Buy American = Goodbye Global Friends 40 comments
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A week and a half in power and the Obama administration has managed to alienate a goodly portion of our trading partners. When the Telegraph headline reads “U.S.-EU Trade War Looms…”, you know that you have seriously stepped on some toes.
The genesis of all of this is the “buy American” provision in the fiscal stimulus bill. Nobody seemed to pick up on this provision as the bill sailed through the House, but it certainly didn’t fly under the radar for long. The Europeans have noticed and they are hopping mad.
The EU trade commissioner vowed to fight back after the bill passed in the House of Representatives late on Wednesday included a ban on most purchases of foreign steel and iron used in infrastructure projects.
The Senate’s version of the legislation, which will be debated early next week, goes even further, requiring that any projects related to the stimulus use only American-made equipment and goods.
The inclusion of protectionist measures has quickly raised hackles in Europe.
Catherine Ashton, the EU trade commissioner, said: “We are looking at the situation. The one thing we can be absolutely certain about, is if a bill is passed which prohibits the sale or purchase of European goods on American territory, that is something we will not stand idly by and ignore.”
If you read this blog much at all, you will have seen my concerns about something like this developing. The first misstep (in my opinion) was Geithner’s shot across China’s bow over currency manipulation. Then this pops up. You all know what this sort of action led to during the Great Depression. You don’t need me to go over that ground again. We already have seen a virtual collapse of world trade due to the economic situation. If we layer trade restrictions on top, then it could become catastrophic.
How the Democrats extricate themselves from this is not so important as the fact that they must. It’s been a very long time since it was so vital to maintain relations with Europe and Asia. We are all in this together and it isn’t conceivable that we can all come out of it if we try and do so at one another’s expense.
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On Jan 30 09:56 AM User 347735 wrote:
> The problem is other than Airplanes, Coca Cola, and McDonalds, there
> is nothing to buy from America. For too long, we have not produced
> viable products to sell to the world.
>
> ME
>
>
> On Jan 30 09:17 AM ag2009 wrote:
On Jan 30 10:42 AM Allah wrote, in part:
"What kind of a stimulus package would it be if it created jobs overseas
at the expense of Americans?"
Is that such a bad thing? Creating jobs overseas as well as within the U.S. means more earners worldwide will have money to spend, a large part of which will go to buying goods "Made in America", still the biggest economy in the world. To make goods in America means creating jobs for Americans so that they can make those goods. It's Global Economy 101.
Whose side is the American media on anyways? These other countries say whatever the f they want and no one says a word.
China has over 1 billion people with no RIGHTS and we're talking about a line in a bill that hasn't been passed yet?
The US right now is like a family at the holidays. Everyone is bickering just to bicker and little no nothing issues are blown up. Like a family at the holidays they hate eachother until someone outside the brood starts trouble and they come together as one. I don't think anyone in the rest of the world wants to give the US a reason to stop the internal bickering. But its just embarassing how this is all going down.
I'm in favor of targeting the stimulus package at where it will do the most good: here in the USA, putting USA labor to work.
After all, if you combine the $875 billion with the $trillions used to bail out the financial elites, you are talking about not only the current generation of workers laboring to pay it all back, but their children and their children's children will also pay it back.
Sure, there will be some dislocation, but nothing compared with the historic dislocation suffered by the working class for the last 30 years as the once great manufacturing base of the USA was exported to places where "slave" wages, no benefits, polluted environments, etc... where the norm.
If the last 30 years massive exportation of well-paying jobs had resulted in a rise of consumer purchasing power outside of the USA, which would now be able to take up the slack since "joe sixpack" is spent out, then it would be no problem. But that did not happen...
Absent "joe sixpack" and his "drunken sailor" spending habits, which resulted in a negative savings rate up until very recently, there is nobody else to consume at "joe sixpack" levels. Not the billions of Chinese, nor Japanese, nor Germans, etc.
However, as another writer has mentioned, we should include our northern and southern neighbors, Canada and Mexico, in the spending. Taking care of your neighbors is always good policy.
