There are a lot of very poor towns in the U.S. that are in a constant state of economic depression even in the best of times. I live in one of them. It's not Midwestern, but there are many rural areas that very, very poor in this country, often because a mine or a factory that used to provide the livelihood of the whole community is now gone. I get what DMC is saying and think people shouldn't trivialize too much. It's also more than fair for DMC to suggest that most of the trade deals we have struck in recent decades have resulted in trade deficits for the U.S. There are plenty of communities in the UK that are under similar circumstances. These are realities.
These things said, there is a reason why no Democrat running for president this year is using the word "tariffs" in anything other than a negative light, including the fair trade Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. All you have to do to see why is look at both the economic results of the current administration's ridiculous trade wars, as well as the polling on it, both of which are very negative, ESPECIALLY in the Midwestern states!
The Trump Administration's ambition is to negotiate new trading agreements with a host of other countries that are more favorable mostly to the American capitalist class (as in you will notice the absence of new labor protections in the deals being negotiated, for example) and the White House contends that aggressive measures that include unilaterally disregarding existing trade deals and imposing protective tariffs on imported goods of all sorts are tactics necessary to bring countries and blocks ranging from China to Mexico to the EU and South Korea and everyone else on Earth apparently to the bargaining table and cause them to make concessions. The reality of the matter though is that the disruptive effect of that process is nightmarish for American manufacturing, which is why the fair trade Democrats insist on renegotiating many of our existing trade deals in way that's multilateral rather than unilateral. That avoids the existing economic disruptions that are frankly starting the tank the economy. And the fair trade Democrats insist that new labor and environmental protections should be added to future trade agreements with other countries, unlike the current administration.
The same basic principles apply to Brexit. Unilaterally withdrawing from the EU is just factually a catastrophic prospect for the UK that will likely hurt the poorer parts of the country the very worst. The economic ramifications of a no-deal Brexit would be many times worse for the UK than of the current trade wars the U.S. is fighting in this country have been.
