Free Republic

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson cautioned on Sunday that countries that turn to protectionist policies to try to escape damage from the global financial crisis may make it worse. "Isolationism and protectionism will not offer a way out," Paulson said in a statement prepared for delivery to the World Bank's development committee.

A moratorium on the opening of new fast food restaurants in one of the poorest areas of Los Angeles moved one step closer to reality on Tuesday in a measure aimed at countering obesity.A Los Angeles city council planning committee unanimously approved a one-year ban, which could be extended for a further year, on new fast food outlets in a 32-square-mile (82-sq-km) area of Los Angeles.

...He starts with a real advantage. Although unemployment remains low and the economy continues to grow, voters are worried. A bank has failed, the financial news channels pump out dark tales of foreclosures and write-offs, petrol prices are crushingly high, and food prices are soaring. Most Americans say the economy is the most important issue in this election, and three out of four think we are in recession. ... Unfortunately, this is a particularly bad time for America to start a trade war. Exports are booming. In states such as Ohio one out of every four manufacturing jobs is devoted...

As immigrants, we're proud of America and the strength it derives from being uniquely open to trade, to investment, and to ideas and people. Recently, prominent voices in punditry and politics have questioned the benefits of America's openness and called for an isolationist U-turn that would choke off our innovation and prosperity. In every state of the union, such a retreat would be disastrous for jobs, economic growth and consumer choice. Nowhere is this more clear than here in Torrance, Calif., where today we are visiting a Hitachi plant that remanufactures auto parts. This "foreign" company employs 16,000 Americans --...

It was annouced The Canadian government rejected the C$1.33 billion ($1.31 billion) sale of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.'s satellite business to Alliant Techsystems Inc., ``I don't think as a general term investors will look at this and say all of a sudden Canada is not open to foreign investment,'' because a similar acquisition in other countries would also face a stringent review, Bradley said.

The United States is experiencing one of its periodic fits of isolationism. In the age before missiles and satellites, we often felt that two oceans protected us from warring states in Asia and Europe. In addition, for over a century our own frontier kept us busy enough. Both the Founding Fathers and waves of immigrants warned us against getting too involved with the aristocratic prejudices and age-old feuds of the Old World. After the Civil War, the federal government turned our army into a tiny constabulary. The nation industrialized, and didn’t much worry about the rising tensions between European colonial...

Fair Weather Free Trader Barack Obama's protectionism. by Matthew Continetti 03/10/2008, Volume 013, Issue 25 A few weeks back, the Washington Post wrote that Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama is running on a "platform of hope and change." Which is true enough--if by "hope and change" the Post actually means "despair and a change for the worse." That is certainly the case, anyway, when it comes to Obama's recent arguments against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and free trade more generally. Campaigning in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas, Obama touted his opposition to NAFTA and pledged to "renegotiate" the 1993...

TARRYTOWN, NY—Representative Duncan L. Hunter was presented the Hand Tools Institute American Manufacturing Champion award by representatives of the Hand Tools Institute (HTI), a trade association of American hand tool manufacturers. This award is intended to recognize legislators that demonstrate strong support for manufacturing. Representative Hunter is the first recipient of this award. Scott Meyer, president emeritus of HTI presented the award to Congressman Hunter in his offices in Washington, DC. During the presentation, Mr. Myer said, “The board of directors of the Hand Tools Institute voted unanimously to present this award to you, Congressman Hunter, in recognition of your...

(AP Photo ) Former President Proves Liability as Well as Asset in Hillary Clinton's Campaign Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has been trying to chip away at Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead in Ohio primary polls by attacking the North American Free Trade Agreement, one of former President Clinton's major legacies — which unions in Ohio say has cost them jobs. "She has essentially presented herself as co-president during the Clinton years," Obama told supporters in Loraine, Ohio. "The notion that you can selectively pick what you take credit for and then run away from what isn't politically convenient doesn't make sense."...

