You read The Corner so the rest of us don’t have to. Thanks for reminding us why.

In 2004 it read like a trade journal for GOP campaign consultants. Daily tracking polls on all the “pivotal” races, latest trends on the “key” demographic groups, previews of soon to be released ads and anonymous quotes from inside the brain-trust.
Who’ll be able to stand the excitement for this year’s burlesque?

(One can only hope that if NRO replaces Spruiell with a less expensive reporter--or maybe outsources his reporting to India--that Spruiell will be true to his convictions, avoid “bitterness,” and embrace the change and view it as an opportunity.)

Tom,
Great analogy. I imagine if they really believed in free trade, there would be more writers, or at least ideas, from Taki’s Top Drawer in the pages of NRO and The “SWEETLY” STANDARD than exist today. The managed media they represent is more akin to the kind of Free Trade they espouse. Keep up the good work.

Mr. Piatak:  Great analysis.  I especially like how you dispel the myth that Asian companies are creating many jobs.  Regarding Obama, as I’m sure you know, he may criticize free trade publicly, but privately his aids assure global interests that he will make no substantial changes in our free-trade policy.  Regardless, the gig is up.  One needs not a degree in economics to look around and see the devastation that free trade has wrought upon our nation.  So, while globalists and libertarians may live under the ideology that free-trade is beneficial and continue to peddle this snakeoil, more Americans are waking up to witness the plundering that’s taking place.

This is the dead land
This is cactus land

...the land devastated by greed and economic ideology. *Whimper*

As someone who has hired and laid off thusands over the years,let me say I never gave anyone over 2 weeks severence and those were darn few.Most people got nothing,that is how the construction business is,no paid vacations and no paid sick days.I personaly like Pat Buchanan’s idea of a 30% general revenue tariff on all imports from counties that have a value added tax or high tariffs like Japan or China.The income tax could be abolished, especially if we brought all the troops home and eliminated many useless departments,like Education,Transportation,HUD,Homeland security,Agriculture,etc.

“I never gave anyone over 2 weeks severence and those were darn few...”

Is that a boast or a lamentation?

Sir,

Perhaps it is a bit blunt to say so, but both positions - Srpuiell’s and your’s - are inconsistent with the facts.
In the 1920ies and ‘30ies, US mass-manufacturing was the envy of the world - culminating in mass produced 4-engine bombers (compare the production process to that to similar british products).

One might however be forgiven to think that for more than sixty years now american elites are reaping what their great-great-grandfathers have sown. That might be a tad long.

Take cars (fitting to Mr. Spruiell’s observations): in the 30ies, american car’s were second to none in engineering and styling, if not finish. In the fifties, they were still seen as a viable alternative in rich european countries (Switzerland, the Low Countries, Sweden). From the sixties onwards (well before the arab embargo) they were seen as last decade’s technology in garish styling (tailfins found their way to Mercedes, Peugeot and the likes - and then everyone woke up, and those, like Opel who were not allowed to wake up by their american owners slowly sank)

When was the last year american cars were exported overseas in reasonable numbers?

If you close the borders to foreign competition while being unable to compete on any but captive foreign markets - any - then you are going the way of the sadly defunct soviet union.

It is not free trade, that is ruining US manufacturing - it is the phenomenon, that since the enormous (US made) advances in manufacturing technology of the first three decades of the last century nothing decisive has happened any more, while the rest of the world has caught up.

Free trade is perhaps to blame for the harshness of some of the symptoms - even there, one might dispute, as other industrialised countries have similar transitions to face and seem to manage with less pain.

Free trade is not your problem. Greedy elites are. A public infrastructure worthy of a bombed out country is. A seemingly dysfunctional system of higher education is (take hope, that you are seemingly successful in exporting).

Sir,

on second reading, there is another comment I would like to make: I am very much with you in saying that trade unions are not - at least not solely - to blame for the decline in manufacturing and I find your mention that severance packages to workers (giving some a chance at a meaningful new beginning) are most probably won by trade unions very fair.

Fat severence packages are something that even today most people don’t get.Why should I as an employer pay for people not working?Most of my employees were union construction workers,but they got no severence, or paid sick days, or paid vacations.They made good wages but they had to put the time in.

“It’s much, much more profitable to produce cars in Japan and ship them all to the U. S.”. I’m sure the Toyota executive believes this to be true. Are we lazier, less productive than the Japanese? Are our wages and our benefits so much larger than theirs? Why is it more profitable to build cars in Japan than the US?

I think it’s much cheaper to build in Japan because of the collaspse of the dollar.The American worker in most nonunion Japanese auto plants in America, busts his ass.

On the contrary, the collapse of the dollar would make american cars, and to an extent, japanese cars produced in America, realtively cheaper than Japanese, or European cars.

It is true that International Trade disrupts some industries, but it is also the case that technological changes bring similar disruptions.

I very much doubt that even by following Mr. Piatak’s advise to erect high trade barriers, you could save jobs in the auto industry. The production process has become over the years more mechanized, so as to the efect that fewer workers are needed to produce the parts or assemble them.

Also, are those jobs in the car industry that good? The constant repetition, sometimes mind-numbing, was a regular critique of the industrial landscape upt to a few years ago. Why now are those jobs suddenly all that beauiful?

An ancestor or Mr. Piatak would have felt the same about 100 years ago with regards to the depopulation of the countryside, as small farmers would leave their fields to work on grimy factories. But the living conditions in the farms were far from idyllic. Today, the level of comfort for workers is the highest any other person in the history of humanity has attained. Sure, there are problems in several sectors, like the possibility of a recession or home foreclosures, but society today has a more stable structure to deal with this periodic crises, and altough this is little comfort to those most in need in these times, there has to be an adequate sense of proportion.

