In short, so foreign exporters don’t have to pay the historic US Tariffs imposed on them.
They bribed and manipulated key members of the Senate, Treasury, and House back from 1911-1913 to finally get both Federal Income Tax passed (with no caps, initially only for taxing the rich), then created a hybrid European banker cartel with a US label on it.
It was all designed to fleece the American people as debt slaves, where foreign masters who couldn’t conquer us militarily hijacked our monetary policy and government.
The legacy old money European bankers didn’t want to leave their investments up to the booms and busts of the 1800s US economy without better controls for them. Then came Bretton Woods at the end of WWII where “free trade” was used to establish global markets, where all the nations could sell their raw materials and products between each other without tariffs in the US.
Because we’re so prosperous, we get the shaft footing the bill for all of this while foreigners enjoy exploiting our system.
It’s why I’m so looking forward to tariffs. We don’t need a lot of the crap that is imported anyway, while every country that exports to us relies heavily on those exports.
We’re the largest economy in the world, 2nd largest exporter (of high value-added goods and services), but exports are only 15% of our GDP. Nobody has anything like that, so we have bargaining power that is basically one-way.
Under Trump, our biggest trade partners came to the table and asked for some demands. His negotiators said, “That’s nice.” Then slid over the contracts and they signed them, even if we totally ignored what they requested because nobody wants to compromise their relationship with the largest oil refiner, petroleum services provider, defense systems manufacturer, heavy industries, machinery, automobile, computer, software, programmer, advanced electronics, financial services, precursory chemicals, Nation.