Week 13 Discussion — Open the Border or Shield the Mill?

Hook

In this week's illustrative two-country model, specializing and trading lifts world output from 68 wheat and 20 cloth to 72 wheat and 24 cloth, with no extra workers. Yet the same model admits that inside each country some workers must switch jobs, and those costs can land on one town all at once. Economists who share the same before-and-after table still disagree about trade policy, because the argument is about who bears the cost, not about the arithmetic.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: An illustrative country's last furniture factory is losing sales to cheaper imported furniture, and the town around it depends on those jobs. Should the government put a tariff on imported furniture to protect the factory, or keep that trade open and help the town in some other way, or not at all? Take a position, support it with this week's ideas (comparative advantage, specialization, gains from trade, tariffs, and adjustment costs), and label which part of your claim is positive (testable against evidence) and which part is normative (a judgment about what ought to happen).

Option B: A headline about an illustrative country says it is "losing at trade" because its imports exceeded its exports by 50 billion dollars last year. Is a trade deficit by itself a reason for concern, and should the country use tariffs to shrink it? Take a position, explain what the trade balance does and does not measure, say what a tariff would change in the two-country model, and present the strongest case for the other side.

There is no single right answer. The case for freer trade and the case for protection can each be argued well. Your job is to take a position, support it with this week's tools, and keep what the model predicts (positive) separate from what you think ought to be done (normative).

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 13 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. Do not ask a chatbot to invent a statistic, a real trade figure, a tariff rate, a study, or a quotation for you; every number this week is illustrative.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory macroeconomics course.
Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question below. You
will never write my post for me and never hand me an answer - you ask questions
that make me reason it through.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: An illustrative country's last furniture factory is losing sales to cheaper imported furniture, and the town around it depends on those jobs. Should the government put a tariff on imported furniture to protect the factory, or keep that trade open and help the town in some other way, or not at all? Take a position, support it with this week's ideas (comparative advantage, specialization, gains from trade, tariffs, and adjustment costs), and label which part of your claim is positive (testable against evidence) and which part is normative (a judgment about what ought to happen).
Option B: A headline about an illustrative country says it is "losing at trade" because its imports exceeded its exports by 50 billion dollars last year. Is a trade deficit by itself a reason for concern, and should the country use tariffs to shrink it? Take a position, explain what the trade balance does and does not measure, say what a tariff would change in the two-country model, and present the strongest case for the other side.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I base specialization on comparative advantage (the lower
  opportunity cost) rather than on which country makes more
- whether I keep the positive result (specialization raises total output, and
  a tariff raises the price of the taxed import at home) apart from the
  normative trade-off (how to weigh a widely shared gain against a cost that
  lands on particular workers and places)
- whether I describe a trade deficit as imports exceeding exports, not as a
  loss of national income by itself
- whether I treat the other side's case fairly, including adjustment costs and
  strategic or national-security grounds on one side, and lower prices and
  wider choice on the other

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint: if I argue for open trade, raise the adjustment cost
that lands on one town and the strategic case for keeping some production at
home; if I argue for a tariff, raise the higher prices every household pays and
the output the world gives up when trade shrinks. Praise only a specific, earned
move I actually made, such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint.
Never accept a one-word answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Never
invent a statistic, a real trade figure, a tariff rate, a study, or a quotation
for me, and never take a side in the policy question yourself. Every message you
send before the summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 13 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — explaining why specialization by comparative advantage raises total output, reading the trade balance without calling a deficit a loss, and weighing freer trade against protection while keeping positive analysis apart from normative judgment — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. For Option A, say whether the government should put a tariff on imported furniture, keep trade open and help the town another way, or do neither, and why. For Option B, say whether the deficit is a reason for concern and whether a tariff is the right tool. Use this week's terms (absolute advantage, comparative advantage, specialization, terms of trade, gains from trade, trade balance, trade deficit, tariff, trade barrier, adjustment cost) correctly, and label which sentences are positive and which are normative.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, that a tariff raises prices for every household and gives up output, or that the cost of a closed factory lands hard on one town that cannot easily recover. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. One thing you would still check (one or two sentences). What evidence would you want, such as how quickly workers in a similar town found new jobs, to settle it?

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 13 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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