratic values, I must assume he has conceded to these points. In conclusion, people should not look to the government to create jobs. They should look at the free market to find out what jobs will generate the most wealth in the future. Wealth generating jobs are the jobs we need in America today, not government-generated ones.Sources: 1.http://www.good.is... 2. https://www.uschina.org... 3. http://www.acqnotes.com...