A Paleoconservative must have respect for tradition, but it must also be aware that the man’s mind pushes him constantly to higher levels of innovation, and that an economy as big an as complex as the U.S. destroys millions of jobs, but creates millions more.

Trade globalization is good. Political globalization is bad.

“Fat severence packages are something that even today most people don’t get.”

I suspect Rerum Novarum, like the well-being of your employees and their families holds little interest for you. Go back and sit in The Corner.

“Trade globalization is good.”

For who? Or is that another “universal truth”, like the one that holds capitalism is the right system for every people and every culture.

Jack:

According to the Wall Street Journal article, Toyota finds it cheaper to build in Japan in large part because it set up its plants here for political reasons, not economic ones.  They are spread out geographically (to maximize political benefits), but Toyota’s manufacturing model calls for plants to be close together.

Mr. Roberts:

Thanks for your kind words.  Yes, I am aware that Obama is a liar on free trade.  McCain, Obama, and Clinton are each disastrous choices for president.

My employees were extremely well paid union construction workers.They good health benefits and pension plan.They had no severce, paid vacations,or paid sick days.In other words they got paid for their work.I as an employer can look Pope Leo the 13th and Hillare Belloc right in the eye, when I get to heaven.My cousin, who used to work for me,just retired with a pension of 3 thousand a month at age 55.

In Regards to Hillare Belloc he was a great and writer and historian.He and G.K.Chesterton knew little about about economics and how much it takes to employ people and to keep them working.

About recent discussions here in regards to antisemitism and racism on this site,both these great authors were libeled and still are libeled as antisemites.I have read Belloc’s “The Jews"and Chestertons book on the middle east.I defy anyone to find anything antisemetic in either.Belloc’s book was a plea for understanding between Christians and Jews.The Jews were under attack for the disaster that was appearing in Russia at the time with all the Jewish Bolshivicks and their many murders. These crimes were tarring all Jews worldwide.They also gave Hitler a weapon to use against the Communists in the fight to control a collapsing Germany. In other words Communism was a disaster for both Jews and Christians.

To blame unions for the state of manufacturing in our country today is laughable.

Tom, how much easier it would be and how much safer we would feel if there was no
economic change. Ever. Let us all be farmers again. Or perhaps more true to your ideals:
let us all be hunter-gatherers.

Anom:

My essay was about free trade.  Without free trade, we managed to become the greatest manufacturing power on earth.  I think we’d do just fine without free trade again. 

But, even if free trade were beneficial overall, there is no doubt that it does harm some Americans, and, since I happen to live in the part of the country clearly hurt by free trade, I take their side in the dispute.

Let me recommend to all a new book by Ha-joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. The book is partially an answer to Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Mr. Chang’s thesis is that the history of development is an exact contradiction of neo-liberal, free-trade ideology. Every country that developed successfully did so behind a protectionist wall and by violating the sacred tenets of free-trade. This is true, in the first instance, of the United States and Britain, who only went in for the free trade ideology after they had achieved superiority in manufacturing.

It is also true of the Asian Tigers, who developed by ignoring all the advice of the ideologues. There is scarcely a single success among the free-trades, and a long history of failure.

But Prof. Chang’s real point, I believe, is about history. The free-traders have constructed an “alternative history,” a fable that doesn’t match the reality. It was impossible for Prof. Chang to believe this history, because he grew up in a poverty stricken Korea that developed itself by ignoring the sage advice of the Americans.

Finally, there is a great irony in Friedman’s choice of the Lexus as a symbol for trade. That product was developed by a company that was heavily supported by the state, in a nation that has never practiced free trade.

I think the plight of the U.S. auto industry and NRO are eerily similar.  You have two groups trying to sell an inferior product to an increasingly disinterested public. 
Interestingly the car manufacturers who dominated the post war market were from Japan and Germany.  Two countries that we bombed into the stone age benefitted from the internationalist’s rebuilding efforts and came out the other side with more updated processes and technology.  I read an article that told of a story of the British looting a German factory of a drop forge or some such huge piece of machinery.  Many of the Germans complained but one spoke up and said let them take it we will build a better one.  Of course the internationalists knew this too and had big money riding on the Germans and the Japanese.

Great article!
I am not smart enough to know the answer, I don’t know what is the best system,but Free Trade has not benefitted my friends, families or myself. I will not bore you with the blue collar details of a marginalized middle aged working class white guy, but the last 30 years of Free trade wiped out the economic futures of a whole class of American people. Glib remarks that they only need to retrain themselves for viable high tech jobs notwithstanding.

Don’t we all look in wonder how sane reasonable people were able to rationalize and excuse slavery 150 years ago, when we only had to hear Frederick Douglas’s query” if slavery is good for me and my family, why is it not good for yours?” to know that a similar query about free trade should be asked of those smug elitist Free Trade B****rds.
Unfortunate Consequences of Free Trade is great for the Great Unwashed but not ever for Wall Street sub prime credit card predators and derivative wizards that are bailing with billions. As My Grandma always said, at least Jesse james used a gun!

