bardicverse said:
And if the US govt lets Americans lose their jobs, then they have more people on welfare, and less and less people paying taxes, which keeps the entire system stable. Picture it like this - You're a farmer. You just collected your harvest, and a famine is going around making all the soil in the world unusable for the next 2-3 years. Do you horde your harvest and save it for your family to survive through the crisis, or do you continue to sell your crops for the sake of trade/profit on it? And no, you don't have enough to do both.
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Protectionist laws raise taxes (tariffs) on imported goods and/or impose limits (quotas) on the amount of goods governments permit to enter into a country. aka steel in this case
They are laws that not only restrict the choice of consumer goods, but also contribute greatly both to the cost of goods and to the cost of doing business. So under "protectionism" you end up poorer, with less money for buying other things you want and need. Moreover, protectionist laws that reduce consumer spending power actually end up destroying jobs. In the USA, for example, according to the US Department of Labor's own statistics, "protectionism" destroys eight jobs in the general economy for every one saved in a protected industry.
