- Dec 10, 2003
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Are you by any chance referring to Japan's practice of dumping consumer electronics? Exactly how is the U.S. consumer "raped" by such practices? The alternative is forcing the U.S. consumer to pay higher prices while stifling innovation and shielding special interests from actual competition.
Good for the U.S. consumer, bad for U.S. special interests.
The problem was not with free trade as such, but rather with England's destructive interventionist policies and its control of Ireland. For years the British government's stranglehold on Ireland's economy and its violation of Irish property rights distorted the economic structure and even led to excessive exploitation of land without regard for consequences. And the British government only exacerbated the potato blight after its onset, ultimately helping to turn a blight into a full-fledged famine. Among other things, heavy taxation for the procurement of wasteful public works projects and welfare programs was not only a drain on the Irish economy but also crowded out private charity. But the British government didn't just crowd out private charity indirectly. In some cases, they actually turned away ships full of food from America. Examples can be multiplied.
You're going to have to explain how repeal of protectionist policies is tied to the fact that "by the first World War she could barely feed 1/4 of her population." I'm not familiar with that particular historical episode, but I suspect you're referring to some kind of food shortage around that time. Even if what you say is true as far as that goes, it's hardly an argument that supports protectionism over free trade. I could just as well make similar arguments against protectionism. Look up a little something called 'food riots'.
How exactly do you mean to tie Japan's protectionism to its relative competitiveness? They make products that people want to buy, simple as that.
This is nonsense. The dollar is tanking because of bad monetary policy.
So what? Exactly how would taxing imports represent a boon for our economy?
First of all, there's nothing sacred about manufacturing jobs. Real growth over time would naturally lead to a decline in manufacturing jobs given that less input is required to produce a given amount of output. This is bad how? But even if I grant that manufacturing is important, the loss of manufacturing jobs has not been accompanied by a comparable loss in manufacturing output. As a matter of fact, it's been accompanied by booms in manufacturing output, which is evidence of growth. Furthermore, much of the loss in manufacturing jobs can be attributed to a slump in U.S. exports and the recession at the turn of the century (something we'd expect to have an effect on employment).
Oh I see. So if something has the words 'free' and 'trade' in it, then it must be a prime example of free trade, right? NAFTA is hardly a free trade agreement (in fact, it just so happens to contain something like 900 pages of tariff rates if I'm not mistaken). At any rate, the fact that some jobs are destroyed is not inherently detrimental to our economy by any stretch of the imagination. Technology has eliminated millions of jobs in the U.S., but the American worker is no less employable now because of that fact. What a pity that the light bulb was invented, right? After all, think about all the jobs that were lost in the kerosene lamp industry. Give me a break. And anyway, if you look at the bigger picture the average annual rate of unemployment in the U.S. fell steadily from the time of NAFTA's approval until 2001.