Bravo for exposing the fallacy of those who are enslaved to the ideology of dead economists.  (I don’t mean adam Smith, whose “Wealth of Nations” contains caveats for protection against dumping and for defense
industries.) My job involves assisting laid-off workers in Michigan with filing for Unemployment insurance, accessing retraining, and getting Trade Adjustment Act petitions filed, if applicable.  Many of the workers get a pittance, or nothing at all.  The companies they worked for may be broke, may be moving overseas under duress, etc.  The workers may be 45 years old, not ‘college material’ by their own admission, and they are not as mobile as the capital that employs them, since they cannot shed houses, uproot families, etc., as easily as money can be moved with a mouse click.  To expect that one can change the rules of the game without causing harm to tthose unable to reinvent themselves overnight is a utopian fantasy.  What I see every day is reality.  And no amount of retraining, concessions, union-busting, etc., will make American workers competitive with the Third World.  I’ve heard more than once that workers at Company X could work for nothing but their health insurance, and they’d still cost more than their overseas competition.  Thanks again for your article.

“(One can only hope that if NRO replaces Spruiell with a less expensive reporter--or maybe outsources his reporting to India--that Spruiell will be true to his convictions, avoid “bitterness,” and embrace the change and view it as an opportunity.)”

As our society becomes more diverse; you may someday, get your wish. ;o)

Thank you for wading through the morass; of what was once a great magazine, for us.

One questions the “values” of a man (Mr. Spruiell) whose world view smuggly embraces the loss of income and security for people who perform honest labor. Those who are his fellow citizens and human beings.

@Nucci: I think the plight of the U.S. auto industry and NRO are eerily similar.  You have two groups trying to sell an inferior product to an increasingly disinterested public.

Now that’s funny!

John

Anti-American internationalist Neocon money-worshippers and their policies have destroyed the US

They’ve seen the trends, and they know that America’s good-paying manufacturing jobs have been decimated by NAFTA and other “free trade” schemes that reward former-American-now-multi-national companies for moving jobs overseas by granting them continued unfettered access to American markets, even as they stab in the back the very country and people upon which their colossal business was built.

The Neocon boys at NRO are merely big business PR agents, paid by their masters to put the best gloss on internationalist big business’ anti-Americanism. Their first, last and only loyalty is money. They couldn’t care less about average Americans, and why should they? The executives and Neocon PR hacks live insular, internationalist lives, traveling in their luxury cars from gated communities to high-rise office building to private jets the whisk them off to international vacations and second, third and fourth homes. What difference does it make to them where the peons that service their lives of luxury live? What loyalty do they feel for flyover country?

And here we are getting to the essence of not only the Neocon, but what is wrong with America: it has been transformed into a crass land of materialism, where every citizens primary loyalty is not to God or his neighbor or his country or even his extended family, but rather to the short-term money-grub. War for profit, open-immigration, environmental decimation, jingoism, crony capitalism, de-regulation, neighborhood deterioration, the war on Christianity—all are manifestations of the eternal money-grub served by the Neocons and their big-business money-worshipping allies.

Remember, these people aren’t like you and me, they are craven vampires with dollar signs where their consciousness should be. And like locusts, wherever they go, decimation will follow. Only when America frees itself of the money-worshippers’ control over society will it begin to turn around the devastation wrought by the vampire class.—Chris Moore http://www.LibertarianToday.com

Tom, I have been asked by David Rockefeller to tell you he finds your article selfish and un-Global, how (he asks)can you put the security of Americans ahead of the need to improve the lives of millions of Indians and Chinese by letting them earn slave wages in non-union sweatshops (and thus, just by coincidence also improving the lives of selfless billionaires like Mr. Rockefeller himself).

“an ideology that encourages Americans to disdain their countrymen and adulate foreigners, to place economic considerations above loyalty to place or people, and that punishes people who are rooted and bound by love to the place of their birth and rewards those willing to leave behind family and friends to pursue the dollar wherever it may take them.”

That nails it, right there.  We’ve gone beyond the point of arguing about means—Those People do not share ends with any significant moral philosophy in the history of the human race.

The ad absurdum result of Spruiell’s reasoning:  The working class should all become pure mercenary prostitutes…

I wonder if he realizes that that’ll only make more competition for him?

Then again, maybe he really *does* believe in a free-market....

When you have a central back [FED] its an interventionist tool and you dont have a free market. The FED, thru lobbying, did away with Glass-Steagall, deregualting the market and within 10 years human greed would have destroyed the market if it was for the FED.

IE The FED knows a ‘free market’ would self-implode in a short period of time.

Tom’s discussion of the auto industry collapsing under the weight of foreign competition
reminds me of what happened to the tool and die industry in Central Connecticut during
my youth. It too was wiped out by foreign producers, a trend that I saw repeated in
Rockford, Illinois twenty years later. The problem with the argument that displaced
laborers can do something else is that what is displaced is not just individuals but
entire communities. Such costs of course mean zilch to the urban yuppies at the WSJ.

Why don’t we just outlaw cars, so the buggy whip industry can get back on its feet.  Face it folks, the world is much smaller.  The US needs to adapt and compete, not close its borders.  To the extent other countries aren’t engaging in free trade, and subsidizing their manufacturers, the US should impose a tariff equal to the subsidy.  With that proviso, free trade IS the best thing.  It minimzes the costs of good to consumers.  If I am spending my money I want the best prodcut for the best price.  I don’t think that makes me immoral. I think it makes me smart.  If you choose to buy an American car, becuase you think it helps American manufacturing, do so.  That’s your perogative.  However, to dictate that the US should impose large tariffs, to promote US manufacutring jobs is simply a form of wealth transfer, forcing US consumers to spend more. It’s the same as the argument that Walmart is bad because it forces the mom and pop stores to close.  The reason they close is that the same item COSTS MORE at the Mom and Pop than it does at Walmart.  Neither I, nor anyone else, is responsible for the US manufacturers ills, unless it’s the exec’s at those companies, or the unions.  If they can’t compete, it’s up to the shareholders to fire them, or someone else to form a company that can compete.  Tariffs are not the answer.

