Arguments for and against protectionism of steel industry in the USA.

Protectionism is an economic policy of restraining trade among countries, using methods such as tariffs on imported goods, quotas. Government through using protectionism, try to discourage imports.

Protectionism protect businesses and workers within a country by restricting or regulating trade with foreign countries. According to article about steel industry in the United States, because of high amount of steel imports, many companies bankrupted, more than 50,000 jobs destroyed, so many negative consequences happened, that's why the president of USA, decided to make tariffs on imports of steel products, he wanted to make protectionism system in the United States. The main problem is that people are becoming unemployed and companies lose their workers, so if American government make protectionism system in their country, they can improve quality of their steel market and they will spend less on imports, what is good for their economic system as a whole and it will improve their national production, but on the other hand protectionism can lead to monopoly, therefore it will reduce competition among firms and companies. Also, if USA government reduce the amount of imports, it can help to the current account, probably for United States it is much better to improve their steel industry rather than import steel from other countries, because USA is a country of massive abilities and they can make their own steel industry on a high level, and there is a huge amount of products which made from steel, for example cars, if USA develop their steel industry, it will be cheaper for consumers to buy American cars, because steel made from their own country. Possibly through supply side policy, by training and giving practice to steel manufacture workers, it will also help for country, and in this case protectionism is useful. The main problem of protectionism system is monopoly which can happen, if protectionism will be in USA, because the one steel company can be above all other companies and it will not be competition among countries, therefore it will be a monopoly in USA. Anyway, advantages for protectionism of steel industry in the USA more than disadvantages, through protectionism people will have their jobs and government will not lose a big amount of money on imports of steel from countries of steel industry such as India.

Does economic growth always lead to increase in living standards?

I think that it is really difficult to give a particular answer on this question, because there are some ways in which economic growth leads to increase in living standards of people and there some disadvantages of it.

First of all,if we look on advantages of economic growth for standard of living, we can take an example of increasing in consumption, consumers can benefit from consuming more goods and services, so if consumption levels are high, prosperity will be bigger. Improving in public services, if tax revenues increase, the government can spend more on important public services such as health and education, if the quality of health services improve, the quality of life will improve as well.

Reduced unemployment and poverty. Economic growth helps to reduce unemployment by creating jobs and services and it is very important because unemployment is the main source of social problems such as crime, however in many countries of EU with high economic growth, in countries such as France, Spain or Italy there are still high levels of unemployment and in this case unemployment is not reduced by economic growth. Also there some disadvantages of economic growth, economic can leads to increase in inequality between people,if we look on UK or USA in 1980 and 1970, we can see the result of economic growth is inequality. Economic growth can lead to more hours of work, it means that if incomes are high, it can lead to people working longer hours and it looks that, people are unable to enjoy their higher incomes.

So, I looked at some advantages and disadvantages of economic growth for our living standards and we can see that there is no a particular answer, but I think that,economic growth leads to increase in living standards,because the economic growth can solve the most important problems with education and health or consumption of goods and services and these things are more important than an inequality or longer working hours.