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Riding the free trade raft over the falls
WorldNetDaily ^ | April 18, 2005 | Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on 04/18/2005 6:37:40 AM PDT by A. Pole

These are not the halcyon days of the Republicans' champion of open borders and free trade, Jack Kemp.

The "Minutemen," who appeared in Cochise County, Ariz., April 1 to highlight the invasion President Bush will not halt, are being hailed by conservative media and congressmen as patriots, as they are dismissed by the president as "irrational vigilantes."

Comes now the trade shocker for February. The deficit hit an all-time monthly record: $61 billion. The annual U.S. trade deficit is now running at $717 billion, $100 billion above the 2004 record.

Smelling political capital, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer are co-sponsoring a 27 percent tariff on goods from China. Beijing ran a $162 billion trade surplus with us in 2004 in what trade expert Charles McMillion calls "The World's Most Unequal Trading Relationship."

The waters are rising around the Kemp Republicans. For these gargantuan deficits are sinking the dollar, denuding us of industry and increasing our dependence on imports for the components of our weapons, the necessities of our national life and the $2 billion in borrowed money we need daily now – to continue consuming beyond our capacity to pay.

Brother Kemp is correct in his Washington Times column in saying Beijing has not been manipulating its currency. China fixed the value of the renminbi at eight to the dollar in 1994, just as we once tied the dollar to gold. Beijing rightly objects, "It is not our fault your dollar is sinking."

But here, the free-traders enter a cul de sac. They recoil at tariffs like Lucifer from holy water, but have no idea how to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, technology, factories and dollars, except exhortation and prayer. For as 19th-century liberals, they believe free trade is "God's Diplomacy." Whoever rejects it sins in the heart. True believers all, they will ride this raft right over the falls and take us with them. This unyielding belief in the salvific power of free trade is, like socialism, one of modernity's secular religions.

As Kemp's column testifies, these folks are as light on history as they are long on ideology. Kemp claims "there is no demonstrable instance in economic history where nations were made worse off by free and open trade. There are only the doomsday scenarios spun out of the imagination of half-baked economists ..."

But between 1860 and 1914, Great Britain, which began the era with an economy twice the size of ours, ended it with an economy not half the size of ours. Britain worshipped at the altar of free trade, while America practiced protectionism from Lincoln to McKinley to Teddy Roosevelt to Taft. Tariffs averaged 40 percent and U.S. growth 4 percent a year for 50 years.

Bismarckian Germany did not exist in 1860. But by 1914, by imitating protectionist America, she had an economy larger than Great Britain's. Were it not for protectionist America shipping free-trade Britain the necessities of national survival from 1914 to 1917, Britain would have lost the war to Germany, so great was her dependence on imports. A real-life "doomsday scenario," thanks to a few dozen German U-boats.

Jack Kemp notwithstanding, protectionism has been behind the rise of every great power in modern history: Great Britain under the Acts of Navigation up to 1850, the America of 1860 to 1914, Germany from 1870 to 1914, Japan from 1950 to 1990 and China, which has grown at 9 percent a year for a decade. As China demonstrates, it is a mistake to assume free trade, or even democracy, is indispensable to growth.

Kemp trots out Smoot-Hawley, the 1930 tariff law, for a ritual scourging, suggesting it caused the Depression. But this, too, is hoary myth. In the 1940s and 1950s, schoolchildren and college students were indoctrinated in such nonsense by FDR-worshipping teachers whose life's vocation was to discredit the tariff hikes and tax cuts of Harding and Coolidge that led to the most spectacular growth in U.S. history – 7 percent a year in the Roaring Twenties. Under high-tariff Harding-Coolidge, the feds' tax take shrank to 3 percent of GNP.

As high tariffs and low or no income taxes made the GOP America's Party from 1860 to 1932, the Wilsonianism of Bush I and Bush II – open borders, free trade, wars for global democracy – has destroyed the Nixon-Reagan New Majority that used to give the GOP 49-state landslides. Bush carried 31 states in his re-election bid. He would have lost had Democrats capitalized on the free-trade folly that put in play, until the final hours, the indispensable Republican state of Ohio.

Kemp calls China our trade partner – surely a polite way to describe a regime that persecutes Catholics, brutalizes dissidents, targets 600 rockets on Taiwan, lets North Korea use its bases to ship missile and nuclear technology to anti-American regimes, and refuses to denounce racist riots designed to intimidate our Japanese allies.

As some on the Old Right have said since Bush I succeeded Reagan, open borders, free-trade globalism and wars for democracy are not conservatism, but its antithesis. And they will drown the GOP.

