Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: craig crawford who wrote (21192)	3/11/2002 10:24:43 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

being able to lay off well paid americans to exploit cheap labor abroad seems like it hurts individuals in favor of the large multinational corporation to me. If you wanted to save the jobs in any particular industry, tariffs would need to be set to allow the least efficient domestic producer to stay in business. This allows the more efficient produces (think Nucor) to raise prices....without raising wages. This ends up being pure profit. Seems like a pretty good deal for the corporation.... The cost of the jobs is born by the general public....it ends up being an incredibally regressive tax. nearly half of ge's employees work outside the united states. What percentage of GE's revenues come from foreign sources? Slacker

To: craig crawford who wrote (21192)	3/11/2002 10:30:30 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

but how does it benefit working americans who have lost their manufacturing jobs to a mexican who will do the same job for 50 cents an hour? Craig, I, and a lot of us here, have refuted this type of argument so many times we are sick of doing it. I am sorry, Craig, but you are beating a dead horse. Any decent "Economics 101" college course gives the answers to the arguments you are posing. The only people pushing your side of this are the Union Leaders trying to keep the cushy jobs they have and Businessmen who want to buy from "Free Traders" and sell to "protectionists". Politicians like Buchanan feed off people who think like you.

To: craig crawford who wrote (21192)	3/11/2002 10:54:28 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 281500

I'll quote some from your post that you linked to as well as from the post I am replying to. tariffs only raise prices if you buy foreign. it is a discretionary tax, which detractors often conveniently fail to point out. buy american and you don't have to pay the tax. Wrong. The companies that are "protected" by the tariff or by non-tariff barriers will raise their prices. Thats why they want tariffs. The company officers and owners would prefer that there was little or no competition. with unfettered free trade corporations can extort lower wages or just plain lay off american blue collar workers. Unless they are using or threatening to use violence they are extorting. They can pay less but the lower costs benefit the consumers. If the market rate for labor in an industry is to low for Americans then Americans would produce more economically valuable goods doing other work. In the real world a lot of factors go in to how competive a good is, but if you have a good where the only important factor is how low wages can go then it probably shouldn't be produced here. Americans can normally demand higher wages because they are more productive. In industries where we are not more productive other countries have a competitive advantage. If we produce more in areas where we have a competitive advantage and less in areas where we do not have such an advantage the economic value of our production is higher and so we are richer. The countries trading with us also become richer by this trade, its not a zero sum game. and to exploit cheap labor to increase profits. this may benefit shareholders, and it may benefit the officers of the company, but how does it benefit working americans who have lost their manufacturing jobs to a mexican who will do the same job for 50 cents an hour? Freer trade results in a better combination of price/ variety / quality of goods. The people who lose their jobs might not benefit (although some of them get better jobs eventually) but consumers benefit, and people who have jobs in export industries also benefit. The biggest beneficiary of trade barrriers are the big corporate fat cats who can milk the consumer. Turning specifically to the steel tariffs the only possible justification for them that I can think of is the hope that they can be used as a stick to get other countries to lower bariers or subsidies. But directly they hurt America. They help steel companies and steel workers in the US (even if they have to pay a little bit more for goods the benefit for these workers is greater then the extra costs), but they hurt consumers, and they hurt the workers who make goods like cars that are made with steel. The costs of the steel going up increases the costs of a lot of other goods because not only do the companies they use a lot of steel face higher costs but the companies that use those companies products and the companies that use those companies products and so on, also go up. Even ignoreing the benefits that consumers get, workers (who of course are also comsumers but the two aspects can be analyzed seperatly) still get hurt overall. Tim