DES MOINES, Iowa - A state lawmaker who served in Iraq wants to ban U.S. or Iowa flags that are made in other countries. Rep. Ray Zirkelbach, D-Monticello, said he would introduce a bill that would prohibit the sale of foreign-made flags in Iowa. "I personally don't want my coffin draped in a Chinese-made flag when I pass away," Zirkelbach said. Under the proposal, business owners an operators could face fines of up to $625 if they sell a flag made in another country. They also could face up to 30 days in jail. The measure also would apply to...

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<p>U.S. sugar policy stands for all that's bad about our political system. The government restricts imports through a series of quotas, pushing U.S. sugar prices to between two and three times the global market rate. As a result, a handful of sugar producers, notably in Florida, a battleground electoral state, pocket $1 billion a year in excess profits. To protect this cozy arrangement, the sugar barons plow a chunk of their revenue back into the political system. During the 2004 election cycle, two Florida sugar companies gave a total of $925,000 to election coffers.</p>

Pat Buchanan's recent attempt to diagnose the sinking dollar demonstrates that ignorance of basic economics is not limited to the Left. Buchanan points out the plummeting value of the dollar relative to other currencies and major commodities such as gold (up 24% this year) and oil (up over 50% in 12 months). He then declares that "the prime suspect in the death of the dollar is the massive trade deficits America has run up" to "maintain her standard of living and to sustain the American Imperium." This diagnosis offers a tantalizing glimpse of the truth, yet shatters it with protectionist...

The die is now cast. As the euro brushes $1.50 against the dollar, it is already too late to stop the eurozone hurtling into a full-fledged economic and political crisis. We now have to start asking whether the EU itself will survive in its current form. It takes eighteen months or so for the full effects of currency changes to feed through, so the damage will snowball late next year and beyond into 2009. Although "damage" is a relative term. As Airbus chief Thomas Enders warned in a speech to the Hamburg workers last night, Europe's champion plane-maker - the...

Lions and Tigers and Trade, Oh My! by: Bethany Stotts, November 09, 2007 American antipathy toward trade has been growing rapidly as American citizens increasingly fear that globalization (and outsourcing) will undermine their job security. However, world-renowned economist Jagdish Bhagwati argues that the current free-trade phobia is unjustified. “But you know, there is no accounting for fear... I would also add that fear has deaf ears, because once you’re really frightened you don’t listen to [experts],” asserted Bhagwati at a CATO book forum. Most studies point to the negligible negative effect that trade with underdeveloped countries has had on their...

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 significantly raised import restrictions, reduced trade and prosperity, provoked protectionist retaliation by foreign governments, and damaged the spirit of peace, cooperation, and goodwill.

Bush: Protectionism will cost U.S. jobs By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 10 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Alarmed by slipping support for free trade even among Republicans, President Bush is arguing that protectionism will cut Americans out of chances for more — and better — jobs. Bush has launched a blitz on behalf of pending free trade pacts with four nations. He continued the push Saturday in his weekly radio address. "More exports support better and higher-paying jobs," the president said. "And to keep our economy expanding, we need to keep expanding trade." His radio address followed a...

The case for free trade rests on a simple principle: people should be free to buy from whomever they choose, even if the supplier is a foreigner. The opponents of free trade believe that there are legitimate exceptions to this principle. When foreign businesses have an allegedly "unfair" advantage, Americans competing against them want Uncle Sam to rescue them by adopting protectionist policies, such as import quotas and tariffs. They want the government to "level the playing field." They fear losing their jobs, and/or they are afraid that free trade will result in the economic decline of our country. The...

China bids for firm that makes "intrusion prevention" technology for the Department of Defense. THE CHINESE ANNOUNCED on Saturday that they would be buying into the company that provides the Pentagon with technology to prevent cyber-attacks--of the sort the Chinese launched a few weeks ago. Why worry? We are all free traders now, according the president and his secretary of the Treasury--all except misguided Democrats, trade unions, displaced workers, and those who worry about our national security. True, free trade is great--when dealing with other parties who are in it for the same thing--to make money. But that ain't the...