The Republicans jumping off the raft into the river and swimming desperately for shore testify to it more eloquently than words.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Foreign Affairs; Germany; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: cluelesspat; deficit; economy; eeyore; joebtfsplk; learnchinesenow; notickeenowashee; repent; sackclothandashes; tariffs; trade; wearedoomed
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To: Racehorse; CSM; 1rudeboy

Book Four, Chapter Two.

Not a surprise that PJB got it right, by the way...

Homework assignment, Rudeboy--you're still in grad school, right? OK. Disprove Smith. (Or Samuelson...)


161 posted on 04/18/2005 12:16:32 PM PDT by ninenot (Minister of Membership, TomasTorquemadaGentlemen'sClub)
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To: Sam the Sham
Yew really. Kerry was not within "a few thousand votes" at all. In fact, the democrats lost that state by well over 20k votes at least - and that was with the democrats already cheating.

Bush got more votes than other person in history. The GOP has controlled the house and state governorships for around a decade. With the exception of traitor Jim Jeffords (which was NOT won at the ballot box), the GOP has also controlled the senate.

Voting patterns of the last 25 years, for the most part, have indicated a GOP resurgence and democrat collapse.

162 posted on 04/18/2005 12:19:27 PM PDT by KC_Conspirator (This space outsourced to India)
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To: ninenot

"You have a better one? Please, enlighten us!!"

Depending on the data used in the discussion, the wage can be a few dollars per worker. Granted you don't have the wage levels you have here or the total compensation packages, but it ain't no "$0.30 an hour" in China.

Let me ask you this, is it more acceptable for me to automate a mfg. facility and eliminate jobs or is more acceptable to move jobs to lower cost regions of the world?

"Such as?" Pooling of resources by multiple generations or multiple workers or multiple families. Imaginations are sometimes able to find solutions to transportation problems.

"However, Forbes Magazine is not much more optimistic about GM's market position in the USA than I am."

There is a big difference between GM's market and the US total market. Which one do you want to discuss?


163 posted on 04/18/2005 12:20:05 PM PDT by CSM
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To: ex-snook

"Tell us what are the big job needs are in your area? Mine are automotive and truck driving."

So, the steel tariffs didn't save the high paying steel mill jobs in your state?


164 posted on 04/18/2005 12:21:35 PM PDT by CSM
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To: CSM

Correction

"Depending on the data used in the discussion, the wage can be a few dollars per worker."

Should read per hour.


165 posted on 04/18/2005 12:23:12 PM PDT by CSM
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To: ex-snook; ninenot; KC_Conspirator; 1rudeboy; Sam Cree; Nephi; WRhine

That's the point.

Free trade promised that high tech jobs would replace all those factory jobs. In the age of NAFTA they believed that all those displaced factory workers could just go to community college and study Visual Basic and become web programmers. Well, now there is outsourcing and those high tech jobs are being shipped overseas.

Half your labor force is composed of people of average or sub average intelligence. Not everyone is college material. In the Golden Age such people could just get jobs at the factory and be stable, productive citizens for life. They could buy a house, go away on vacation, have health insurance, and retire on a pension. Now, they do crystal meth as they drift from McJob to McJob. One of these days, the Democrats are going to stress restoring the old days of the job at the factory over sodomite marriage. And when they do, get ready for New Deal II.


166 posted on 04/18/2005 12:24:12 PM PDT by Sam the Sham
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To: CSM
So, the steel tariffs didn't save the high paying steel mill jobs in your state?

Which steel tariffs during which period of time?  Sometimes when the result is bad the cause is not the tariff.

You do realize tariffs are in effect now?  The steel industry wants to keep them, close off exemptions, and severely curtail the export of scrap metal to competitor nations.  They say jobs are being saved and the breathing space is allowing them to rebound.

The automotive industry folks are not so pleased.  They say the tariff is costing jobs, causing them to import finished components, raising their costs, making them less competitive.

Ah . . . the agony of tradeoffs.

167 posted on 04/18/2005 12:30:17 PM PDT by Racehorse (Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.)
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To: Sam the Sham

Oh I agree with you on that point totally. Free trade was supposed to mean trading goods between countries. Instead the only thing America is exporting are its jobs - and important ones in technology and defense. Its like America is selling scrap metal to Japan in the 1930's.


168 posted on 04/18/2005 12:31:02 PM PDT by KC_Conspirator (This space outsourced to India)
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To: KC_Conspirator

The decline of the Democrats was caused by a blunder.

NAFTA.