Of course, it would help if American firms like GM were good companies that made products worth buying. They aren’t. And the Japs and company aren’t to blame for that.

The vision of a universal free market suitable for the many different peoples and cultures comprising the human race is one of the scariest delusions ever conjured up by a philosophe. The free-trade ideologue stands in stark opposition to human nature and reality. As is true of revolutionaries of all stripes, he is not afraid to break a few eggs for his omelet. Even if his neighbor happens to be the egg.

@ Kevin.  What is scary about a free market?  Reality is that people act in their own best interest.  If something manufactured abroad is cheaper or better, I buy it.  If the US product is superior, I buy it.  That’s human nature.  Why should the buyer be penalized?  I have sympathy for my neighbor.  It’s not my responsibility to support him.

So if I have a US company, and want to outsource some or all of the work to the workers of another country--or I am an American consumer wanting to buy foreign products--your right to impede, tax or stop me would derive from . . . what, exactly?

The notion that American cars aren’t competitive with foreign ones no longer reflects reality.  Just as an example:  J D Power’s 2007 initial quality survey saw a Ford product get the number one ranking in five different product segments, more than any other company.  And the award for the best plant in terms of overall quality worldwide went to a Ford plant in Michigan: http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pressrelease.aspx?ID=2007088

American cars aren’t alone in improving, of course:  overall, cars today are very well made.  But the notion that American cars aren’t well made too just isn’t true.

Bilwick:

That right is found in Article II, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises” and “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”

The first act passed by the first Congress was a tariff.

@ Tom Piatak.  If American cars are well made, why are GM, Ford etc. going broke and laying off their workers? Because they’re inefficent.  Too top heavy.  Labor costs are too high.  Health care costs too much.  Products liability lawsuits.  In short, government regulations and unions keep US manufacturers from being competitive.  A tariff simply penalizes the US consumer rather than adressing the problem.

All arguments must rest on practical, real-world foundations. Foreign governments approach econ as a weapon. Their ammo: cheap labor, dirt cheap. Their enticements: low overhead, max profits. Workers who used to be cheap labor and have climbed the wage ladder to a better life are knocked off it by . . . the next pool of cheap labor (possibly kept their by their governments). Social and cultural factors matter. Numbers matter. A cheaper product is not always the better one (i.e. Walmart). I tend to follow the Austrian school of econ, but I can see that the world is not, nor ever will be, a level playing field because that implies homogeneity . . . doesn’t exist. So, look out for our own, where we mesh well with other economies, fine, where not, apply whatever means to redress the imbalance. (Wilhelm Ropke had many good points to make, worth a read).
All econ is really about people, it is not a machine, or formulas on black-boards. Which cars do you think many would buy if we said: Let the best product produced at the same cost find the most willing buyer. BTW, enjoying the debate.

If tariffs penalize the consumer, then the Founding Fathers belived in penalizing the consumer, and so did the Republican Party up until the 1950s.  Interestingly enough, when tariffs were our principal source of revenue, government was far smaller and less intrusive than it is today. 

There is nothing inconsistent between small government and high tariffs.  In fact, historically, the two went together in this country:  Calvin Coolidge belived in high tariffs, FDR did not.  Who did more for the cause of small government?

@ Cornel, With you on enjoying the debate.  I don’t think that homogeneity is necessary for free trade.  Consumers will act in their own best interest.  A cheaper product isn’t always better. But the same product, cheaper is better.  (Walmart doesn’t have better products, it sells the same products for less money.  A tariff simply increases the cost of an imported good.  That may cause someone to buy an American alternative, not because it’s better, but because it’s cheaper.  In essence, a tariff limits the consumers’ freedom of choice.  Some consumers may choose to “buy American”.  No problem there.  However, to impose that “choice” via a tariff punishes one group (the buyer) to benefit another (US manufacturers).  The only way to “Level the playing field” would be to increase the cost of production overseas.  That might be good for foreign workers, who would experience a rise in their standard of living.  However, it would be at the cost of the US consumer.  I agree that, if another nation is not engaging in free trade, and subsidizing their industires, then a tariff is accpetable to level the field.  It also incentivies the other country to stoip the subsidy--to the benefit of the consumer.

‘There is nothing inconsistent between small government and high tariffs.  In fact, historically, the two went together in this country:  Calvin Coolidge belived in high tariffs, FDR did not.  Who did more for the cause of small government?’

Grover Cleveland believed in free trade. Abraham Lincoln believed in protectionism. Who did more for small government?

@ Tom Piatak.  Government has the right to impose a tariff.  That doesn’t mean that it should do so.  High tariffs discourage trade.  Goods can be made for less expensively overseas.  The consumer benfits.  A tariff is simply a tax, imposed by the government, paid by the consumer.  For the benfit of who?  The govenrment.  I, for one, don’t trust the goverment to spend the money wisely.  The tariff would make US goods more competitive--cost wise.  Again, to the detriment of the consumer.  If you’re tying the tariff to a reduction in some other tax (ala Richard Spencer) that may be a different story.  However, at the end of the day it’s all about whose ox is getting gored.

I would favor reducing other taxes in connection with increasing tariffs.  Pat Buchanan advocated this policy in his book “The Great Betrayal,” and David Hartman reaches a similar result with his slightly different proposal for a border-adjusted VATT. 

But there is no question we are losing out by our ideological adherence to free trade:  the Europeans use border adjusted VATTs to protect their industries, and the Asians use multiple methods to protect theirs.