...[The building of the Trans-Texas Corridor] is all too sinister for Jerome Corsi, the Vietnam War veteran who helped lead the Swift Boat charge against John Kerry. Corsi has knitted disparate strands of each of these separate road projects to help convince fellow xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Dobbs and the John Birch Society that the corridor is the first leg of a secret federal project called the NAFTA Superhighway, a four-football-field wide monstrosity that would run from Mexico's Yucatan to Canada's Yukon... Yet even Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican candidate for president, has fallen...

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - Officials from the Federal Reserve on Saturday warned of dangers from a rising tide of trade disputes and the harmful impact on what one otherwise termed a "resilient" United States economy. Three regional Fed presidents steered clear of current economic or monetary policy topics at a panel discussion on the southern U.S. economy at the Southern Governors' Association conference. The presidents of the St. Louis, Dallas and Atlanta Feds, respectively, mostly focused on the dangers of protectionism and the need for an educated and flexible work force to cope with rising foreign competition. The governors convened...

<p>PARIS -- French libraries are said to file their nation's constitutions -- there have been more than a dozen since 1789; the current one is a relatively ancient 49 years old -- under periodicals. Now Nicolas Sarkozy, France's peripatetic new president, has created a commission on constitutional reform. The commission includes Jack Lang who, as minister of culture in 1983 under President Francois Mitterrand, staged a sublimely unserious conference on the (supposed) world economic crisis, featuring the likes of Sophia Loren, Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer.</p>

A New Deal for Globalization By Kenneth F. Scheve and Matthew J. Slaughter From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007 WAGES FALLING, PROTECTIONISM RISING Over the last several years, a striking new feature of the U.S. economy has emerged: real income growth has been extremely skewed, with relatively few high earners doing well while incomes for most workers have stagnated or, in many cases, fallen. Just what mix of forces is behind this trend is not yet clear, but regardless, the numbers are stark. Less than four percent of workers were in educational groups that enjoyed increases in mean real money earnings...

The results of the 2007 edition of IMD’s World Competitiveness Yearbook highlight a big shake-up in economic and business power. Emerging nations are quickly catching up in competitiveness. New companies and new brands are appearing all over the world. They now contest the long-standing competitive supremacy of industrialized nations. “This could lead to an increase in protectionist measures in Europe and the US”, says Professor Stéphane Garelli, Director of IMD’s World Competitiveness Center. Of the 55 economies ranked by IMD, the US still ranks No. 1 in 2007, closely followed by Singapore and Hong Kong. However, 40 economies are now...

The advocates of free trade have on their side over 200 years of settled science in economics, going all the way back to Adam Smith. The advocates of protectionism have Lou Dobbs. With his nightly harangues on CNN and through his books, Lou Dobbs has become the public face of today’s dangerous movement toward economic isolationism. That movement has become all the more dangerous since the Democratic party took control of Congress. Beholden to Big Labor, the Democrats have no choice but to cater to that powerful lobby’s fears of a dynamic globalized American economy. Last month, when Dobbs testified...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A move to protect threatened American industries and workers from foreign competition would be a serious mistake that would jeopardize the sizable benefits of free trade, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday."Restricting trade by imposing tariffs, quotas and other barriers is exactly the wrong thing to do," Bernanke said in remarks to an audience at Montana Tech in Butte, Mont. In the long run, economic isolationism and retreat from international competition would inexorably lead to lower productivity for U.S. firms and lower living standards for U.S. consumers," Bernanke said.As America's trade deficits have soared, Congress and...

