[FreeReign]

Now there are some manufacturing sectors that for strategic reasons should not have been allowed to decline — steel and semiconductor devices come readily to mind — but to preserve them would have meant (and to revive them would mean) modernizing them and thereby making them less labor-intensive (i.e. fewer jobs).

Bush imposed tariffs of up to 30 percent on imported steel after 9/11, and he caught holy heck from numerous people on this board for doing it.

[The_Reader_David]

I might have been one of those giving Bush heck for that: I don’t think tariffs are a good way to defend strategic industries — they impoverish the consumer. If there is a compelling strategic interest in maintaining capacity in an industry, it would be better to subsidize the industry, and improvements to the industry, rather than forcing the citizenry and other industries to pay higher prices across the board. This maintains the advantages of free trade, while not allowing domestic capacity in a strategic area decline.