So what's wrong with Protectionism anyway?

[Duer 157099]

And how is that different from, say "National Defense" that every patriotic American agrees is critical?

I fail to see how they differ. Why is one considered "patriotic" and the other is considered xenophobic?

[DefenseLawyer]

1. It's horrible

for the profit margin of multinational corporations. Horrible.

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. I can answer to this to some degree.

The promise of a successful, non-interventionist government is peace. The reality is, there are constantly causes all over the world in which our involvement would be quite moral. However, this precedent of involvement creates a sense of competition between states which becomes ever more and more dangerous as the WMD and other capacities of the states grow. The theory of non-interventionism is that once key states begin to focus internally to create prosperity, and succeed, than other states will see that it is an internal focus, not an a hateful focus on other countries which facilitates their well being. Its a belief that we can move the whole game away from dominance and military power toward a more productive form of competition.

[DefenseLawyer]

3. Protectionism has to do with trade policy

You're talking about isolationism (I think).

[napoleon_in_rags]

6. The two are one, my friend. The two are one. nt

[DefenseLawyer]

7. No, they're really not, my friend.

Whether we keep corporations from profiting by dumping products made with 3rd world labor in our country doesn't need to be tied to interventionist or non-interventionist policies abroad.

[napoleon_in_rags]

14. Yes, they are my friend.

Have you ever looked into the OTHER 9/11?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

Or the whole situation with the Shah in Iran way back when? Or anything going on with American foreign policy? The situation with Chile was that a socialist government was seeking to nationalize resources held by American companies, and though he was voted in by the people, needed to be taken out, for American companies to remain profitable in trade relations.

People aren't lining up for slave labor to benefit American citizens. Its actually enforced on them by intervention of US government military forces representing American BUSINESS interests, not your interests. Did you think Saddam really had WMDs? Did you think Bin Laden was really in Afghanistan? You'd have to be blind not to see the deception. Us military focus and US business interests are inseparable.

[JDPriestly]

23. Trade agreements that do not involve requiring governments to surrender their

sovereignty to international trade courts and that provide for reciprocal trade that impoverishes neither side, that creates jobs for all and does not destroy the economies of one country or the other would be a good idea in my opinion.

It isn't a matter of "free" trade or no trade. It's a matter of fair trade that protects the national sovereignty and environmental and labor standards of citizens of all countries that are parties to the agreements.

Our so-called "free" trade is costing Americans too much.

[napoleon_in_rags]

25. Now that's a good point. nt

[RB TexLa]

28. Ahh, the longing for the past and fighting the future

The world is a much smaller place than it once was and international courts, organizations and regional not national governments are here to stay and and will prove much more effiecent. People will have to get over this hanging on to the sovereignty thing.

[JDPriestly]

29. International courts. To whom do they answer?

Certainly not to any democratically elected government -- at least not directly.

Among other things, the trade courts have ruled against local laws that protect the environment. They are a travesty of justice. Americans just don't realize how this system works.

Our trade policy is an example of corruption at work:

For example, do you think that sugar should be traded on a free market? It isn't you know. We protect sugar as we do certain other commodities. If we can protect sugar, why can't we protect jobs?

Read the article at this link for a history of our

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/sc019

How the U.S. Sugar Policy Began and What It Does
The U.S. Sugar Policy began in 1934, during the Depression Era in the United States.
There was an overproduction of sugar at this time, which caused the price of sugar to fall.
To protect the incomes of sugar growers, the government passed the Sugar Act of 1934 to
stabilize prices. This piece of legislation has since remained in place.
The law was later expanded to set limits on the amount of sugar that could be imported
into the U.S. (to about 15% of domestic consumption), and these quotas are apportioned
among selected countries.
The system of price support and quotas keeps the price of sugar in the U.S. above the
world price. This, in turn, allows American sugar growers to earn more than they would
if they sold their sugar on the world market.

http://internationalecon.com/virata/The%20Effects%20of%20the%20US%20Sugar.pdf

The sugar industry "donates" generously to the campaigns of politicians on both sides.

