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Foundations

Trade And Immigration

How To Think About Trade

  • Trade and immigration are good for the U.S. economy.
  • Free trade connects us to more people and allows us to purchase better goods at a cheaper price.
  • Bigger markets mean more of an incentive to develop advanced technology. The iPhone doesn’t get invented if it can only be sold to a few hundred people.
  • The more people you are connected with, the more you can grow.
  • Trade is already quite free. The challenge is to preserve and extend what we have.
  • The logic that isolation will create more American jobs is false.
  • Free trade only needs one sentence: American buyers may buy anything they want from anywhere in the world without tariff or quota restriction.

How To Think About Immigration

  • Immigration is largely not free, so many of its potential benefits remain unrealized.
  • Immigration is good for the U.S. economic because it allows foreign entrepreneurs and high-skilled immigrants to come to America and create jobs.
  • Small sensible reforms, like allowing people who complete advanced degrees here to stay and work without obtaining special permission, would stimulate the economy.
  • Assimilation is always an issue and our immigration policy should encourage it among immigrants.
  • More open trade and immigration is the best foreign aid America can offer while also benefitting American citizens through cheaper goods and faster economic growth.
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