In his blog Ideas, Santa Clara University economist David Friedman (yes, he's Milton's son) wrote about the cost of eyeglasses. He was curious why a new frame and set of lenses costs less than $10 online, but five times that amount or more at most stores. Part of the answer lies in statutes like Arizona's §32-1684.01, which states that anyone wanting to open an eyeglass store must "provide evidence to the board's satisfaction that at least one licensed dispensing optician works at the optical establishment on a full-time basis." That means the Arizona State Board of Dispensing Opticians, the licensing...

Pak says no to Nokia phones made in Chennai April 19, 2007 18:21 IST Stretching its reservations on imports from India to multinational companies, Pakistan is understood to have informed mobile handset maker Nokia not to sell phones made in India in the Islamic nation. The reservations of Pakistan in receiving such mobile phones apparently were conveyed to Nokia through authorised cell phone distributors, who have asked the company not to ship Indian made handsets into Pakistan on the ground that consumers may not like it. The company, which has a facility near Chennai in south India, has accepted the...

Great Britain once prided itself on being the "workshop of the world." During Operation Iraqi Freedom the British army found itself at the mercy of the Swiss government, which stopped a shipment of 25,000 grenades from a manufacturer, RUAG Munitions, based on their opposition to the invasion. British troops were forced to fight under-equipped. One British military analyst argued that the British government was foolish to depend on a manufacturer whose government was outspoken in its opposition to the Iraq war. Should the United States feel confident that, unlike the British, we could avoid a similar mistake? Well, it happened...

THE NEW WORLD DISORDERReport: 'Free trade' enslaves poor nations Globalization benefits wealthy exporters at expense of farmers, workers, says Oxfam World Net Daily March 31, 2007 WASHINGTON – So-called "free trade" agreements are not free at all, victimizing the poor while benefiting the wealthy, says a new report by Oxfam International, the coalition fighting poverty, suffering and social injustice around the world. Nevertheless, a trend toward regional agreements and globalization continues, with an average of two bilateral or multilateral investment treaties being signed every week, according to the study. "In an increasingly globalized world, these agreements seek to benefit...

The following is from Duncan Hunter's son, Duncan Duane Hunter, a Marine who's serving in the Iraq War. The issue is about something that's been a big question by FReepers by his positions on trade. ----- First off, hello to everyone. I'm Duncan D. Hunter, son of Congressman/Candidate Hunter. This is a great forum for dad and is exactly what we're aiming for. Because the mainstream media refuses to talk about dad our campaign is truly a grassroots one until the spill over takes effect and the lightning strikes. If you don't mind I'd lie to talk about trade, one...

The mammoth globe on the World Trade Bridge spins in the glow of the Texas moon, welcoming hundreds of cargo trucks from Mexico to the United States' largest inland port. Nighttime is the slowest time for the bridge. During the day, literally thousands of trucks cross the span into the U.S., headed for destinations scattered throughout the Midwest and East and north into Canada. Traffic between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, on Mexico's side of the bridge, is only expected to increase in coming years with Mexico anticipating billions of dollars in new trade, mainly from China, on its way to...

Tuesday, December 26, 2006 Everybody knows that the loss of huge portions of their home U.S. market to imports has decimated U.S.-owned automakers Ford and GM (as well as Chrysler, which is no longer U.S.-owned, but shares many of Detroit’s biggest problems). What everybody doesn’t know is that literally dozens of U.S.-based manufacturing industries have suffered the same kinds of losses since the late 1990s. The clear bottom line, as revealed by the U.S. Business & Industry Council’s latest annual survey of domestic manufacturing’s competitiveness: The United States is a military superpower, but is steadily becoming an industrial also-ran. The...

Globalization will lower the real wages of unskilled workers in advanced economies with or without the free flow of labor between countries, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said Thursday. ..... "The downward pressure on the real wages of the unskilled in advanced economies doesn't require migration to bring it down - trade will do the same."

