It's hard to argue against the idea that you should care for you own family before others, although this goes against utilitarianism. What interests me are the people who say we should care for Americans before we spend any money trying to help people in foreign countries. Is that just national prejudice, or is there a reason for saying "America first?"
7 comments:
We do place America first. It's a matter of degree; do we spend 97% of our aid in aiding Americans, or 98%?
99 percent on the last statistics I saw.
Goes to show that we waste just a wee bit of our money here at home.
Our leaders should act on our behalf and to protect our safety. That point, no one genuinely disputes. But recent "America First" ideology is misguided. Trump's "America First" ideology involved imposing illogical trade tariffs that hurt the very agricultural and production industries he claimed they would protect. His nationalism hurts U.S. interests abroad. It's not a principled position, as it ignores global economic realities. Acting in helping other countries helps one's own. Just as, on the individual level, helping one's neighbors tends to foster relationships that will help oneself.
Acting in helping other countries helps one's own.
If imposing tariffs and trade restrictions on other country's products hurt that country's interests, please try to convince China. They don't seem to agree with you.
China's retaliatory tariffs IS the point. It's why tariffs make no sense. At best, it cancels itself out because the target country responds with its own tariffs. But in reality, its more than offset by its adverse consequences. Moreover, I have no burden to convince China, nor does their disagreement mean anything to me about the effects of Trump's misguided America First policies. The facts speak for themselves.
https://taxfoundation.org/tariffs-trump-trade-war/ https://www.aier.org/article/trumps-tariffs-did-nothing-to-boost-the-steel-industry/?gclid=CjwKCAjwgOGCBhAlEiwA7FUXkiGCLGJUVpaEfm0uRYZxIHx6pAWbi3j6c2emBgu6hc8mHclC8EFUxxoCexAQAvD_BwE
China had tariffs and trade/business restrictions in place decades before Trump.
Some of those restrictions still include the demand for the actual manufacturing of the products sold within China to be produced within China in order to boost employment of the Chinese people. In the decades that China opened up to Western trade, they've done quite nicely restricting imports while exporting to the West.
So their China-first policy seems to have worked quite well for them.
Here's one person's answer to the question of where one's loyalty belongs.
Is he right?
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