[Madstrider]

Idiot. Trade equals economic growth, period. If other companies erect trade barriers or subsidize their industries, they only rob the consumers and taxpayers of those countries. Protection results in inefficiency; inefficiency causes economic decline.

[sarcasm]

Protection results in inefficiency; inefficiency causes economic decline.

Was the United States a declining nation when it imposed tariffs to protect its industry?

[The Duke]

Idiot. Trade equals economic growth, period. If other companies erect trade barriers or subsidize their industries, they only rob the consumers and taxpayers of those countries.

"Companies" don't erect trade barriers - nations do. And all our major trading partners do, in fact, have trade barriers in place (try selling a US-made PC in China!).

Don't you think there's a reason when you travel to Canada from the US, for example, that you have to tell the border guards that you're not coming there to work?

It's a relief to know that we do things so much smarter now, even though we're a far less educated nation then we were back in the days that we imposed tarriffs. </sarcasm>

[freeper12]

>>Trade equals economic growth, period

Growth, but for who? Even if trade does equals economic growth, it seems quite clear that the benefits of increased free trade are being reaped by fewer and fewer people at the very top of the food chain. CEO's are making hundreds of millions of dollars by firing american workers and hiring ones in China and India. If this is creating any wealth at all, it is creating it not for the average american but for the average chinese person and for the CEO's...they should have called it SHAFTA, not NAFTA.

The outsourinc of america WILL be an important election issue someday in the not to distant future.

[SSN558]

The Japs bought into the economics of globalism, and are suffering the same fate as Americans. Change occurs faster for local economies with the closest geographic location to the trade ports. This explains why CA is not far behind the Japanese.

Welcome to the 21st century and the race to the bottom. The economists are half right, third world nations have a comparative advantage of "low cost labor" a thinly disguised euphemism for sweat shop labor and CEO slave masters.

How might you ask do traders and investors become billionares by trading away a nations wealth, health, and prosperity ? Corporate welfare and political coruption is how. For example: Feinswein uses her power and position in the Senate to steer government contracts to her billionare husband Richard Bloom. Government contracts are money taken by the force of law, "taxes" from the people of the United States. Through a series of sub contractors, holding companies, and other business gimics all this wealth is then exported to third would nations such as China. In the lexicon of modern business this is refred to as, "win-win." China wins, Bloom wins, Feinswine wins, and the statists in government win having to exert ever greater amounts of control over the population.

Is it any wonder that Feinswein is an ardant supporter of gun control ? Just like the former USSR, a growing portion of domestic economic activiy is devoted to the "black" market or underground economy. By some estimates the black market in the U.S. is 10% of GNP, and this consists mostly of illegal drugs. If the U.S. government had prohibited shoes or tooth brushes instead of mind altering drugs, we would see a blosoming "black" market for these items.

Why is the "black" market called black ? End Of Rant.

[maui_hawaii]

Idiot.

That sounds like a perfect self description.

Trade doesn't always equal economic growth. Sometimes it does, but other times it doesn't. I have glaring real life, real world examples.

[dennisw]

Idiot. Trade equals economic growth, period..............

LAUGHABLE!!! Hardly a universal law. One size fits all, cookie cutter economics.Just a wet dream of free market worshiping libertarian loons.

[redangus]

One way trade doesn't. You are assuming that we are equal trading partners with these other countries which we are not. We buy billions of dollars worth of goods from many countries that have no market for us to sell to. There maybe millions of Chinese, Malaysians, Mexicans etc., but they don't buy large quantities of American made goods because they don't have the money to do so. We are not playing on a level field here. Go to any Wal-Mart, Lowes or Home Depot and see how many things are made in America. I can tell you very few. I would bet if you went to stores in the above mentioned countries you would find the same thing to be true. Very few American made items on the shelves.

[RJS1950]

B freakin S. It means economic growth IF the goods are manufactured here and workers who make the goods get paid here thereby spending the money here for other goods and services produced here for which other workers get paid...etc. If the goods/jobs are overseas, then it is little different from the goods produced by foreign industries, only the CEOs and stockholders gain, and in the long run you create a society where the former, now unemployed/underemployed workers cannot afford to buy the goods and services produced, and certainly not at the level they might if the goods were produced here and the money all flowed through the american economy. Where the hell did you learn economics? From the DNC? Goods, services and the money from the wages of the producers are what fuel an economy, otherwise, you had better find enough buyers in europe, asia and elsewhere to buy large quantities of your goods because you are killing off the buying power of the average worker in this country.