You just failed business 101. All equitable transactions benefit both sides of the transaction.
If a business spends all their money on hookers and coke, it is indeed an equitable transaction with both sides benefiting. But that business is still gonna go out of business no matter how equitable it was.
You just failed business 102.
Free trade is undeniably good for the economy.
I welcome any attempts to disprove the scenario I linked. The scenario I have provided proves the above statement wrong. (that it is "undeniably" good)
Not really. Where are you getting told all of these myths? Not sure what you read but you should probably find some better more reliable freedom-oriented sources for your understanding of economics.
A myth? Your outright dismissal of the claim that global economic integration has costs in cultural, sovereignty, and security, makes you look like a religious fanatic of free trade, rather than a critical thinking individual.
The risks to culture, sovereignty, and security seems to me at least extremely obvious, but I am happy to detail what I meant by that.
Culture
The global language has become English and other languages are rapidly declining in use and will be effectively extinct within generations. The free movement of people and products is rapidly leading to the global homogenization of culture where everyone and everything is the same. No matter where you go in the world you can find a Pizza Hut or a McDonalds and while even those have regional differences now they will eventually all be the exact same.
The global export of Hollywood and its formative impacts on children is gradually aligning everyone in the world to the same customs & values, which is exacerbated by the free movement of people.
If we look at Iran, they have (largely) managed to retain its cultural customs & values despite western unpopularity of its ideals. The limitations of trade with Iran have almost certainly helped them to retain their culture. If they were fully exposed to free trade over the past 50 years or so, their culture would likely look radically different than it does today.
Meanwhile, America's culture has become diluted (if not outright destroyed) by the free movement of people that have come into it. Baseball is often cited as a part of American culture. Last year's World Series was the least-watched World Series of all time (
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/wstv.shtml)
The impact to America's ideals and values is unfortunately more abstract and less measurable, but still incredibly impactful. Gone are the concepts of "Rugged independence", "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps". It's now all about common welfare and safety nets.
We are leading to a global homogenization of culture and this has serious risks to sovereignty, both nationally, and more generally, as I will explain below.
Sovereignty
Free trade poses multiple risks to sovereignty. In the long term, the erosion of culture and national identity will remove the largest barrier to a One World Government. When everyone in the world speaks the same language, shares similar values, laughs at the same jokes, has similar political systems, and uses the same currency, there will be no remaining cultural barriers to a global One World Government. This is perhaps the most important sovereignty risk as there will be nowhere to hide once this is done.
Other more immediate risks to sovereignty are more straight forward. If your country has a reliance on foreign trade for a product, the countries that provide that product can exert influence over you, either individually, or as a group. Even if you have multiple trading partners available, short-term reductions in supply from a single partner can have impactful consequences to your economy. This effect is exacerbated by specialization, which is a "good thing" economically, but certainly bad when it comes to protecting your sovereignty.
Security
We saw this during COVID, it shouldn't require much explanation. If your country relies on computer chips to function, and those computer chips are supplied via container ships across the pacific ocean, then those products cannot be reliably depended upon in terms of international crisis/strife/warfare.
If we were to theoretically "specialize" (which is a "good thing") all of our food production to countries across the various oceans, exactly how fucked would we be if those supply lines were cut off due to war or crisis? Pretty damn fucked, is what the answer.
As I've said before, there are irresponsible trades, that just because you can make, doesn't mean you should. Even if these trades "save money".
