"Buy American" Bad News
'Buy American' Rule in Stimulus Bill Sparks Protest
U.S. businesses and trading partners are up in arms over a provision the House bill that prohibits the purchase of foreign iron and steel for any stimulus-funded infrastructure project.
Yet John Murphy, vice president of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said 50 million Americans whose jobs depend on exports would pay the price.
"If the U.S. raises these barriers to international business, we're likely to see massive retaliation around the world," he said.
Insanity. First off, the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act ia widely acknowledged as one of the major contributing factors to driving the economy into a deep and unresponsive Depression during the Great Depression. Retaliatory tariffs were enacted across the globe and trade was choked off almost entirely adding fuel to the fire. "Protectionism" almost always hurts way more and way more people than it might help in the short run.
House Democrats have passed a version of the Stimulus bill that would inject crazy amounts of cash into the economy, plenty of which is going to be wasted on pet projects and pork instead of narrowly targeting key areas to help bolster production - but wait! Businesses are having trouble dealing with the downturn in the economy, they're losing money, having to lay people off - so what do the Democrats think will work to fix it? Force those businesses to have to buy raw materials at a more expensive price even if they could get it cheaper from foreign suppliers - just to line the pockets of union steel plants,
This is completely outrageous, rather than let the taxpayers keep the money and let them decide what to do with it in the private market (there's not enough tax cuts to provide immediate relif) they are going to force business to adhere to inefficient and horribly unfair government interference.
This is exactly the kind of nonsense I can't stand about the Democrats. I'm happy to see social conservative junk getting overturned, but they drive me absolutely nuts when it comes to fiscal suff - it's like they have a bunch of baboons making their economic policy objectives.
U.S. businesses and trading partners are up in arms over a provision the House bill that prohibits the purchase of foreign iron and steel for any stimulus-funded infrastructure project.
Yet John Murphy, vice president of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said 50 million Americans whose jobs depend on exports would pay the price.
"If the U.S. raises these barriers to international business, we're likely to see massive retaliation around the world," he said.
Insanity. First off, the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act ia widely acknowledged as one of the major contributing factors to driving the economy into a deep and unresponsive Depression during the Great Depression. Retaliatory tariffs were enacted across the globe and trade was choked off almost entirely adding fuel to the fire. "Protectionism" almost always hurts way more and way more people than it might help in the short run.
House Democrats have passed a version of the Stimulus bill that would inject crazy amounts of cash into the economy, plenty of which is going to be wasted on pet projects and pork instead of narrowly targeting key areas to help bolster production - but wait! Businesses are having trouble dealing with the downturn in the economy, they're losing money, having to lay people off - so what do the Democrats think will work to fix it? Force those businesses to have to buy raw materials at a more expensive price even if they could get it cheaper from foreign suppliers - just to line the pockets of union steel plants,
This is completely outrageous, rather than let the taxpayers keep the money and let them decide what to do with it in the private market (there's not enough tax cuts to provide immediate relif) they are going to force business to adhere to inefficient and horribly unfair government interference.
This is exactly the kind of nonsense I can't stand about the Democrats. I'm happy to see social conservative junk getting overturned, but they drive me absolutely nuts when it comes to fiscal suff - it's like they have a bunch of baboons making their economic policy objectives.
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