The best postmortem on the 2006 election came from that perennial politician, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). He said, "People want to know who's on their side. Whether it's health care or wages or retirement issues, they want to have someone on their side." The biggest electoral bloc of the "they" who are seeking friends is the middle class, which includes people variously labeled blue-collar workers, skilled workers, or Reagan Democrats. They are the swing voters, often called the moveables. President Ronald Reagan's victories absolutely depended on their support. But Presidents Bush I and II kicked them away from the Republican...

THE ISSUE OF GLOBALIZATION--which has been growing from a preoccupation of the political fringe to a battle cry of the Democratic mainstream--may well become the sleeper issue of 2008. Listen to the postelection chatter in Washington right now, which can be boiled down to one question: Did the Democrats win simply because of Republican scandals and frustrations over the war in Iraq, or was some less perceptible shift in the electorate at work? Are we in fact seeing the beginnings of an electoral wave that might continue into 2008 and give Democrats control over the White House and even larger...

It's hard to recall now, but Democrats were once America's free trade party. Reed Smoot, Willis Hawley and Herbert Hoover--the President who signed their infamous 1930 tariff--were all Republicans. This history is worth recalling as resurgent Democrats in Congress debate whether to set off in a protectionist direction that repudiates much of their heritage. Amid the breakdown of the international trading system in the 1930s, the man who began to rebuild it was a Democratic Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. With FDR's support, he negotiated a series of bilateral trade deals that Harry Truman used as the basis for the...

There are only a handful of products that Americans import that cannot be produced at home and therefore create jobs for Americans. Let's look at a few of them. We import cocoa from Ghana and coffee from African and Latin American countries. We import saffron from Spain and India and cinnamon from Sri Lanka. In fact, India produces 86 percent of the world tonnage of spices. There's absolutely no reason these products cannot be produced by Americans, and we could be cocoa, coffee and spices independent. You say, "Williams, that's crazy! We don't have the climate and soil conditions to...

The world is benefiting from an "unprecedented" pace of global economic integration that may be constrained by protectionism and terrorism, says U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke. "The emergence of China, India, and the former communist-bloc countries implies that the greater part of the earth's population is now engaged, at least potentially, in the global economy," he said in prepared remarks to the Kansas City Fed's conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. "International tensions and the risks of terrorism already constrain the pace of worldwide economic integration and may do so even more." Mr. Bernanke, 52, didn't address U.S. monetary...

OK. Who outsourced Lou Dobbs’s dictionary to China? That has to be the only explanation for why CNN’s resident anti-free trader Lou Dobbs claimed a guest critical of the Bush administration’s trade policies was not a “protectionist.” During his July 24 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” interview with liberal (2005 ADA rating 100 out of 100) Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) about his new book “Take This Job and Ship It,” Dobbs praised the North Dakotan and urged viewers to pick up a copy of the senator’s anti-free trade manifesto. “Senator Byron Dorgan is no protectionist. In point of fact, he is calling...

THE NEW WORLD DISORDER Truck drivers from India to take U.S. jobs? Union protests plan as attempt to undercut 'hard-working Americans' An American company is recruiting long-haul truck drivers from India with the goal of placing them with U.S. trucking firms. The Teamsters Union strongly opposes the plan by Gagan Global LLC of Garnerville, N.Y. Teamsters Union spokesman Galen Munroe told WND the plan "is yet another example of corporations exploiting a visa program to replace highly trained, hard-working Americans with cheap labor from overseas." Gagan Global has contracted with the Indian state government of Andra Pradesh and its Overseas...

LONDON -- When Spanish stock-exchange operator Bolsas & Mercados Espanoles lists shares on its own market today, opening itself to investors for the first time in its 170-year history, it will do so under one condition: You must ask permission to buy more than 1%. The Spanish government put the requirement in during May as BME, based in Madrid, was gearing up for its market debut. Under the rule, no investor can build up a direct or indirect stake of more than 1% in BME without consent from the country's market regulator, the Comision Nacional del Mercado de Valores, or...

