Quote from Renegen:
The laws of free trade are not compatible with nation states. While building the bridge in China is cheaper, all it does is send money to the chinese workers and chinese government. Depending on what company built it, sending money to the chinese company too. In simple terms, the US trade deficit rises, which is bad as we know.
But for free trade it's great. The company that can build that bridge for the best value won the contract, while the more inneficient companies go bankrupt, so the GDP of the world goes up.
The US government (both parties) support this kind of free trade, even if it hurts the US, because they hope that the chinese profits will trickle in the US eventually. They want a globalized economy where the best company, anywhere, succeeds, and then magically injects its profits in the poorest country, making everyone happy.
But as long as nation states exist, that will not happen. The Chinese government has no intention of letting that money flow to the US, they want the money to flow through China.
It's actually a classic case of the prisoner's dilemma. China is the "cheater", but there's nothing you can do short of blowing up the system.
This is simply something that will never be rectified, and people will complain endlessly, and there will be never ending debates where someone will be called a socialist for believing in the "USA". The truth is that the richest capitalists have stopped believing in the USA, they can simply invest their money in the chinese bridge company and move to Hong Kong. The only people that still (and need to) believe in the USA are those that are not mobile, aka. the plebs.
