Posted on 09/21/2009 12:58:46 PM PDT by the anti-liberal
YOU can be fairly sure that when a government slips an announcement out at nine o’clock on a Friday night, it is not proud of what it is doing. That is one of the only things that makes sense about Barack Obama’s decision to break a commitment he, along with other G20 leaders, reaffirmed last April: to avoid protectionist measures at a time of great economic peril. In every other way the president’s decision to slap a 35% tariff on imported Chinese tyres looks like a colossal blunder, confirming his critics’ worst fears about the president’s inability to stand up to his party’s special interests and stick to the centre ground he promised to occupy in office.
This newspaper endorsed Mr Obama at last year’s election (see article) in part because he had surrounded himself with enough intelligent centrists. We also said that the eventual success of his presidency would be based on two things: resuscitating the world economy; and bringing the new emerging powers into the Western order. He has now hurt both objectives.
Last year the fear was that Mr Obama would give in to enormous protectionist pressure from Congress. By introducing the levy, Mr Obama has pandered to a single union, one that does not even represent a majority of American tyre-industry workers, and he has done so against the interests of everyone else (see article)...
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
The economist is a somewhat sensible magazine and right on point here.
The cartoon is priceless, and spot on.
“Nor is the potential fallout from Mr Obama’s wrongheaded decision limited to trade. Evidence of a weak president being pushed leftward might cause investors to worry whether he will prove similarly feeble when it comes to reining in the vast deficits he is now racking up; and that might spook the buyers of bonds that finance all those deficits. Looming large among these, of course, are the Chinese. Deteriorating trade relations between the world’s number one debtor and its number one creditor are enough to keep any banker awake at night.”
Obama the Feeble.
Limited government and free markets are the answers, not the problems!
Sure the don’t like the USA to put any crimps in trade. They sell to us but don’t buy from us and the deficit trade deal gravy train keeping rolling along. Protectionism by everyone except the USA is their rallying cry.
Some more Kool-aid drinkers that refused to listen to what he said in the campaign.
The US having the largest economy in the world enjoys the most benefits of free trade. Yes, US has a large structural trade deficit. Yes, Red China is one of the largest creditor countries and buyer of US government issued debt. Which country would most people rather live in? Everyone is gaming to get into America. How many Americans hide in shipping containers trying to get into Red China? Only the DPRK citizens/prisoners are trying to get into Red China. And their unhappy reward is to be shipped back from whence they came.
China is doing quite well being an exporting country while we are having economic problems by importing product and sending jobs, factories and Treasuries in return.
I am deeply troubled. The globalist Economist was in love with the President Without Borders until now. Showing the President vandalize private property for thrills or worse stirs up a corrosive mix of fear and prejudice. Economist editors: get in line for your whipping from Jimmy Carter.(sarc)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.