[BRIGADE] PJB: 'Buy American' -- or Bye-Bye America
Published: Tue, 02/10/09
By Patrick J. Buchanan
February 10, 2009
"British jobs for British workers!" thundered Gordon Brown, as he
emerged from the shadow of Tony Blair to become prime minister.
His populist sloganeering has now come back to bite him.
Across Britain, thousands laid down tools in wildcat strikes in
solidarity with a walkout from a French-owned oil refinery in North
Killinghome -- to protest a $300 million contract to an Italian
company that plans to bring in 400 Italian and Portuguese workers
to fulfill it.
As Brown pleaded from the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, that Britain must not retreat into "protectionism,"
strikes spread to Scotland, Wales and Ulster.
Britain's commitment to let foreigners buy up its utilities and
industries and bring in foreign workers to run them has backfired.
Brown's own Labor Party is now angrily demanding that he live up to
his pledge: British jobs for British workers.
"The Return of Economic Nationalism," wails the alarmed cover of
The Economist. And understandably so.
For the stimulus bills of both Houses have a "Buy American"
provision mandating that in "public works" only U.S. iron, steel
and manufactures be used. The provision came out of the
appropriations committee of the House on a 55-to-0 vote.
The Senate watered it down by declaring the Buy American provision
must be consistent with all U.S. trade commitments. But Congress is
sending a message: The rebuilding of America is to be a project of,
by and for Americans, not outsourced. Sen. McCain's free-trade
amendment, to strip all Buy American provisions from the bill, was
routed 65 to 31
The reaction of Barack Obama, a NAFTA skeptic in 2008 with bumper
stickers that read, "Buy American, Vote Obama," was to genuflect to
the gods of globalism and recant his economic patriotism.
"I think it would be a mistake ... at a time when worldwide trade
is declining, for the United States to start sending a message that
somehow we're just looking out after ourselves," he told Fox News.
We don't want to "trigger a trade war," he told ABC.
Apparently, Obama was unnerved by rumbles from Europe, which is
threatening to drag us before a World Trade Organization tribunal
and have "Buy American" banished forever.
But there is no easy way out now for a Democratic Party where
economic nationalism is rampant. If Congress drops or Obama refuses
to enforce the Buy American provision, and billions of stimulus
dollars are spent on foreign iron, steel and cement, Middle America
will know whom to blame. But if Americans get the contracts, and
Europeans get nothing, Europe will have to decide whether to
retaliate and start a trade war with a populist and nationalist
America.
We may be at a turning point in history. For we are about to choose
whether to fully and finally cast our lot with globalism, or to
become again a nation and people who put Americans first.
We are about to decide, perhaps for all time, whether we believe in
a deepening interdependence leading to one world government, or we
restore the independence won for us by the men on Mount Rushmore:
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
All four were economic nationalists. All would today be decried as
protectionists. For all believed that the nation's independence and
prosperity hung upon its ability to stand alone in the world, and
that foreign goods should never enjoy as privileged access to
America's markets as American goods made in the U.S.A.
All four put America first. And it was they who created out of 13
rural colonies the greatest manufacturing power in history. Is not
their record superior to what Bush-Clinton-Bush left us: a
hollowed-out industrial nation dependent on foreigners for the
needs of our national life and for the loans to pay for them?
Even John Maynard Keynes came around in 1933 to believe in
"national self-sufficiency."
Those who prattle about the perils of protectionism need to be
asked: What has free trade produced, but a bankrupt America that
must go hat-in-hand to Beijing to borrow the money to rebuild our
crumbling infrastructure? Are we also to use Chinese iron, steel
and cement because they, with their Third World wages, will work
for less than our fellow Americans?
As for Europe's threat of a trade war, bring it on!
We would eat their lunch. As analyst Charles McMillion writes, in
eight years of Bush, Canada ran up $500 billion in trade surpluses
at our expense, Japan ran up $600 billion, the European Union $800
billion.
These three trading partners, often by imposing value-added taxes
on U.S. imports, and rebating those taxes on goods sold here,
racked up $1.9 trillion in trade surpluses, sucking jobs, factories
and technology out of the United States. These trade deficits, and
the even larger ones with China, says Paul Volcker, are behind our
present crisis.
America is bust. It is shameful to have to go to China and Japan to
borrow the money to rebuild America. But to go to China and Japan
and borrow billions, and not spend the money here, makes zero sense.
We have indulged in free trade for a quarter century. And look
where it has gotten us.
SOURCE:
http://buchanan.org/blog/2009/02/pjb-buy-american-or-bye-bye-america/