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Has the dropping of tariffs and cheaper products from abroad helped or hurt America? I really dont understand how that shit works....



In general, just about every economist will tell you free trade makes both countries involved in the trading richer. Each country has a specialty whereby the other country can buy goods within that specialty cheaper than if they did it themselves. And, the extra resources saved by buying those goods cheaper can be expended upon other things that they're better at, thus growing their economy more.

The problem is that specific niches of the economy are displaced when you introduce more and more free trade. Like, if you start outsourcing banana farming to the Caribbean, all the banana farmers in the US get put out of work. Ideally you'd fund some kind of transition into other fields for the banana farmers when you displace them due to changing the rules with new treaties. But in practice, that's difficult. E.g., what do you do with a 60 year old guy who can't learn another trade? Yes, I know, you just have him grow something else. Farming's a bad example. But, you get the idea.

However, on the whole, each country is better off.

What's screwed us up with China (who I think is our largest trading partner, or not trading mostly, but buying from) is that our government spends so much more money than it takes in. And, that extra cash we need, we borrow from China. Conservatives will bitch about everything the government spends money on. But, even Liberals agree that it's health care costs that's sinking the government budget. America spends a hell of a lot more on health care than other countries without better health statistics. That health care reform thing Obama just got passed doesn't do anything to cut costs. It's an entitlement bill that gets health insurance to the poor and the sick. Not a bad thing, just that it avoided the central problem, cost, and actually even makes costs a little worse, is why that bill Obama got passed sucks so bad.

The reason our national debt being so important is that when our economy tanks, the government doesn't have any resources to try to resuscitate it. And, the debt drags on the federal budget because we have to pay interest on the debt every year.

That, and the Obama bill is a bureaucratic nightmare. I've seen claims that it creates something like 20 new government bureaucracies. Just ridiculous. The bill is a mess like that.