Hawk,
Energy is vital to our economic health. Cheap wood is not.
You need to revisit the impact the price of wood has on housing and just how much money that costs American families-money that could be better spent elsewhere.
And given that the Saudis can produce their oil for $1/barrel, as compared to the average $8-12/barrel in the west, tariffs could be justified except that it was US companies who developed those fields (later to have them stolen through nationalization). However, until we are generally self-sufficient, and not more dependent upon, imported oil, we don't have much leverage to negotiate with.
A fact that few on this thread have woven into foreign affairs discussions on this thread is that the Saudi oil fields are now officially in decline. As any oilman will tell you, the decline side of the daily production curve is always steeper. When declines in the North Sea are factored in, it is now time to install a new friend in Iraq in order to keep cheap oil flowing. Any guesses as to the number of civilian deaths that have resulted from the US deliberately leaving the butcher of bagdad in power to counter balance OPEC in the name of cheap oil? Any guesses as to how many civilian deaths will result will result from the next geopolitical action to replace Saddam and to replace diminishing Saudi and North Sea oil production with Iraqi oil?
Tariffs exist so that what are considered vital domestic industries are not run out of business by cheap imports produced through governmental give-aways, or cheap labor.
LOL....when America can't compete, they act the bully, regardless of past WTO decisions against them. It appears that the rule of law only applies when it is in America's favor eh.
There ARE certain industries in the US that can be considered vital to maintaining our sovereignty, and one of those is oil. (I'm not going so far as to claim wood is a strategic commodity).
Cheap commodity prices have played a large and perhaps key roll in the previous decade of economic expansion and high standard of living that has been enjoyed. Interestingly, materials engineering appears to have reached its economic limits in terms of lowering costs of production with economies of scale, and the size of plants and equipment etc.
I'm a VERY BIG proponent of government subsidization of the energy sector...I personally would love to see ALL electricity in this nation produced through nuclear power production, preferably fusion should the technology advance to that point.
Just wait a minute now. Energy is a business just like any other business and the market needs to play a roll here. If high energy prices are necessary to attract the investment required to expand energy production, lower costs, and to research and develop new methods of generating energy, that is the way it should happen.
And I would like to see those Nukes producing prodigious quantities of hydrogen to power fuel cell vehicles. Cheap power is ALSO critical to economic success, as was proven time and time again when the US built hydro-electric projects throughout the nation, including TVA.
I would love to see more nuclear too. Canada has the largest, richest uranium deposits in the world. Utility reactor uranium consumption is roughly twice that of new uranium mine production. I look forward to uranium pricing at what the market will bear when US uranium stockpiles are depleated.
OPEC, until recently, could set the price of oil to its whim. Only now are things turning against them as non-OPEC oil comes online, and the world enters recession.
That is a very short sighted perspective with conventional Saudi and North Sea fields now in steep decline.
But there's no reason that US national security and foreign policy should be constantly threatened by our over dependence upon foreign sources of energy.
Especially when America is preparing to do in Iraq what it has done time and time again in the past: engage the armed forced and the CIA to vacate those currently in power and install a corrupt government with a friendly leader who will turn on the oil tap in exchange for weapons, and at the same time, leave no stone unturned in the never ending job of seeking out and eliminating America's enemies, no matter how many women and children have to give up their lives to keep all those SUV's running on America's highways. America, Britain and Europe will also have to make some large "geopolitical investments" to safeguard that 8-20 billion barrel oil pool under the Caspian sea that is now in production. |