Sugar growers have been capturing substantial rents from the U.S. sugar
program. Despite well-documented huge welfare losses of this program, legislators have
always voted against phasing it out. This paper uses Tobit analysis to explore the
determinants of campaign contributions from the sugar industry to Senators from 1989 to
2002. It finds that the power and willingness of the Senators to protect influence the
campaign contributions significantly: Membership on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition
and Forestry Committee attracts $4,266 of sugar contributions per two-year election
cycle. The membership on the relevant subcommittee that deals with sugar legislation is
even more important than membership of the agriculture committee: membership on the
Agricultural Production, Marketing, and Stabilization of Prices Subcommittee is worth an
additional $6,445. These results suggest the strength of the subcommittee in drafting
specialized legislation and attracting interested members. Moreover, while the particular
party affiliation does not make any difference, membership in the majority party is worth
$1,235. Finally, an impressionable freshman Senator from a sugar cane state receives
$8,366 more than a more senior senator from a non-sugar state.

http://public.econ.duke.edu/Papers//Other/Tower/sweet.pdf

See also:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8046348031279865399

[Zalatix]

31. To hell with a one-world Government. Not that I expect a response but

your fantasy means that 1 billion Muslims and 1 billion Chinese will have a say in deciding the entire world's reproductive rights laws.

You can also say goodbye to escaping to another country to flee fascism, as it will be made worldwide under a 1 world Government.

There is so much wrong with your one-world fantasy that the DU admins would need to dedicate a new hard drive for the forum just to cover it all.

[Better Believe It]

4. So what do working people need to protect ourselves from .... foreign capitalists?

Global capitalists?

Domestic capitalists?

All of the above?

Or "foreign workers"?

[Zalatix]

20. Working people need to protect their jobs from going overseas. Ever wonder why?

I'll tell you why - it's to prevent them from becoming permanently JOBLESS, or displaced into lower paying jobs.

[Better Believe It]

32. Not by adopting capitalist protectionism which only protects capitalists and not workers in any land

[Zalatix]

33. Wrong. Protectionism protected Chinese workers and created their exploding middle class.

Protectionism prevents jobs from leaving the country. That is priority #1.

[JHB]

5. Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley

Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley Smoot–Hawley

etc.

That's the explanation you'll get. Explanations as to how applicable that is compared to current conditions (e.g., massive trade deficit with China, which manipulates its currency to maintain it) will be much less forthcoming.

[Odin2005]

9. And they forget to mention that Smoot-Hawley...

...was retaliation for and self-defense from a wave of protectionism in Europe

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. No, it wasn't.

It resulted in retaliatory tariffs on the import of American goods by other countries; it was not itself retaliation for tariffs by other countries. See here: http://www.economist.com/node/12798595

Smoot-Hawley did most harm by souring trade relations with other countries. The League of Nations, of which America was not a member, had talked of a “tariff truce”; the Tariff Act helped to undermine that idea. By September 1929 the Hoover administration had already noted protests from 23 trading partners at the prospect of higher tariffs. But the threat of retaliation was ignored: America’s tariffs were America’s business. The Congressional Record, notes Mr Irwin, contains 20 pages of debate on the duty on tomatoes but very little on the reaction from abroad.

A study by Judith McDonald, Anthony Patrick O’Brien and Colleen Callahan* examines the response of Canada, America’s biggest trading partner. When Hoover was elected president, the Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King, wrote in his diary that his victory would lead to “border warfare”. King, who had cut tariffs in the early 1920s, warned the Americans that retaliation might follow. In May 1930, with higher American tariffs all but certain, he imposed extra duties on some American goods—and cut tariffs on imports from the rest of the British empire.

He promptly called a general election, believing he had done enough to satisfy Canadians’ resentment. America, wrote the New York Times, was “consciously giving Canada inducements to turn to England for the goods which she has been buying from the United States.” Canadians agreed. King’s Liberals were crushed by the Conservatives, who favoured and enacted even higher tariffs.

[Zalatix]

16. Your analysis is way, WAY off.

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2472520

Historical fact: the loss of trade during the Smoot Hawley years closely matched the drop in GDP.

There was less trade because there was less stuff to trade.

Moreover, today we import FAR more than we export. We stand to lose the LEAST in a full-blown trade war: jobs will simply STOP leaving the country, period.

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. I haven't made any analysis

I've simply refuted the bogus claim that Smoot-Hawley was retaliation for foreign tariffs, when it wasn't.