@ MC Brown,
MC Brown,
“What is scary about a free market?”

A universal free market encompassing the entire globe is an ideological pipe-dream. It requires blunt force, top-down manipulations and the crafting of alien
concept onto resistant cultures. Ask the Russians. Besides, not every culture prizes cheaper goods at the expense of those they hold near and dear. I’m sorry if that sentiment isn’t shared at NRO.

“If something manufactured abroad is cheaper or better, I buy it...”

In terms of economic and human goods, where does the endless pursuit of cheap labor lead us? Do you like where we are headed?

“I have sympathy for my neighbor. It’s not my responsibility to support him.”

Leaving aside the moral dimension for a moment. When jobs are lost and communities are destroyed you do pay a price both culturally and in terms of increased social welfare payments.

“ High tariffs discourage trade.  Goods can be made for less expensively overseas.  The consumer benfits.”
Those “less expensive” goods are often made with near slave labor, and in the case of Chinese Communist prisoner forced labor, literal slave labor. Now as someone who obviously sees the world through a monetary lense and with no regard for Christian morality, that obviously doesn’t bother you. And it obviously doesn’t bother the majority of dumbed-down, de-Christianized Americans who have been brainwashed by their government that the only morality that matters is materialism. But it should, because they are now being consumed by the chase to the slave labor bottom, and will themselves someday be slave labor. But that’s alright in the eyes of the free market money worshippers, they’ve got theirs, to hell with the rest of humanity, and their fellow countrymen can just piss off. What a disgusting, base, animal, uncivilized, Godless approach society. I bet if all the slave labor loving free traders had to spend even one half day in a Chinese labor camp, they would change their tune quickly. But because they’re moral degenerates and savages in suits whe spend all their time mentally masterbating over their dollars, they don’t have time to think about morality or any other non-monetary enterprise.

Fair enough.  As long a there is a trade off (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun) for the consumer.  Rather than an “across the board” tariff, isn’t a tariff aimed at countries which aren’t trading freely better?  Such a traiff would incentivize those countries to remove their tariffs.  Partucularly if the US notified them in advance (I.e. drop your tariffs or we will impose an identical one on your country’s goods).  An “across the board” tariff is simpler, which is good, but does not benefit the consumer, nor does it promote competition.  Keep in mind that US cars have gotten better recently, mostly because US auto makers have had to compete with Japanese, and other, manufacturers.  Nevertheless, the main problem, is not solved by tariffs.  That is high labor costs in the US.  In particular, health care, payroll taxes, mandates like “paternity leave”, etc.  Also, the myriad of regulations imposed by the Government, environemental, ADA and others too numerous to mention.  The first thing to do is to go back to the small government you mentioned.  That, in and of itself, will make US manufacturers more competitive.  Without that, tariffs allow those inefficieies to continue.

@ Kevin, Russia wasn’t a free market.  Quite the opposite.  You make various assertions regarding how “inmposing” a free market would be impossible.  Why?  If a culture chooses not to engage in trade, so be it.  The quesitonwas whether the US would benefit from tariffs.  If you feel that buying something made outside the US is done “at the expense of someone “near and dear”, don’t buy it.  But don’t force me to.  I pay enough taxes.  Tariffs are simply a way of the government imposing it’s value system on its citizens.  On your final point, tariff’s have nothing to do with unemployment. 

@Ed, I thought everyone was trying to be civil.  Why all the name calling?  Where’s your Christian charity?  Tariff’s have zero to do with “slave labor”.  That’s a function of the government, and working conditions, in that country.  Imposing a tariff on those goods would simply put those workers out of work.  Is that Christian?  If you beleive something is made immoraly, don’t buy it.  Ask others to do the same.  Join the Peace Corps.  Just don’t tell me I need to pay more taxes with my hard earned money because of YOUR sense of “what’s right”.  Last ime I read the Bible, I didn’t see the “Buy Ford” proverb. Rather than have this string devolve into name calling, I am not going to respond further to you.

I agree on the need to reduce government regulation, but I think high wages are a good thing.  Relative to the rest of the world, the United States has always had high wages.  Historically, we were able to keep wages high for Americans in part because of tariffs. 

I am not interested in reaching a global equlibrium on wages, which necessarily means American wages falling.  The historic American system of high tariffs and low (or nonexistent) income taxes worked very well for a long time; I think it’s an idea whose time has come again.

‘Tariff’s have zero to do with “slave labor”...Just don’t tell me I need to pay more taxes with my hard earned money because of YOUR sense of “what’s right”.’

And there we have the moral relativist core of the average free trader: there is no objective right or wrong when it comes to the eternal money grub, its all relative. Materialism is all that matters. Want 100% tarrifs on slave labor? Join the peace core, but don’t try to interfere with my money grub. Crass, base, degnerate. Greed is a mental illness, fella.

@ Ed, Zealotry is an illness too, dude.  “Crass, base, degenrate”.  Nice.  I won’t repond in kind.  You don’t know economics.  You have YOUR sense of what’s right.  Fine.  More power to you.  It’s not my job to pay more money to the government.  If you want to, be my guest.  A tariff is a tax imposed on imported goods by the government.  The revenue goes to the government.  Perhaps you’ve ntoiced that the government isn’t very good with money?  Why do you want to give it more?  Is it moral for the govenment to tax imported cars (for example) so that people have to pay more?  The cost to US citizens would be immense. There would be less money to be spent, causing other businesses to fail.  If Is it moral for an American citizen who works at a Nissan car dealership to lose his job, so that someone who builds cars in Detroit can keep his?  Morality doesn’t enter into it. There’s a time and place for charity.  International tariffs aren’t one of those.

