[Recourse]

Don't buy into Pat's propaganda. Protectionism only weakens our economy. Protectionist measures give domestic producers an artificial advantage over their foreign counterparts. At first glance, such barriers may seem to be advantageous measures that save jobs. In truth, however, policies that exclude foreign products only hurt the global economy and all who participate in it. Consumers in the importing nation have to pay more for that widget—when it could have been produced and imported from another country at a lower cost. These restrictions undoubtedly benefit local producers but are an inefficient use of money for everyone else.

Every job "saved" in a particular industry costs consumers.

[Gargantua]

The only "propaganda" here is the crap you're spewing. With a badly deteriorated manufacturing sector, upon whom will America rely for our wartime production if we ever end up at war with China?

When America had to respond to the heinous Japanese attack in WWII, we converted our peacetime factories (very quickly) into wartime materiel production facilities.

Everything from boots and coats and helmets for our Boys to bullets, guns, planes, jeeps, ships, tanks, missiles and bombs were built right here by American manufacturers...

...because we had American manufacturers back then, and we had them in the numbers needed to push back the Luftwaffen SS, the Panzers, the Wermacht, and the Japanese Imperial Fleet.

This has nothing to do with "Buchanan's Propaganda" and everything to do with your own venom for the man causing you to be unable to see the potentially fatal ignorance of your own narrow view.

This isn't about Bush-vs-Buchanan or Democrat-vs-Republican. This is about doing what is best for our National Security and Sovereignty because it is what's best for our National Security and Sovereignty.

Arguing the 'economics' of a matter where, properly framed, our National Security is the issue... is a dodge worthy only of a deceitful Liberal lying scum. And we know you aren't one of them, right?

America needs a STRONG manufacturing sector to ensure our safety and freedom, now and in the future.

Get your head out of there... it smells better out here, and you can actually see stuff.

:-/

[Tauzero]

"Every job 'saved' in a particular industry costs consumers."

Yes, but the costs are diffuse and less visible, compared to the competetive demise of industries, factories, and employment.

That diffusion is a good thing, in a representative republic.

[Gargantua]

"Protectionism only weakens our economy."

Right.

And since NAFTA and GATT were signed into law, my how the economy has flourished, huh?

Can you possibly be that thick? That blind?

;-/

[Tokhtamish]

Every job saved also means a family saved.

Has it ever dawned on you that the destruction of low to semi skilled stable industrial jobs means and has meant a permanent and growing underclass ? That the advent of globalism in the early 70's destroyed precisely those jobs that would have enabled Blacks to work their way out of the ghetto the way the Irish and Italians did ?

[Theodore R.]

It's kind of like Wal-Mart coming into a town of 8,000 people and putting all the small merchants out of business. Wal-Mart has the variety, the lower prices, etc, and the small merchant cannot compete. So he goes out of business, and his store becomes a boarded-up eyesore for many years before some video store decides to try that location for a few months.

Not everyone can have the nice white-collar jobs. There must be jobs for the blue-collar men too. And there is a danger in a country not producing so many consumer goods. There is a very long list of what is no longer produced in the USA. It ranges from televisions to radios and even brooms.

[bimbo]

Protectionism only weakens our economy. Protectionist measures give domestic producers an artificial advantage over their foreign counterparts.

Explain to me what is "protectionist" about requiring China to float their currency, like our other major trading partners? Or is the "artificial advantage" this gives China what is mean by "free trade?"

So, if any "advantage" is to be had, I'd prefer that it accrue to domestic producers rather than those Chinese Communists.

[TomasUSMC]

Ah, you forgot one thing, if you don't have a job you can't be a consumer. Don't consider a costlier widget worse than a american who has lost their job so that the widget can be made by slave labor in China.

[Paul Ross]

You are tilting against 200 years of U.S. Trade Policies and their associated empirical evidence which disproves your thesis. The evidence of the trade imbalance disproves your thesis. The evidence of the growing economic supremacy of China and India disproves your thesis. They have massive tariffs against us, BTW.