>If you really believed what you wrote, why do you think trade deals exist in the first place? What function do you think they serve? In an ideal world, we wou

>If you really believed what you wrote, why do you think trade deals exist in the first place? What function do you think they serve? In an ideal world, we would have free trade between nations and no trade deals. In the real world, for various reasons, we have trade barriers. But those who wish to see more trade can fight fire with fire by carving out exceptions to trade barriers in the form of trade deals and making trade more free in that way. It's all political horse trading, none of it creates new economic value that wouldn't be there in a free trade regime. But the important thing to note is that both imports and exports are good for your country; think of them both as technologies that convert between products at a favorable exchange rate. [0] Just because another country dampens the effectiveness of this technology in one way, why would you then respond by throwing out the technology altogether? [0] Think I was first exposed to this idea of thinking of trade as a technology in that way by https://tradef20.classes.ryansafner.com/readings/Krugman-1993.pdf https://tradef20.classes.ryansafner.com/readings/Krugman-199..., section II/