@ Tom Piatak, I think we’ll agree to disagree.  I don’t think an across the board tariff would be good for US workers for the reasons I’ve mentioned.  High wages are a good thing.  But not if those wages come at the expense of consumer goods costing far more.  The standard of living would decline for all but the few who worked in industries benefited by the tariff. It’s just robbing Peter to pay Paul (I.e. trying to help one segment of the econmony at the expense of the econmoy as a whole).  Trying to arificially keep jobs which aren’t competitve won’t work in the long run.  The externalities are enormous.  High tariffs and small government did work.  But that was long ago, in a completely differnt environment.  Historically, wages weren’t high because of tariffs.  They were high because of worker productivity, inexpensive access to raw materials and low cost of capital.  Regardless, it has been a pleasure engaging in a rational discussion.  Thanks.

@ Tom, One last thought:  If you can get the income tax eliminated, I’ll go for the tariff in a minute.  Although the tariff does create problems, they’re a lot fewer than the income tax code.  Sayonara

An important point to keep in mind is that the issue of free trade is not limited to the automobile industry--the market share of imports is up dramatically over the last ten years across the board, as the Plain Dealer article I linked to shows.

@ Tom, Right.  I think the malaise is in what I would call “heavy manufacturing”.  I used cars as examples, since you had mentioned them in an earlier post.  The real debate is over the manufacturing sector and whether, via tariffs, that sector can be revitalized, without doing excessive damage to the rest of the economy.  With the decline of the dollar, there may be a resurgence of that sector, because of the changes in relative price between imports and exports.  Thanks again.

MC Brown,
“Russia wasn’t a free market.”
Exactly. We tried to remake it in our own image and the nation descended into a criminal state.

“If a culture chooses not to engage in trade, so be it.”

The free-trade ideologue is never happy until the benefits of globalization are enjoyed by everyone. The price of admission includes the IMF forcing other nations to adhere to a rigid regime of fiscal and monetary austerity. The effects are not always so benign. To put it mildly.

“The quesiton was whether the US would benefit from tariffs...I pay enough taxes.”

Free trade has caused unemployement and severe dislocation. And, yes social welfare costs increase as do your taxes. Sorry you can’t make the connection.

And lack of connections is intrinsic to the free-marketer’s world view. He has made economics the supreme measure of all that is good and detaches it from other disciplines, like history and philosophy. He views it as scientifically proven, rational system that need not trifle with “non-objective” concerns like morality. In doing so, his abstract game of “creative destruction” causes damage to real flesh and blood human beings.

Until, the jobs of pundits are out-sourced, I expect this practice to continue.

@ Kevin, In case you missed it, tariffs are a tax.  A tax is about money.  Hence my comments being money related.  The issue posed was whether tariffs would be econmically beneficial, not whether they were moral.  Your assertion that social welfare costs increase with free trade is untrue.  Unemployment has been at an historic low for the last decade or so.  Check.  The healthier the economy is, the better is is for everybody.  People lose jobs.  Buggy whip makers go out of business.  Bad things happen to good people.  International tariffs are not the way to fix that.

The IMF has nothing to do with tariffs.  In the long run, it’s bad economics to try and preserve jobs that aren’t competitive.  Having the govenrment control which jobs exist and which don’t is communism. I think it’s immoral to force people struggling to pay the rent to buy something more costly and of lower quality to benefit someone elase.  That’s what tariffs do. That’s the truth of it.  Over and out

I count 11 posts by mcbrown.  Let’s return to his first. Did anyone catch him try to pass two contradictory propositions through the discussion? 
“[Under certain conditions (which just so happen to be, in fact, currently and historically ubiquitous by the way)] the US should impose a tariff [in a certain (very nearly impossible to comprehensively calculate) way] [i.e. tariffs are the answer].”
“Tariffs are not the answer.”
With the rhetorical ground staked out as such --both sides his, it is no wonder he appears reasonable, while really contributing little to the discussion save for wearying his opponents.  This is why the expression “take the bull by the horns” is most excellent.

Good essay! You complete show the idiocy of the arguments of the free market ideologues, who twist the fact to suit the tenor of their own bias.

They of course, share with the distain for the working stiff with the the well-to-do white liberalism that begat Hillary and Bill, and Obama and his crowd too, of people unlike themselves, that are “too stupid” or “too lazy” to enjoy the benefits of “the new world order” of open markets and contant war that marks today’s “global economy”

Of course, like liberals, they are ultimately hypocrites, who like to pontificate about their superiority to everyone else, while being well protected from the policies they advocate.

We will give an example of the typical “conservative” free trader as Bush2 himself, who was a drunken bum tile he was 40, without an significant harm to his career or his standard of living. A guy so incompetent that every business he was involved was founded on his blue blood family contacts, yet everyone of them failed anyway.

Liberals and “free traders” --- both based on faulty and simplistic political economics, and the potent mix of arrogance and stupidity that marks so-called “conservatives” like Bush2

MC Brown,
You’re trying to have a discussion while isolating the various parts of the universal free market from the whole. Kind of like separating economics from other considerations and disciplines. It must be a habit.

For a country to be allowed in the globalization scheme it must meet certain requirements. The IMF is the enforcer that dictates the austerity policies that the aspiring new member must adapt. Could you imagine such a regime imposed on us? We’d be belly up in hours.

“Unemployment has been at an historic low for the last decade or so.”

You know full well once the eligibility to collect expires, so too the removal of the unemployed person from the rolls.

