A comment from the thread in this case dealing with Donald Trump on free trade:

Heads explode all over these days. Note the outrageous claims, lots of personal invective and total lack of balance. Lowenstein was (is?) in the employ of the ferociously anti-Trump Murdoch vehicle, the WSJ. The same outfit who love their cosy relationship with the current political apparatus, and who run bogus ‘agenda polls’ to undermine Trump. RL is a shock jock journo. So think of this:

‘As someone who lived 27 years in East Asia, I know what a rich seam Trump is tapping into as he focuses on America’s trade disaster. For two generations already, increasingly pathetic American trade officials have turned a blind eye to the blatant barriers facing American exports in key foreign markets. One result has been a tragic roll-call of factory closures in the American heartland. Another result, as Trump has insistently pointed out, is that other nations literally laugh at the United States. They think of the U.S. government as idiotic where it is not corrupt.

The problem with free trade is not just that other countries cheat but that they see no reason not to cheat. Cheating confers several key benefits that American officials and commentators consistently sweep under the rug: just the most obvious is that it forces the transfer of American production technology.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of how formidably the Japanese car market is protected has been the performance of the Korean auto industry. At last count the Koreans had less than 0.02 percent of the Japanese car market.

Even Hyundai, Korea’s largest auto maker, sold a mere 1,700 cars a year in Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Repeated efforts to surmount Japanese trade barriers yielded so little that in 2009 Hyundai shut down its Japanese car sales division.’

I post regularly on this subject since I check out each of DJT’s claims. Technology theft from the engine of innovation is extremely well documented as are the methods of coercion in US-China trade relations.

I suspect Trump knows a good deal more about the realities of business dealings national and international than virtually any of those who comment in the press.