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.

Pastimes : Crazy Fools Chasing Crazy CyberNews -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (1555)	8/16/2002 1:01:17 PM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5140

Our Tigger Of A President President Bush reminds me of Tigger, the bouncy, high-energy pal of Winnie-the-Pooh. The president's own doctors have recently pronounced him to be in superb condition. Let us all rejoice in that. Unfortunately, the president seems to possess Tigger's mindless optimism and self-confidence. When Congress recently forfeited its constitutional duty to set trade policy by passing fast-track legislation (the new Orwellian euphemism is "trade promotion authority"), Mr. Bush announced that he would accomplish magic with this authority. He will increase the number of American jobs, increase American exports and raise the living standards of all American families. Bosh and hog slop. I don't accuse our Tigger of a president of lying. I just accuse him of being ignorant. After all, the effects of free-trade policy are not a mystery. Mr. Bush should have asked for a report that answered these questions: 1. How many good American jobs have been lost due to (a) American firms moving their manufacturing jobs to cheap-labor countries; and to (b) cheap foreign imports? 2. How many good jobs have been created by an increase in American exports? 3. How many viable farms did we have before the era of so-called free trade, and how many have survived? 4. How do you explain the enormous and continuing record trade deficits if, in fact, free trade results in more American jobs? The answers to all of these questions present an argument against free-trade agreements, not one in favor. Of course, free trade is a false banner. What has been the policy since the John F. Kennedy administration has been managed trade, falsely labeled as free trade. Free-trade agreements would be simple to write. We would only have to say: Our tariffs on all imports are, say, 6 percent. Sell you what you can to any American who wishes to buy. When the so-called trade agreement, however, runs to 20,000 pages of fine print or more, then you know that what has been negotiated is a series of trade deals, usually favoring those segments of the American economy with the most political clout. And we all know that in our times, political clout is spelled m-o-n-e-y. More than the devil resides in the details these days; so, too, does political corruption. I believe in old-fashioned free trade, in which a small tariff is imposed for revenue purposes. I don't believe, as a rule, in protective tariffs — tariffs so high as to prevent other manufacturers or farmers from competing with Americans. But there must be exceptions. Some industries necessary to national security — and certainly agriculture is one of those — should be protected. Any nation that allows its agricultural base to be destroyed by cheap imports is committing suicide in the long run. So, too, with stuff needed for the strategic forces of the country. I also believe that there should be a third category of tariffs — punitive tariffs. Any American company that dumps its American workers into the unemployment lines and moves its manufacturing facility to a cheap-labor country should be assessed a punitive tariff of at least 100 percent when it tries to export into the United States. It's simply another example of corporate corruption for an American firm to pay foreigners $3 or $4 to cut and sew a pair of blue jeans it will sell to Americans for $50. Such "imports" should be slapped with a tariff high enough to double their retail price in the United States. Trade policy, of course, is more than tariffs. It should be the goal of the U.S. government to encourage Americans to make and buy everything possible here in the United States and to import only what cannot be feasibly made here. That, of course, is not on the radar screen of either President Tigger or his cohorts in Congress. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- reese.king-online.com