You also know that a lot of our social pathologies are a result of the loss of manufacturing jobs that have left communities both financially and culturally broken. Men that once held good paying jobs are not under-employed or worse. There is a steep moral and economic cost to this awful development. Not everyone can work at Merrill Lynch. In fact, they’re not hiring right now.

“In the long run, it’s bad economics to try and preserve jobs that aren’t competitive.”

Pitting our workers against the international slave labor pool hardly seems sane. Let alone a case of lacking in “competitiveness”.

“Having the govenrnment control which jobs exist and which don’t is communism.”

Our government’s economic policies do dictate which jobs remain and which ones leave for cheaper wages. I’m arguing for an approach that places our people first. Marxists and free-market ideologues are united by their materialistic rationalism and abhor natural loyalties.

Finally, tariffs are used as a form of social welfare. The Japanese do so. Which bolsters my point; sometimes your taxes are higher because your tariffs are non-existent. One way or the other, you pay when your neighbors lose their jobs, benefits and sense of worth. Maybe, cheap electronic toys are more expensive than you think.

Quote from mcbrown ; “To the extent other countries aren’t engaging in free trade, and subsidizing their manufacturers, the US should impose a tariff equal to the subsidy.”

Ridiculous! That would require a tariff of more than a hundred percent in the case of China (just as an example) because of the currency manipulation, tariffs, duties, hundreds of other regulatory measures the Chinese impose on US companies.

Wall Street would have their traders Suicide bomb Congress in mass before they let that happen.

Quote from mcbrown:  “It’s the same as the argument that Walmart is bad because it forces the mom and pop stores to close.  The reason they close is that the same item COSTS MORE at the Mom and Pop than it does at Walmart.”

And it cost more at Mom and Pop because Mom and Pop aren’t subsidized by tax increment financing (like WallyWorld), re-zoning, abusive labor policies, and
sweetheart land deals. If you don’t know what tax increment financing is then don’t talk to us about Wal-Mart
and the delusion of a “ free market.”

In the real economy there is no free market and trying create trade policy based on ideas of a perfect “free market” is like trying to do engineering with frictionless surfaces and perfect constants. Absurd!

The creators of the current so-called “free trade” policy know that no real “free trade” policy could ever exist between two different peoples and have designed a policy wherein power to regulate is transfered from the representatives
of a people to the WTO and its clique of lawyers who represent the commanders of finance capital (all 5,000 of them). To argue for “free trade” is deny a people their self determination and that is an act of dehumanization and economic violence of the highest order.

Mr. Mcbrown stop promoting violence against the American people! Stop calling us lazy when we protest our way of life destroyed by designed in violation of principles of representive government. Stop shooting us with rubber bullets, spraying us with chemical weapons, tasering us, caging us into “free speech zones” when we demand that representative stop outsourcing their duty to create trade policy that is in the interest of the American people and not a clique of international banksters and economic hitmen who call themselves capitalists as if they ever produced anything but more economic bureaucracy and fictive capital.

I was rude not to mention up front but Tom Piatak’s article was most excellent and I only wish wished we had more Tom Piataks defending the American system and tradition in public sphere and much earlier on.

Amin,
“I believe it is immoral to use coercion to interfere with an individual’s decisions on how to manage his private property.”

You can buy the more expensive imports. It just might cost a little more in the pocketbook.

“Tariffs are also a tax.”

I know, but if they preserve jobs, families and communities they’re both worth it and likely less costly than taxes used to mitigate unemployment and the ills associated with it. After all, you conceded; “This is not just about material prosperity, but also about basic justice.”

“Lower prices mean a higher standard of living and lower production costs.”

Not if the route to lower costs means lower wages. That would be quite a trick if you could pull that off. Sounds like the thinking behind the whole sub-prime - CDO scheme.

“Free individuals who own businesses should dictate which jobs leave and which jobs go”

As long as those who decide to send jobs overseas also go with them.
It’s only fair.

Amin,
Your contradictory canards and Ayn Rand abstractions are wearisome.

Instead of accusing everyone opposed to the hollowing out our manufacturing sector as “collectivists”, try to disabuse yourself of your paperback theories. Individuals belong to communities and have ties and obligations that trump the consumerist ethos and it’s shallow mantra of “everyday low prices - at any cost” Your mythic individual operating only out of sheer personal self-interest is a crabbed and small thing and a dangerous fiction.

If the cost for inexpensive imported goods is the loss of US jobs and independence, the diminishing of our standard of living and creation of an under-class of under-employed men who previously worked in that sector, then the price isn’t worth it. I believe pursuing policies that benefit our national interest and our workers, not just those that satisfy my desire for cheaper toys.

I also believe one should apply the same principle to oneself as one does to others. If a businessman thinks Malayasia is a better environment for his company then he should follow his heart and head there too. I’m always troubled by dual loyalties and the “heads I win, tails you lose” ethic that allows one to operate without any consideration for others.

Free-trade isn’t. It comes at a cost that many are now finding too
steep.

Kevin sed: I’m always troubled by dual loyalties and the “heads I win, tails you lose” ethic that allows one to operate without any consideration for others.

A very insightful description of the illogical arguments of the free trade zeolots…

Amin sed: “I believe it is immoral to use coercion to interfere with an individual’s decisions on how to manage his private property.”

Of course, according to silly heads on the “free trade” side of the fence, it’s NOT immoral to use the state to finance the “free decisions” of these individuals, who are financing their investments in China or Asia with loans guaranteed by the Export-Import bank, and financed by the Federal Reserve printing dollars.

