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Strategies & Market Trends : Commodities - The Coming Bull Market -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (1450)	9/27/2002 9:00:06 AM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

>> The latter half of the 19th century in the USA was probably the biggest expanding economy in the history of the world. The western frontier had been pushed back. Technological change was abundant too. I put those as the primary reasons why the USA grew as an economy rather then trade barriers. << so the worst you can say is that the u.s. economy was the largest expanding economy despite trade barriers? incidentally growth has slowed to around 3% since the free trade era lowered import barriers. so i guess it was just coincidence that the u.s. economy grew faster under protection and slower under free trade. >> If you chop a tree down, it takes a while for it to grow back << ahh, i see. tariffs in 1930 were so damaging that 9 years later the effects still lingered, even after 5 years of reciprocal trade agreements which brought duties right back down. i don't think there is any set of statistics i could give to convince you. if the statistics are positive, it wasn't due to protection, it was just a coincidence. if the statistics are bad, it must be the fault of the protection, even if the statistics are bad long after the protection was repealed. ok. :) >> Forced to it's logical conclusion your trade barrier idea pushes us all back into pre-historic subsistence farmers << i strenuously beg to differ. ricardo's principle of comparative advantage is one of the chief doctrines of free trade. if the early colonies had followed this doctrine, they would have stuck to exporting cotton, corn, rice and tobacco--which america produced most efficiently. britain could certainly produce manufactured goods cheaper so americans would import those. it was due to the shield of tariffs that infant manufacturing could get off the ground in america, protected from the much more entrenched and efficient british manufactures. (especially after the british sought to dump into our markets following the napoleonic wars). alexander hamilton's report on manufactures outlined this protective policy for infant industry. i'm not sure if you can find the whole thing on the web or not.