[atlanta67]

""'I for one am grateful that the *Free Trade* crowd wasn't in charge in 1941. ""


actually you should go check your history becasue they were. Sec of State Cordell Hull was an avid advocate for free trade and FDR's administration held the belief that trade protectionism made world war more not less likely.....sigh

[investigateworld]

Fair enough, but we still had the capacities to become the *Arsenal of Democracy*. And I kind of think Americans were a bit more concerned about the welfare of one another. I've seen old posters; "Buy a car, give a guy a job".
The state I live in is always in the top five for unemployment. There are numerous state and federal programs for retraining workers who lost jobs to imports.
But none of the "Trainers" will guarantee a job, unless you chose truck driving or bar tending. Great eh?

[Willie Green]

Sec of State Cordell Hull was an avid advocate for free trade

Yep, he's the stinkin' socialist SOB who authored the first Federal Income Tax back in 1913.
Every American taxpayer should curse his name on April 15.

[Willie Green]

and FDR's administration held the belief that trade protectionism made world war more not less likely

Good grief, what a myopic buffoon!

Hull achieved general note as one of the conceivers and most ardent supporters of the United Nations.
He provided the main impetus pushing the State Department to write the "Charter of the United Nations", which it accomplished by mid-1943. Hull, upon returning from the Moscow Conference, told a joint session of Congress on November 18, 1943 that Soviet General Secretary Josef Stalin "was one of the great statesmen and leaders of the age" and, "There will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power or for any other of the special arrangements through which the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests."

(source)