[insickness]

> People are scared and want their leaders to protect their jobs from foreign competition.

It's not 'competition' that people are afraid of, it is unfair government intervention and tariffs. The idea with Trump's trade wars is that if a country imposes tariff's on US goods, the US will respond in kind until those tariff's are removed and fair competition is restored. Whether or not this is actually happening in practice is another story, but to say nationalists are afraid of competition misses the mark.

[mtberatwork]

> It's not 'competition' that people are afraid of, it is unfair government intervention and tariffs.

People aren't afraid of that either, they are afraid of the rise in cost of living compared to the tepid rise of their wages.

[longstaff2009]

My understanding is that Trump's trade war was apart of the America First economic policy to reduce the US trade deficit. This had the added benefit of making manufacturing more viable in the US.