The Global Education Conference held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. last month was used to teach educators how to bring global issues into the classroom. But, when it came time to practice the logistics of coordinating a debate the political opinions of the teachers could not be suppressed. The organization that put together the conference, Americans for Informed Democracy (AID), claimed to be a non-partisan group established to “educate and engage Americans in global issues….[in order to] create a generation of Americans that will support a U.S. role in the world that is appropriate….” But what is appropriate? AID...

REVIEW & OUTLOOK The New Protectionists - How to create a real security crisis. Friday, March 10, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST Dubai Ports World finally threw in the kaffiyah on its American operations yesterday, agreeing to sell them "to a U.S. entity." We hope that entity turns out to be Halliburton, if only for the torment that would cause certain eminences on Capitol Hill. Dubai Ports was susceptible to this political stampede because it was an Arab-owned company buying port operations, which Democrats have played up as uniquely vulnerable. But this is also the second such mugging of a foreign...

PROTECTIONISTS, REJOICE! The dastardly United Arab Emirates company that would have presumed to unload containers of underwear and toothpaste on U.S. soil has backed down, and it will now divest its U.S. port interests to an American entity. Rest assured, the nation is now safe from dangerous Middle Eastern accountants and port logistics specialists. Dubai Ports World did what was necessary, if not necessarily fair, on Thursday by agreeing to give up the U.S. operations of its newly acquired British ports company. The House Appropriations Committee had voted 62 to 2 on Wednesday to block the deal; a similar bill...

STATE DEPARTMENT cookie-pushers, Davos dons, Wall Street Brahmins, think-tank worrywarts and the Olympians of the European Union are all fretting about the troubling rise of "economic nationalism" in the West. ***************Snip********************* The beauty of the American free-trade consensus over the last few decades is that it split two outlooks that tend to go together: nationalism and socialism. In terms of economic policy, nationalism is indistinguishable from socialism. When you nationalize an industry, you socialize it. And what is the difference between socialized medicine and nationalized healthcare? ***************Snip*************************** And if we let them follow this path, we'll have the same problems...

The Economist magazine reports that the official unemployment rate in South Africa is 26 percent but that the real unemployment rate there may be even higher. The South African economy is growing. Why then this extremely high unemployment rate? What is going on? What is going on in South Africa is what has been going on in other economies with huge problems. Somebody could not resist the lure of something for nothing. Minimum wages in South Africa have been set higher than the productivity of many workers, so employers have no incentive to hire those workers, even though such workers...

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The Minnesota Department of Commerce plans to fine a gas station chain for repeatedly selling gas below the state's legal minimum price. The agency said it's fining Midwest Oil $140,000 for breaking a state formula based on wholesale prices, fees and taxes to determine a daily floor for gas prices. Minnesota's price law was intended to prevent large oil companies from driving smaller competitors out of business -- but some critics argue it fails to protect consumers. The Commerce Department says Midwest-owned stations in Anoka, Minn., Oakdale, Minn., and Albert Lea, Minn., sold gas below the...

Moving toward a deal that could allow President Bush and congressional GOP leaders to save face and avert a prolonged confrontation, GOP officials said today that they were discussing the idea of having Dubai Ports World seek a new review of its acquisition of a British company's operation that runs several key U.S. ports. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, confirmed in a phone interview early Saturday afternoon to TIME that officials were close to a deal involving the Congressional leadership, the White House and the Dubai company. The agreement would call for a 45-day “CFIUS-plus investigation,” King said,...

The Violence Against Women Act signed by President Bush on Jan. 5 contains an almost unnoticed attachment. Subtitle D, also known as the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBA), will become law when VAWA is enacted. The IMBA is an ostensibly noble measure with a surprising and ominous twist. The scant attention directed toward the IMBA has been positive. A headline in Washington State's The Daily Herald announced, "Mail-order brides gain protection" with the subtitle "The mother of a murdered immigrant hopes that pending federal legislation will keep foreign brides from abuse, neglect and slavery." The "murdered immigrant"...