[joey_bob]

> Now that the US has shown it can ban foreign tech companies if it's in their own interest, and all the moralizing talk about the free market has been exposed as the self-serving propaganda it has always been, what reason do be exactly have to keep playing this game where we are the biggest losers?

One of the ideas behind the structure of our republic is that there can be peaceful changes in power between different governments. What I mean to say is that the US is not one person, not even the US government. So, the moralizing talk about the free market has not always been duplicitous as you seem to imply. The protectionist actions you see now are just taken by the current government, who even on its own, doesn’t seem to have harp on the need for a free market very much. This is especially true when you compare it to the last government that was backing the TPP, something that was promptly killed after the regime change.

Otherwise I agree with your conclusion, European countries should chart their own way. Gotta watch those negative interest rates though, might be a little trickier in a closed economy.

[smolder]

I, for one, am glad the TPP is dead. We can have fair international trade without giving multinational corporations "the right to a business model" and letting them seek compensation from governments through tribunal over lost profits caused by changed laws. The TPP seemed absurd in that respect.