Sound economics ? It is the free trade argument that is based on pie in the sky wishful thinking. It is the free trade argument that has proven historically wretchedly wrong. Free trade, like utopian socialism, is a textbook theory that just plain doesn't work in the real world because real nations will not sacrifice their power and standard of living for pie in the sky promises of future benefit. When people have decided that cheap imports are not worth losing good jobs the whole structure collapses.
I would list excessive regulation, taxation, abuse of civil courts, etc. as even bigger influences in the loss of U.S. jobs and industries than cheap competition from China.
Nonsense. China has the worst industrial pollution in the world. I read that some 1500 Chinese coal miners died this year in accidents. Do we want the safety and environmental laws of 1900 in order to "compete" ? Do we want to bring back the good old days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and company police and company towns and being paid in company scrip at the company store ? And even if we did that would not change the massive wage differential that Joe Sixpack just plain can't compete with.
What is a "good job" by your standards, and how many of these are U.S. workers likely to have if we had a fully "protected" system of trade for them?
Do we want the safety and environmental laws of 1900 in order to "compete" ? Do we want to bring back the good old days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and company police and company towns and being paid in company scrip at the company store ?
I agree with you 100%. But if you go back and look at the 1860-1914 period in U.S. history that Pat Buchanan describes in such positive terms, you'll find that all of these things were very typical of the United States in that period.
The United States was a strong agricultural and (later) industrial power for much of its history. However, these periods of dominance in these sectors were marked by several characteristics that made economic strength possible on a national level but at a terrible human cost. These include the following:
1. Slavery.
2. "Free" land (i.e., western expansion).
3. Exploitation of immigrant labor (during the peak of the industrial revolution).
4. The aftermath of global warfare that decimated all other industrial nations (post-WW2).
5. "Free" infrastructure (implementation of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s).
So I would ask you -- and Pat -- the same question: Which of these periods would you like to go back to, in order to rekindle the industrial strength of this great nation?