Clinton believed in free trade and the arguments for free trade. So did all of elite opinion, Republican and Democrat. Problem is, the working class base never agreed with free trade because they know that Desi Sixpack and Chan Sixpack will do the same jobs for a fraction of the money that Joe Sixpack gets and they can't compete with that. But Clinton made the decision to turn his back on them and won a victory that did not profit him politically in the least.

From then on, it was all downhill for Democrats because they had shown disdain for the economic interests and now the moral values of Joe Sixpack. The Clinton era Democratic party only cared about college educated knowledge workers. It was smugly assumed that only non-college educated people would be economically displaced and who cares about them ? That is a fixable problem, as Hillary realizes with her 27% tariff. A Democratic Party that talked more of jobs and protectionism than free trade and sodomite marriage could get Joe Sixpack back.


169 posted on 04/18/2005 12:33:11 PM PDT by Sam the Sham
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To: CSM
" So, the steel tariffs didn't save the high paying steel mill jobs in your state?"

Hey don't change the subject. Your turn. What are the job ads are in YOUR newspaper?

[US Steel, Bethlehem steel were long gone before the tariffs came went. A too late election gesture was no help.]

170 posted on 04/18/2005 12:46:46 PM PDT by ex-snook (Exporting jobs and the money to buy America is lose-lose..)
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To: ex-snook; Racehorse

What has the Tariff done for Budd, Philadelphia? Does it look like a ghost town yet?

As Racehorse put it, the tariffs are doing nothing but subsidizing one industry at the expense of other manufacturers.

Why not support reduction of government intervention in the market by reducing taxation, regulations, etc. instead of supporting more government meddling with tarrifs?


171 posted on 04/18/2005 12:55:04 PM PDT by CSM
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To: Nephi
"it must be "advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign (imports)," i.e., impose tariffs..."

At least 2 of my posts to you have concurred with the above. Your having posted this to me makes me believe you did not read them.

172 posted on 04/18/2005 12:58:46 PM PDT by Sam Cree (Democrats are herd animals)
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To: A. Pole

Pat saw this coming years ago. Same on immigration.


173 posted on 04/18/2005 1:06:31 PM PDT by dennisw ("Sursum corda")
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To: Nephi
"You place your right to buy anything at the lowest price above the right of American workers to have the highest standard of living. You are with the herd on this one."

As a citizen in a free country, the right to choose, and not to follow, is everything. OTOH, in a free country, there is no right to anything that must be provided by government, including the right of a worker to a "highest standard of living."

When we reach the point in time where our rights are provided by our rulers, we have reached the point in time where our rights are chains.

174 posted on 04/18/2005 1:09:21 PM PDT by Sam Cree (Democrats are herd animals)
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To: CSM

So what jobs has free trade created in your newspaper?


175 posted on 04/18/2005 1:12:07 PM PDT by ex-snook (Exporting jobs and the money to buy America is lose-lose..)
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To: ex-snook

Engineering and Manufacturing jobs are available.


176 posted on 04/18/2005 1:21:33 PM PDT by CSM
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To: hedgetrimmer

Thank you for the links. Nevertheless, communism does not really stand for free trade, even if captive states behind the iron curtain were restricted from imposing tariffs on each other.

My point is that even though the dissolution of trade barriers can accompany the dissolution of sovereign barriers, there is no necessity that they must, nor does one cause the other.

However, I have stated that it is in our interest to protect industries needed for national defense.


177 posted on 04/18/2005 1:22:12 PM PDT by Sam Cree (Democrats are herd animals)
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To: Nephi

I'm even more surprised that they admit to it. I want to know what are the guiding principles of a freeper who can agree with Karl Marx on trade. I also want to know his position on not just free trade, which clearly cannot exist without both sides operating under similar parameters, but I also want to know his position on the free market and competition.


178 posted on 04/18/2005 1:26:28 PM PDT by Sam Cree (Democrats are herd animals)
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To: CSM
"Engineering and Manufacturing jobs are available."

In what newspaper?

179 posted on 04/18/2005 1:26:51 PM PDT by ex-snook (Exporting jobs and the money to buy America is lose-lose..)
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To: KevinDavis
Just plain old BS from Pat..

Please give a detailed refutation. I was a free-trader, but I'm growing alarmed at the loss of our industrial base - and at outsourcing of hi-tech jobs. I'd like to be assured that Buchanan is wrong, but condeming his column as "BS" doesn't offer the assurances I'd like to see. Please give some details, at an adult level, as to why Buchanan is wrong.

180 posted on 04/18/2005 1:28:25 PM PDT by churchillbuff
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