Comment by _heimdall
7 days ago
> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.
Is that because we can't grow olives here, or because we don't have federal subsidies propping up a domestic olive industry that can compete with corn and soy?
I ready don't know the details well enough there, but it feels like this could just be selection bias at play.
You can grow olives in the US and there are some farms in CA. The quantities produced are orders of magnitude off though and given the time it takes to grow olive orchards we cannot replace our imports of olives in a reasonable time period.
There's a lot of examples like this. Coffee, and bananas come to mind. You can only grow those in Hawaii, or maybe Flordia, and there's absolutely not enough land to sate our imports. The whole theory behind international trade is that some countries do things well and others don't. In the case of food the reality is more that others can't.
Hawaii is the only U.S. state where you can grow coffee and their coffee costs a fortune. You need tropical weather and high altitude. Florida won't cut it. Besides, we already have fruit rotting in the fields in Florida because there's no one to pick it.
Want to put tariffs on Chinese electric cars or batteries? Ok, fine. But tariffs on all imports? It's the most brain dead policy in my lifetime. I can't think of any products that are produced 100% domestically without any foreign inputs. These tariffs will drive up the price of just about everything.
Puerto Rico (yes not a state) has active coffee farms.
There are olive farms as far north as Oregon. I visited one a few years ago and bought some olive oil; it was very good.
Surely the null hypothesis isn't "The USA would have a domestic industry for every crop known to man if not for external factors"
Oh that's 100% what Potus thinks.
There's no other rationale for this other than thinking this.
You're assuming he has any rationale at all
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Or (more likely) they would not have access to many crops at all.
Personally I don't mind not having strawberries in the middle of winter, but for some they care about that.
Sure, but that's the rationalizing of someone who can't get strawberries in winter. Getting food that's not grown locally much less in the current local season is one of the most QoL-improving parts of the modern world.
Kinda sad to go from that back to "well I guess I don't really need these nice things we took for granted. I suppose I can live off jellied eels again."
Donald Trump, champion of the locavore community. Now I've heard everything.
Let's ignore whether we'll actually get there, that's a very deep question and entirely theoretical for now.
If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce most or all of our own products, would you not prefer that?
That's like saying "If we could snap our fingers and every state would have mild weather, abundant capital, and a highly talented workforce, would you not prefer that?"
Yeah, then every city could be like SF or LA or NYC.
But it's not even worth it as a thought exercise because it completely ignores reality. The reason I live in NJ and pay high taxes is because this is where the high paying jobs and good schools are. Cottontown, Alabama theoretically could be a financial capitol of the world and if you want to base your position on that, then you should probably re-examine your position.
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Good question.
No, I would not prefer that. A robust distributed system is less likely to crumble under local pressures. A blight could more easily sweep through a single nation and take out a staple crop or two, where it'd be impossible for that to happen globally. You can't spin up additional global trade quickly after you've shut it down, which could lead to people starving in America. I like systems that can't fail. That's especially true when that system is how I'm able to eat food.
Global trade isn't a security issue, national or otherwise. We don't increase safety or stability by reducing sources of consumables.
Edit; super timely example because this isn't an unlikely hypothetical: egg availability due to bird flu.
> If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce most or all of our own products, would you not prefer that?
I'm not the person you asked, but I would definitely not prefer that. Trade & economic dependencies prevent wars. Wars are really, really bad things.
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I think my answer to this question would be no? The food example is specific, all food can't be grown here, but for other products that aren't commodities, I want different cultures competing to build the best products i.e. cars, and I want other cultures innovating things that maybe their culture is optimized for (video games, electronics in Japan, in the 1980's?). There are some interesting questions recently about how maybe globalization have turned luxuries into commodities (i.e. all cars look the same) but I think my point still stands.
No, I wouldn't; Ricardian comparative advantage is a thing, and the kind of extreme autarky you suggest means sacrificing domestic prosperity available from maximizing the benefits of trade for the aole purpose of also harming prosperity in foreign countries (but usually less sonthan you are denying yourself, because they have other potential trading partners) by denying them the benefits of trade.
Its a lose-lose proposition.
No, research comparative advantage. We actually had it pretty great in the US.
Also a world trading with each other is a world disincentivized from war with each other.
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No, because it is far more expensive to domestically produce our own products. I would rather not have a huge increase in the cost of living.
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I’m not familiar with any arguments that would lead somebody to prefer that. Maybe to avoid giving adversaries leverage over you, but isn’t that better solved by diversifying your supply chain? Maybe to salve the domestic effects of the trade adjustment, but isn’t that better solved by reallocating the surplus wealth rather than eliminating it?
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No, because economic interdependence keeps everyone (mostly) civil on the world stage.
Not at all. We'd be much poorer in that world. Comparative advantage is a thing.
Would the things you produce be as good? As cheap? As available?.
Autarky is very bad.
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No, for the same reason I don't try to manufacture my own car in my backyard or build my own house, or grow all of my own food, or ...
This is basic fucking common sense: I'm good at some things and other people are good at other things. We each specialize in the things we're best at, and everyone ends up better off.
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The exact growing conditions for olive production aren’t common in the US, so most of the production comes from California - west of Sacramento and south along the San Joaquin river. There are a lot of barriers in bringing specialty crops to market related to know-how and contracting sale of product, so even in other areas where growth may be possible it may be infeasible.
https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/olives
https://croplandcros.scinet.usda.gov/
I mean if you could make olive oil cheaper in America wouldn't someone have done that by now?
The US never lacked for smart entrepreneurs looking for a business opportunity. See wine.
Most likely the answer in many such examples is it needs cheap human labor. US seldom lacks anything in terms of natural resources and always comes down to this.
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An olive tree reaches the peak of its productivity after 15 years and can live for several centuries.
An adult tree can be so expensive that there are cases of theft. It takes a heavy truck and a tree puller to steal an olive tree.
Hard for me to believe that even with a surplus of domestic production that comparative advantage of importing still wouldn't be better.
Almost all the olive oil in my local Costco comes from California