When you scratch a “free trader” you usually find a hypocrite. They are a lot like the liberals from whose premises they share, who love to pass the burden of their sense of social justice on everyone else.

Sorry, Amin, but the fallacy in the Ayn Rand rationale for the nature of things that YOU don’t live in a vaccum, and neither does anyone else. But you probably realize that anyway, and your adherance to “freedom” is just a lot of meaningless rhetoric to justify your own selfish motives.

Liberals and “liberatarisns"---two sides of the hypocrite coin that dominates the “free trade” and “immigration” debates.

McBrown ranted: “In the long run, it’s bad economics to try and preserve jobs that aren’t competitive.  Having the govenrment control which jobs exist and which don’t is communism.”

Oh great, let’s suppress labor unions ‘cause working organizing to collectively bargain would be more like “communism”...except wait a minute, in “Communist China” labor unions ARE illegal. Go figure. Duh!

Of course, your argument is really based on economic ignorance, an complete misunderstanding of the nature of “comparative advantage"..."free trade” is totally about labor arbitrage, not whether or not a particular job is “competitive” or not.  In the same way, the debate about unrestrained immigration is not about racism, as the liberals would believe, or freedom, which the libertarians believe, but merely about importing workers from destitute economies (free market economies btw), and undercutting the wages of domestic workers.

What’s really funny about McBrown’s argument is that the fastest growing “capitalist” economies in the world---china and India also have the most repressive governments and rigid class structures. which totally demolishes the equally silly argument that “freedom” and capitalism are related. In fact, the opposite is true, true “capitialism” works best when the governments and social values are MOST repressive.

Your analysis is so uninformed I really don’t know where to begin.  Calling for protectionist tariffs?  Get out a history book and look up the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.  It turned a mild recession into the Great Depression.  Do you really think we want a repeat of that?  As happened with Smoot-Hawley, other countries responded with tariffs of their own, touching off a global trade war.  Everyone got poorer as a result.  What makes you think those countries will respond any differently now? 

Times have changed and those who refuse to adapt pay a price.  Calling for a retreat to 50 years into the past is idiotic, to say the least.  The rising fortunes of the rest of the world, a result of the spread of capitalism, advances in technology and communications, has created a new landscape for trade.  We either adapt or go the way of dinosaurs.

Mr. Smith:

Are you aware that the very first act past by the very first Congress was a tariff?  That behind protective tariffs the United States became the world’s leading industrial power, after Britain foolishly embraced free trade?  That Germany, too, surpassed Britain, after Germany emulated the United States and embraced protectionism?  That Japan, South Korea, and now China have risen to economic prominence after embracing protectionism?  That all of our major trading rivals today employ some form of protectionism, either through a border-adjusted VATT (which operates much like a tariff) or the myriad means used by China and Japan to protect their home market?

With respect to Smoot-Hawley, this is what Milton Friedman had to say about it:  “It played no significant role in either causing the depression or prolonging it.” Which is unsurprising, since total imports in 1930 represented only 4% of GNP, and Smoot-Hawley applied to only one-third of imports, or 1.3% of GNP.  In addition, between 1929 and 1933, net U S exports fell only $700,000,000, or 1.5% of the GNP.

What prolonged the Depression was the fact that one-third of the money supply essentially vanished.  That is why 5,000 banks failed, the stock market lost five-sixths of its value, the GNP fell by 46%, and unemployment rose to 25%, not because of a tariff in an economy geared for domestic production for domestic consumption.

“We either adapt or go the way of dinosaurs.”

Indeed, so why advocate more of the same?

The free-trade argument rests on;
1) the myth growing out of the Gore-Perot debate regarding Smoot-Hawley. Tom has answered that one.

2)the foreign investors, most notably China, holding our next to worthless Treasuries agree to do so, only if we continue to consume their exports at the expense of our domestic industries. Odd that those who worry about a loss of liberty are so mute on this crippling arrangement.

Thanks for deleting my posts takimag.

Anyway,

---Sorry, Amin, but the fallacy in the Ayn Rand rationale for the nature of things that YOU don’t live in a vaccum, and neither does anyone else.---

I don’t see how believing that coercion should be minimized is tantamount to believing that we live in a vacuum.  I believe we have responsibilities to our community, but that the only responsibility that the government, aka the collective, has a legitimate right to compel us to fulfill is the one that calls on us to apply coercion to othersr.

Now call my ideas Randian, I don’t really give a shit.  They are the moral position and they make sense. 

You and the rest of you protectionists hide behind more regulations to try to adapt to a world that is changing rapidly, when it is regulations and the abdication of personal responsibility that has hampered the American economy and standard of living for the last 3 decades.

@ Various, A tariff is a tax.  Tax revenues go to the govrnment. The government is not good with money.  Anyone disagree? 

I repeatedly wrote that I was against “across the board” tariffs.  Not all tarrifs.  Don’t misquote/misconstrue.  It weakens your arguments.

China and India aren’t growing because of their governments.  They’re growing because of a cheap labor force and less government regulation.

Like it or not, there is no turning back the clock.  Amrica must adapt and compete, not isolate itself.

Sure, we can keep wages high by imposing tarrifs.  IN THE SHORT RUN.  In the long run, trade wars ensue, America loses.

Kevin wrote:  Individuals belong to communities and have ties and obligations that trump the consumerist ethos

That’s what it realy comes down to.  What is most important?  The freedom of the indivdual or the need for collectivism?  It has nothing to do with “materialism”.  That’s simply a way of putting a bad name on something you don’t like.

Name calling doesn’t change reality.