[Odin2005]

8. The free-traders like to imply that it is racist and xenophobic.

[Little Star]

10. +1

[Better Believe It]

11. And so do anti "free traders" because it frequently is!

[Zalatix]

17. On the other hand, free traders are anti-American. They don't want jobs for America.

They'd rather bleed us dry to help others.

[Uncle Joe]

12. Too much protectionism is the same as too much national defense, they're both dysfunctional.

Too much national defense = the military industrial complex; that Eisenhower warned about during his farewell speech.

Too much protectionism = a closed system which speeds up entrophy, that's what happened to the Soviet Union.

I can see the need for some defense just as I believe nations should have some protected industries but I also believe you can over do both.

I believe the prospect of war diminishes as nations become more interdependent on each other.

Thanks for the thread, Duer.

[bhikkhu]

15. Very few nations are self-sufficient - we all survive by trading with one another

In the US we actually have it better than the great majority of countries, as we are a large net exporter of food. There are about 196 countries in the world, and only about 10 can export food on any scale; most are dependent on imports.

The problem comes when competing tariffs begin to punitively affect prices, and you have a large part of the world who's shelves are almost bare already.

ed sp.

[saras]

19. Protectionism has always been a crucial part of successful national policy

No one has ever tried fanatical free-market extremism before. "Free" trade was what you were forced into after losing a war. The wars are economic now, but that's all that's different.

It's the job of the government to govern - that is, to balance the amount of power exerted by various one-sided social forces such as business for a reasonable effect on the public. Protectionism is simply choosing other values than those of the most efficient market - pollution, worker lifestyle, international balance of trade, international resource management are all good reasons for other than market forces to dominate a decision-making process. Protectionism has a long history outside the West as well - you can't understand much of it by restricting yourself to past American policy.

[Populist_Prole]

21. The term as used today by pundits is a major strawman

The pundits/shills utterly, even studiously ignore degrees and nuance. I mean, have you ever noticed that the globalists/free-traders always pull this Hobson's Choice bullshit where ANY action taken to mitigate ANY ill effects of trade on US citizens puts these pundits on full code red hysterical alert? "Isolationist", "Building a wall around the US" blah blah. The more polished bullshitters use the bogus humanitarian angle of helping the 3rd world from us xenophobic rubes, but of course they couldn't give a damn about that if they weren't raking in the harvest of labor arbitrage.

Anyway, I think the #2 post, 'Defense Lawyer's' is the most accurate. It's good for business. Same with the MIC, good for business...."patriotic" too! The common thread.

If globalism didn't fatten the bottom lines of the rentiers; Do you think they'd give one fifth of a damn about it raising the citizens of developing nations out of poverty? ( which it doesn't )

Protectionism is "wrong" because the 1 percent says so, and they own the soapbox.

[grantcart]

22. a lot of things.

The most important point that you should understand with a protectionist strategy is that you can start it but you can't control it.

So let's say that we start putting a tax on made in China low wage made material.

Those low wage jobs would then flow to other low wage countries like Indonesia and Vietnam.

In the meantime China would retaliate by putting a tarriff on our high wage made material, namely civilian aircraft, software, electronic games, movies, etc.

In the end you end up creating barriers that will swap lower paying jobs for higher paying jobs.

Instead we should be developing a labor policy that concentrates on

1) developing a trade advantage with higher paying jobs.

2) creating more non fungible jobs in non fungible industries.

[Waiting For Everyman]

24. Nothing is wrong with it. It works.

It's one of the issues the left has brainwashed itself on contrary to all common sense and actual results, just as the right has done the same on its own set of issues (like 'trickle down' for one).

[RB TexLa]

26. Because the world is one market and should behave as such

you people have got to give up the concept of nations.

[TheKentuckian]

27. That sounds nice, I'll put it on the list when I can vote for the policies of other nations to

to protect my needs and interests and when that trade doesn't place multinationals as the de facto world government, who place the need for profits over the needs of people.

Otherwise, I expect the entity that I vote for and pay taxes to to look out first for those of us that fund it and participate in it.

[Zalatix]

30. You know, TheKentuckian nailed it right to the wall.

FYI.