Good money after bad. Sigh.

I always enjoy your refreshing voice of reason! I will concede that “betrayal” is too harsh of a term, but I have strong feelings about people who intentionally harm my country. Furthermore, I couldn’t agree more with you that the U.S. government has failed at resolving trade inequities. I really hope our new president does exactly as you say.

Perhaps you think that calling me “stupid” convinces everyone that you are correct, and saying “PERIOD” means that the debate has ended and you have won. In reality, if you want to convince people of the validity of your point of view, you need two essential ingredients: facts and people skills.

The facts that I have are that Japan has a history of protectionist trade policies and subsidies to their domestic industries. This gives their industries a tremendous unfair advantage in the U.S. market. Their distorted cost structure is what has historically allowed them to provide more quality for a lower price. But, even at such a disadvantage, U.S. industry has been catching up in recent years.

When you buy Japanese products instead of similar American-made products, American industry suffers. If we were talking about a nation that trades more fairly (like Canada), they would reciprocate, give our products a fair chance to be sold in their country, and the gains from the exports would balance out the losses from the imports. But Japan doesn’t reciprocate (otherwise, they wouldn’t have such huge trade surpluses). This weakens our whole society, because less jobs are available to support our families, and less tax money is available for social programs, infrastructure, and national defense.

That is why I contend that, when reasonable alternatives are available, but you choose to weaken America’s economy just to get a better deal for yourself, you are betraying your country.