Megathread: President Trump announces increase in tariffs on China for billions of dollars of products, as Wall Street reacts to an intensifying trade war

To do anything but blame an external non-american "other" would be to admit that what is really to blame is American corperate leaders operating on the Friedman doctrine, corporations never paying their share of taxes, and America's last few decades of continuously slashing taxes for the most wealthy Americans forcing everyone else to pick up the burden. The reason for the misbehaviour of American corporations who treat communities and employees as if they don't matter is not the fault of China or Mexico but because in American corporate culture the shareholder, not the stakeholder, comes first and foremost with everything else something you just strategically pay lips service to through PR campaigns. As Milton Friedman put it, it would immoral for a CEO/chairman to put anything like the employee, environment, national good, humanity, or consumer second to blinding increasing all value possible for the shareholders. To do so according to him would somehow lead to totalitarianism, ie evil communism. Friedman gave the bullshit excuse that corporations had to operate within the rules, the laws, so there was nothing unethical or potentially disastrous about this but failed to acknowledge that any large enough corporation operating on pure shareholder theory under his doctrine for the good of the shareholder is morally obligated to use it's money and power to change the political system, buy off goverment officials, and manipulate public discourse to make sure rules are changed or just not enforced in their single minded drive to increase shareholder value at all moral/ethical cost to society.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

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