possible Tariff on China

[Robert Oak]

The US multinational establishment, having successfully championed free-trade orthodoxy for decades, may now be flirting with protectionist heresy--a stiff tariff against China to stanch America's hemorrhaging trade deficits. Fred Bergsten, the multinationals' leading economic authority, warns that the United States is in "big trouble," taking on foreign debt beyond anything any industrial nation has experienced and comparable to Mexico and Thailand just before they crashed in the 1990s. Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, is lobbying elite circles to demand decisive action by the Bush Administration--an "import surcharge" as high as 50 percent on all Chinese imports--to avert financial meltdown.

Meantime, a bipartisan group of senators--nine Democrats, five Republicans--has introduced Senate Bill 295, which targets China with a 27.5 percent tariff. Charles Schumer, the lead sponsor, calls it "a tough-love effort." The co-sponsors include Democratic minority leader Harry Reid and, more surprising, Hillary Clinton, a longtime free trader close to financial leaders like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now an executive at Citigroup. The bill lets politicians express solidarity with constituents who lost their jobs, without offending big hitters.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050411&s=greider

What kills me is the "free trade" theory by Baumol, Gomory, plus
many others clearly shows "free trade" is not a "win-win" and
in fact could wipe out a 1st world economy...it's a "depends"
theory based on a series of factors and even more ridiculous
is Baumol and Gomory's work has been so misintrepreted for
outsourcing, when if one actually reads the book, it clearly
shows danger areas.

Anyway, probably too little too late, but at least some
multinationals are waking up realizing if the US economy crashes
they crash no matter how "offshored" they are.

[Wright Patman]

1. Too late

Most of the major U.S. corporations are well established in China. You think they will let tariffs happen to them? They own whatever administration is in office of either party. Free trade is an article of faith. It is an economic religion.

I remember Al Gore debating Ross Perot about NAFTA and everyone crowing about how he cleaned the little Texan's clock on the wonders of free trade.

I am now for all-out free trade because both parties told me so. How could they both be wrong? < /sarcasm>

Actually, it doesn't matter anymore what I think. * is right. Who cares what I think?

So America collapses. What's so great about us anymore anyhow? The rest of the world will breathe a huge sigh of relief and only express concern for the safety of the nukes. It will be our version of the late 1980s, early 1990s for the old Soviet Union.

[Massacure]

2. I doubt the U.S. will collapse.

The EU and China will be the next super powers though.