Dear America, Protectionism Gets You Nowhere

[WhipperSnapper]

Completely separate things. First, softwood lumber had been under NAFTA for a while. It's not like the free trade caused the US to lose jobs. In fact, it is more likely that it was the exchange rate which contributed to it more than anything.

Your definition of a back end cost is... odd. This has nothing to do with the price of housing really. You're talking about "saving" money in a completely different way.

You could ask the same question to the tens of thousands of people in BC who lost their jobs... The agreement was negotiated in good faith. We were able to produce something more cheaply than you could and expanded an industry about it. You buy our lumber, we buy your cars and computers. It's worked well for a long time, but some lobby group got all pissy and decided to break NAFTA over some wood.

Also, cheaper raw materials from Canada is good for US manufacturing. Cheaper oil, cheaper ores... That allows US companies to be competitive both domestically and globally. Imagine what would happen to the US auto industry if GM's input costs for all its materials were 40% higher than the Japanese and Germans.

I don't know much about the market for wood, so I'll refrain from further comment about wood specifically. I really don't have a problem with running a trade deficit in wood as long as we have a trade surplus elsewhere. It isn't a problem if the U.S. purchases $100 million in wood and Canadians purchase $100 million worth of other American products. It becomes a problem when a large trade deficit emerges. That's what our problem is with other nations.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

No one was complaining back in the Clinton days... Don't blame the current situation on free trade because that is not what caused it.

The economic malaise caused by Global Labor Arbitrage (which we are exposed to as a result of "free trade") is certainly a contributing factor. When college-education-requiring knowledge-based jobs are shipped overseas or filled by foreign workers on H-1B and L-1 visas, it's definitely a contributing factor to unemployment and underemployment amongst people with college degrees. The other problem is that our society is sending far too many people to college.

 

[ElFenix]

EADS/Northrop, and now only EADS, had the better, more proven tanker and was going to be building a new facility in the US to build them - and they still lost. Boeing simply has gotten too large and been allowed to lobby too much.

oh bullshit. EADS and northrup were trying to sell the AF a plane that was much too much aircraft for the role the AF was trying to fulfill. and it's not like there aren't 767 tankers flying around -- in fact, there's more of those than there are A330 MRTTs.