What is so bad about free trade?

Isn't competition in free markets something Republicans believe in anymore? Because forcing Americans to buy inferior locally-made products at a premium through artificial restrictions surely isn't that.

Free trade and globalization are also a pacifying force, by creating mutual dependencies between countries.

Protectionism doesn't work.

"Democrats embraced free trade and globalism with Clinton"

History would disagree with this. Republicans and Big Business were always for free trade and globalism.

Because in 80's-90's, big-corp was salivating over that sweet cheap-cheap foreign labor. To put this on Democrats is a retcon.

> What MAGA is today is what the bulk of the GOP has always been: a coalition of social conservatives and business owners.

I'm skeptical of this historical analysis.

The two major political parties fundamentally realigned during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Before then, Democrats controlled the south. Strom Thurmond switched from Democrat to Republican in 1964. George Wallace ran for President as a Democrat 3 times before he became an independent. Robert Byrd was a Democrat until the end. Who were the "social conservatives"? Both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon (Californians, by the way) made their names as staunch Cold Warrior anti-Communists during the McCarthy era.

I don't think there's any such thing as what "the GOP has always been", or what the Democrats have always been, for that matter. I'm old enough to have seen the parties change several times, and the definitions of "conservative", "liberal", "left", "right" morph into something unrecognizable to former adherents.

The only constant is change.

Business owners don’t like the tariffs either. Even American car companies are being hurt by tariffs on steel and car parts.