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Title: Buchanan: Free Trade and Funny Math
Source:
Worldnetdaily
URL Source: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54454
Published: Feb 27, 2007
Author: Pat Buchanan
Post Date: 2007-02-27 19:32:53 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 132
Comments: 8
Posted: February 27, 2007 To the devout libertarian, free trade is not a policy option to be debated, but a dogma to be defended. Nowhere is this truer than at that lamasery of libertarianism, the Cato Institute. But with America running the worst trade deficits in history, the monks are having a hellish time of it. Hence, like the neocons who cherry-picked the intel to bamboozle us into believing national survival hung on invading Iraq, they feed us irrelevant truths and deny us the whole truth. Case in point – the Feb. 22 column in the Washington Times by one Daniel Ikenson, "associate director at the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies." Bewailing the "barrage of hyperbole and misinformation about trade and its relationship to jobs and economic growth," Ikenson assured us, with impressive statistics, that globalism is working out wonderfully well for America. "[T]he Census Bureau data show that U.S. export growth was phenomenal in 2006, increasing by 14.5 percent. ... Exports to Europe increased by 15.2 percent and to China by nearly 32 percent. The growth in exports to Japan was a slower 7.5 percent, but it grew. Since 2001, U.S. exports have increased by more than 42 percent." Wow. Phenomenal indeed. And it does sound like we are cleaning those foreigners' clocks. But Ikenson ignored the other side of the ledger. That the U.S. trade deficit in 2006 rose to an all-time record of $764 billion. That the deficit in goods hit $836 billion. That the deficit with China rose 15 percent, from $203 billion in 2005 to $233 billion in 2006, the largest trade deficit ever recorded between two nations. That the deficit with Japan rose to $88 billion, the largest ever between us. Under Bush, the U.S. trade deficit has set five straight world records, as has the U.S. trade deficit in autos, parts and trucks. So reports Charles MacMillion of MBG Services, who has for years tracked the decline and fall of American manufacturing. For manufactured goods, our trade deficit rose to $536 billion, from $504 billion. In Bush's six years, America has run a total trade deficit of $2.6 trillion in manufactured goods, as 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared and wages in that sector have fallen 3 percent in three years. Query to Ikenson: If these numbers represent a successful trade policy, what would a failed trade policy look like? Recall NAFTA. In 1993, we had a trade surplus with Mexico. Some of us warned it would be gone with the wind if NAFTA passed. And NAFTA did pass, through the collaboration of Clinton Democrats with Gingrich Republicans, over the opposition of the American people. Since 1994, we have run a trade deficit with Mexico every year. In 2006, it hit a record $60 billion. Grand total: almost $500 billion in trade deficits with Mexico since NAFTA. Mexico now exports more than 900,000 vehicles to the United States every year, while the United States exports fewer than 600,000 cars and trucks to the entire world. This is success? Where did Mexico get an auto industry? Is it good that our auto industry is being exported? Has the price of a new car plunged because Mexicans get paid a fraction of what U.S. autoworkers earn? "In 2006, the U.S. economy grew by an additional 3.4 percent," writes Ikenson. True, and China's economy grew by 10 percent – and by 140 percent over the last 10 years, tripling the growth in the United States. Not only are we shipping factories, technology, equipment and jobs to China, we are exporting our future to China. Nor should this shock any student of history. For contrary to free-trade mythology, every nation that has risen to pre-eminence and power – Britain before 1860, the United States from 1860-1914, Germany from 1870-1914, postwar Japan, China today – has pursued a mercantilist or protectionist trade policy. Economic nationalism is the policy of rising powers, free trade the policy of declining powers. For great powers have ever regarded trade as an arena of struggle in the clash of nations. It is no accident all four presidents who made it to Mount Rushmore were protectionists. "Thank God I am not a free trader," wrote Theodore Roosevelt. "Pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fiber." Think Teddy might have had a point, Mr. Ikenson? Probably not. For libertarianism is an ideology, and evidence that contradicts the dogma of an ideology is to be disregarded or denied. For the dogma cannot be wrong. Indeed, should Ikenson awake from his dogmatic slumber and decide that free trade is failing America, he would not last long as associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. The folks who fund Cato are not paying to have dogma debated, but defended. For if the dogma be untrue, then the ideology, the whole system of beliefs, the faith itself, is called into question. And we can't have that.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
I had the displeasure of interviewing Stephen Moore shortly after the NAFTA sell out and this clod swore to me that illegal immigration and American manufacturing would boom. Ass. As are all L's..
Cato is a joke these days. I had problems there with one Tom Palmer, who is fairly high up there, and is a mentally-ill narcissistic homosexual and left-wing fascist who pretends to be a libertarian. The whole institute has sold out.
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan, after Alexander Pope and William Blake.
Protectionist and mercantilist claptrap. The decline of transportation costs was the big engine that fueled US commercial growth before 1914. While the US "enjoyed" 50 percent tariff rates after the civil war, Britain and Northern Europe had low tariff rates and their economies boomed. The US came out on top after WWI only because of WWI. Japan's MITI is a failure. Japanese attempts to manage their economy are failures. China's economy should never be held up as a model for us to emulate. Britain's gains before 1860 were due to the fruits of the industrial revolution. Their economy really took off after Cobden and Bright convinced everyone to abandon high tariffs. It is also offensive to see Buchanan quote Teddy Roosevelt, who never saw a war he didn't like, who used the antitrst laws to show big business "who's boss," and was, in general, an authority on nothing but how to run America like an old European principality.
Everyone laughed at Perot's "giant sucking sound." Who is laughing now? However, in "free" trades defense, the use of the US military to maintain the over inflated value of the Dollar is hardly a trait of a "free" market.
"The more I see of life, the less I fear death" - Me.
Total agreement. Not worth argueing with. Reality has proven them to be utter failures and exposed them to be toadys for entrenched political corporatism.
Perot had it nailed, and he was the person who solidified my American economic nationalism. BTW, I could care less where or how he conducts his business today. He tried to launch a much needed 3rd party and was roundly rejected. I don’t begrudge him for a second if he now chooses to cash in. The mess called globalization is unstoppable.
libertarian
#2. To: Brian S (#0)
(Edited)
#3. To: Brian S, who knows what evil, Pissed Off Janitor, randge, Esso, Lady X, kiki, Zipporah (#0)
Economic nationalism is the policy of rising powers, free trade the policy of declining powers. For great powers have ever regarded trade as an arena of struggle in the clash of nations. It is no accident all four presidents who made it to Mount Rushmore were protectionists.
#4. To: Outstanding article Bump (#0)
#5. To: Brian S (#0)
Economic nationalism is the policy of rising powers, free trade the policy of declining powers. . . . every nation that has risen to pre-eminence and power – Britain before 1860, the United States from 1860-1914, Germany from 1870-1914, postwar Japan, China today – has pursued a mercantilist or protectionist trade policy.
#6. To: Jethro Tull (#1)
I had the displeasure of interviewing Stephen Moore shortly after the NAFTA sell out and this clod swore to me that illegal immigration and American manufacturing would boom. Ass. As are all L's..
#7. To: YertleTurtle (#2)
(Edited)
The whole institute has sold out. Cato.
#8. To: Pissed Off Janitor (#6)
Everyone laughed at Perot's "giant sucking sound." Who is laughing now?
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