Trade restrictions and tariffs that would being it to a more equitable level. Those would be used as a forcing mechanism for countries to improve in all of those fields and as they improve the restrictions ease.
The image of Donald Trump standing up for the downtrodden worker, and singing a raspy version of the "internationale", eludes me completely. What I do recall is Trump insisting tough play with China will bring manufacturing jobs back to America. The only manufacturing jobs that are going to return to the US, or any advanced economy, are going to be for robots. Even China is beginning the shift to automation in some sectors. Unless American workers want to compete with Bangladeshi wages, there will be no jobs for them, tough play or not.
The problem with tariffs is that they are easily retaliated against, and this can go into a downward spiral in which all lose. China is beginning to develop a middle class, and hence a domestic market for its products, indeed a very big one, meaning, exports will not be so critical for them in the future. The US could find itself in deep economic s***t by initiating a trade war with China.
Trade is war. That's simply how it is, and we are losing that war. I don't see taxes the way you do. I'm a flat % tax person. Everyone pays the same %, no matter how much you made, and there are no deductions or refunds. Withdrawing from treaties is a good idea as they make any issue worse. WWI gave us WWII. WWI became such because of treaties. If not for them then it would have be a small conflict between two 2nd rate countries.
How is the US losing? Trade is expanding, GDP is growing, Americans get super cheap products from the developing world. Trade is not an issue so much as the rise of the corporate culture, in which business entities can move anywhere in the world to increase their bottom line, whereas workers cannot. And so companies move to Bangladesh to get cheap labour, and move their headquarters to Ireland to avoid taxes. Guess who loses out there.
All taxes are, at their core, a political judgement on how society should be ordered. A flat tax is just one of many such subjective conclusions, one that sees some value in high rates of inequality. I find it odd that many who so strongly demand freedom are also the ones that willingly give up one of the public's main tools to free them from the control of the elite, a progressive and pro-social tax system.
WW1 was partly about treaties, but also came about because of the prevailing sentiments of the time. Nationalist hubris was very powerful then, and war was seen in a different light. Glory was imagined in war, the triumph of good over evil, and it was even imagined good for youth, a kind of hard edged education on the world. WW2 was a horse of a different colour. It was a time of world wide fascism, which arose for various reasons, and had little or nothing to do with alliances.
The US was entangled in neither due to alliances.It entered WW1 for commercial reasons. America wanted to trade with the western allies, Germany wanted to stop them, and so torpedoed ships, a pretty clear throwing down of the metaphorical gauntlet. Even if this hadn't happened, the US likely would have jumped in anyway, because its investments in Britain and France were such at that point that a German win (and presumably then loss of this money) would have been too big a hit to take. It was money, not alliances.
The US resisted any sort of alliance in WW2 for a long time, but eventually the writing was on the wall. Survival meant getting involved. A violent, extremist fascist regime encompassing all of Europe and Asia would have left the US in a very vulnerable position. It had to act, and so it did.
The last war made abundantly clear that the greater safety lay in engagement with the world, not retreat, and in a firm set of alliances, not in nationalistic hubris and slogans.
It's nuclear weapons are going to proliferate, no matter what people do. It will get easier and easier to create as technology advances. Not sure how to change that.
One way to do that is an interlocking set of alliances that mean nations are not on their own, and so do not have to necessarily match everyone else's capability. Japan and S Korea are not rushing to get nuclear weapons because of their alliance with the US. Germany is embedded in NATO, with US, British, and French nuclear deterrents, and so on. Trumps's grandstanding and demagoguery would pull these long standing institutions apart, virtually guaranteeing greater proliferation.
That's an interesting theory. Cyborg/sentient god robots floating around.
I wish I could remember the name of the book. It's a good read if you can it.
