I really dont know about this free trade vs isolationism thing.
Free trade can be a good thing if it's between equally strong and developed economies, and if it doesnt lead to one-sided job losses. That something like NAFTA wouldnt work out, however, was very obvious from the get go.
So I'm not against free trade agreements between, for example, the EU and Japan, or the EU and the States. (Note: TTIP is not primarily a free trade agreement, it's an overcomplex abomination whose primary purpose was to undermine democracy and strengthen the rule of large corporations.)
At the same time, I'm also not entirely against the idea of using tariffs between the US/EU/Japan and China/Mexico/BRICS.
The key conceptual difficulty with free trade is the following: free trade always boosts the overall wealth of an economy, but the distribution of the "free trade dividend" is extremely uneven. Typically, the gains go to the rich owners of large corporations, and to the professionals. The losses, however, are beared by the middle class and the less educated folks. If those adverse effects of free trade on jobs and prospects of the middle class are not addressed, it can cause problems that, over time, eat up the dividend of free trade and turn it into a net negative. Hence, to make free trade work, so that everyone is better off, it must be accompanied by significant redistribution, which goes against the ideology of most capitalistic societies, and certainly against the ideology of those circles who are pushing for free trade the hardest.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 17 2018 04:32pm