On Jan 30 10:20 AM longoil wrote:
> I think the US needs to be selective in its trade relationships and
> NOT apply one blanket policy to all nations.
>
> Thanks to NAFTA, Canada and Mexico are the largest trading partners
> of the USA . Canada spends 85 cents on US goods for every dollar
> the USA spends in Canada. Mexico spends 65 cents in the US, for every
> dollar the US spends in Mexico. This is not an agreement you want
> to endanger. Both nations provide raw materials to the USA to grow
> the GDP such as oil, gas, electricity, water, timber and metal ores.
Good -- we need to produce here at home. Time to pull out of NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and U.N. -- our politicians have sold us down river and fed the people a total line about "free trade" and "globalism"...and it has been EXPOSED as the scam it always was.
The nightly news bulletins in the UK are leading on the industrial action being taken at a number of sites across the UK where British workers are protesting the hiring of non-British workers at various power plants and other facilities. All of these workers that are being hired are (apparently) from EU countries and thus fully entitled, under the EU legislation to which the UK signed up, to be able to work in the UK.
This is yet more evidence that a rather concerning wave of anti-globalization and protectionism is beginning to emerge as the recession deepens. Statements by Gordon Brown about wanting to promote British Jobs for British Workers over the last few years have once again come back to haunt him.
This is the same man that has claimed that his stewardship of the British economy over all of the years when he was the Chancellor had eliminated the boom and bust culture that was endemic during the prior years.
While it is not too surprising to see these kinds of "nationalism" arising as more people are losing jobs, homes etc. there is the possibility that jingoism and the politics of exclusion and division may try to exploit this growing anger.
"
This is the same man (Brown) that has claimed that his stewardship of the British economy over all of the years when he was the Chancellor had eliminated the boom and bust culture that was endemic during the prior years.
"
He sounds like our ex-man Al Gore, who a few years back was saying he invented the internet. Both are "chumps", in my opinion.
On Jan 30 12:03 PM fatwollit wrote:
>
> "What kind of a stimulus package would it be if it created jobs overseas
>
> at the expense of Americans?"
>
> Is that such a bad thing? Creating jobs overseas as well as within
> the U.S. means more earners worldwide will have money to spend, a
> large part of which will go to buying goods "Made in America", still
> the biggest economy in the world. To make goods in America means
> creating jobs for Americans so that they can make those goods. It's
> Global Economy 101.
Cars? The Germans and Japanese made better ones.
Electronics? Yeah, he did buy quite a lot from Apple but how many Apple-equivalents are there in the States?
On Jan 30 09:17 AM ag2009 wrote:
> Dear Tom,
>
> America is running the largest trade deficit in world history. The
> U.S. should be the last country accused of protectionism.
>
> The problem is that other countries take the money Americans spend
> and hoard/lend it, rather than use it to buy products from America.
> This is not sustainable.
>
> At some point, either the world needs to stop acting as miser and
> usurer to America's spender, or America will have to stop buying
> their stuff.
>
> I wrote about this here: ssrn.com/abstract=1332...
>
> AG
On Jan 30 09:17 AM ag2009 wrote:
> Dear Tom,
>
> America is running the largest trade deficit in world history. The
> U.S. should be the last country accused of protectionism.
>
> The problem is that other countries take the money Americans spend
> and hoard/lend it, rather than use it to buy products from America.
> This is not sustainable.
>
> At some point, either the world needs to stop acting as miser and
> usurer to America's spender, or America will have to stop buying
> their stuff.
>
> I wrote about this here: ssrn.com/abstract=1332...
>
What's that supposed to mean, we don't buy american products?
I'm typing this on HP Notebook and print it on a HP, besides me stands a
bottle of Coke and maybe later I will have a BigMac. I also drink Californian wine, i like Jack Daniels an sometimes a coffee at Starbucks.
I listen american music, watch american movies, read books from american authors, of course I have an iPod.
I drive Jeep Cherokee's since 20 years, my snowboard comes from Burton, my winterjacket from Schott an my bicycle from Scott.
The list is not complete...