The US is far less dependent on trade than the average country. We could close our borders to the world entirely and be fine after an initial discomfort.
And nobody has has seen America as the “good guy” in my lifetime. We’re the country that destabilizes Latin American and Asian countries, bombs the Middle East, etc. I used to think there was at least a logic to all that, but it turns out our elites were just ideologues and morons.
Canada is the source of more than 80% of the US's potash, the source of fertilizer. Without that, the entire farming industry and its crops withers and dies. It is not something easily sourced and not something easily replaced, and the crops all die long before it can be sourced or replaced. Your suggestion to close the border is absurd, jingoistic, empty, and meaningless.
Again, I'm not an economist, bear with me and explain what that's got to do with the trade deficit being a deficit? You could have a GDP of a quintillion dollars a year but if you're consistently running a trade deficit (which the US has for decades), that strongly implies you cannot close your borders with impunity.
If you could supply the goods cheaper than importing them, people would, no? Simple capitalism!
While American, I've lived most of my life abroad, and share with your world view of the US.
But after having spent years living in China, and being very familiar with the political situation there and their global ambitions, I'm afraid that the alternative to the US is even worse.
Have a democratic system has somewhat of a moderating effect on the worst impulses of the US elite. China has no such guardrails.
What “democratic system?” American are checked by anti-democratic forces at every turn, from a judiciary that overturns duly enacted laws based on “emanations from penumbras” to an executive branch that is run by the same people regardless of who wins the election to institutions that are captured by people that abuse their positions to peddle their fringe ideologies.
To paraphrase Churchill, "democracy is the worst system, except for all the others".
There's a lot you don't know about how things actually work in China. The levels of autocracy, corruption and lack of true legal framework, make the US look like a democratic haven.
Would this be the same China where jaywalkers' portaits are automatically shamed on electronic billboards and fined social credits? Is that a worthwhile trade for universal single-payer healthcare?
The US is extremely dependent on trade because the US needs the USD to be the currency of trade and reserve to sustain its debt and deficits, without which GDP would drop precipitously.
The US isn't far less dependent, China is at 37% GDP from trade to the US's 27% but doesn't have the structural dependency on trade from having the reserve currency.
USA exports are idling around 1/4 to near 1/3 of the GDP. Our economy is heavily tied to imports from other counties.
When it comes to isolation I think of this:
The word invasion itself is a good example of this.
A French ironmaster says: "We must protect ourselves from the invasion of English iron!" An English landlord cries: "We must repel the invasion of French wheat!" And they urge the erection of barriers between the two nations. Barriers result in isolation; isolation gives rise to hatred; hatred, to war; war, to invasion. "What difference does it make?" say the two sophists. "Is it not better to risk the possibility of invasion than to accept the certainty of invasion?" And the people believe them, and the barriers remain standing.
And yet, what analogy is there between an exchange and an invasion? What possible similarity can there be between a warship that comes to vomit missiles, fire, and devastation on our cities, and a merchant vessel that comes to offer us a voluntary exchange of goods for goods?
And nobody has has seen America as the “good guy” in my lifetime. We’re the country that destabilizes Latin American and Asian countries, bombs the Middle East, etc. I used to think there was at least a logic to all that, but it turns out our elites were just ideologues and morons.