Trump's trade policy violates basic rules of behavior we teach in kindergarten

In kindergarten, most children are taught lessons they are meant to carry through the rest of their lives. This is where they are socialized, and become humans capable of working with other humans.

They learn lessons like,"treat others the way you want to be treated;" "don't bully;" and "play nice with others."

The Trump trade agenda, which was published this week, violates all of those principles in the name of creating a more prosperous America.

Worse yet, it erodes away at the fabric of the global economic order. It claims that Americans on both sides of the aisle "rejected the way in the framework of rules governing international trade operates." These are incredibly complex rules and agreements most Americans have never really considered.

So let's stick with the kid's stuff.

Treat people the way you want to be treated

The White House is constantly saying that the US — the richest country in the world with the largest military on the planet — is being treated unfairly.

And the administration's trade agenda makes pains to establish the US's ability to govern itself, and ignore trade rules set up by the World Trade Organization (WTO), whenever it wants.

"Americans are subject to US law — not WTO decisions," it says.

"What happens to US manufacturing when Boeing can't sell airplanes," Branstetter offered, "Or when GE can't sell industrial equipment? It would be an enormous blow... to the part of manufacturing that has the brightest future."

And yes, they can retaliate. Look at everything China alone imports from the US (via Deutsche Bank) below:

The can "apply reciprocity" as soon as we do, and that wouldn't be nice at all.

Play nice with others

Another big part of the trade agenda is ripping up multilateral agreements (like NAFTA) and instead negotiating bilateral agreements. This has largely been panned by trade experts as expensive. Branstetter told Business Insider that it would take decades to renegotiate the deals we've arranged in groups, one on one.

"This sort of takes the stupidity we've heard up to now and amplifies it by a factor of 2 or 3 or 10," he said.

Worse yet, tearing up trade deals makes the US untrustworthy. People don't want to do deals with people who will just tear them up and walk away later.

There are things we do domestically that make us untrustworthy outside too. Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration asked members of the Commerce Department to change trade data to look like the US had a bigger deficit with other countries. The Trump trade agenda rails against countries like South Korea and China, where the US has a trade deficit.

But as the WSJ points out, trade deficits are simply not a measure of economic health. The US ran a trade surplus during the Great Depression, and you all know how our economy was going at that point. However, ideologues within the administration like Peter Navarro, head of the