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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (334201)	4/19/2007 2:01:56 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576290

I said when something is incrementally more expensive it is better for our country to produce it here. And I replied to that point. You might consider my reply to be wrong, but even if that's true it doesn't mean I ignored the point. Putting in place barriers to imports, even for goods that are only "incrementally more expensive" to produce here, hurts consumers, hurts exporters (1 - their costs go up, 2 - Other countries will impose similar or perhaps worse barriers, 3 - Other countries won't have the money from their exports to use to buy our exports), and it also slows down improvements in our companies that make the protected products. Over time they could easily change from "incrementally more expensive" to much more expensive (or perhaps lower quality) because the companies won't have to face world class competition. The "produce 96% ourselves" idea is a quicker and more obvious disaster. A lesser level of protectionism would have slower, less extreme, and less obvious problems, but it would still be a bad thing.