February 6, 2008
Free Trade Report Card
One refuge I've found in my defense of Senator McCain has been his stance on free trade. David Ranson, head of research at H.C. Wainwright Economics Inc., has a guest editorial in which he grades the candidates on their approach to trade. The bar is pretty damn low, but Senator McCain shines:
During their debates, some of the Republican candidates expressed more ifs, ands or buts about free trade than others. John McCain says: "Free trade should be the continuing principle that guides this nation's economy." Mitt Romney's position is: "I strongly support free trade, but free trade has to be fair in both directions." According to Mike Huckabee: "I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade." But elsewhere he has said: "I don't want to see our food come from China, our oil come from Saudi Arabia and our manufacturing come from Europe and Asia."Hillary Clinton has taken an even stronger stance against free trade, suggesting that the economic theories underpinning it no longer hold. To support that she cited economics Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson, but he was only making the long-understood but sometimes forgotten point that, even in the long run, free trade does not benefit everyone.
When you hear "fair trade," "smart trade," reciprocal trade," you are always hearing a euphemism for protectionism. Free trade is fair, smart, and reciprocal -- without any help from bureaucrats.
If you read the whole piece, McCain gets a well deserved whack for some nonsense about compensating senior workers and some good old bromides about retraining. But even if enacted, a few stupid gub'mint programs will be much less of a drag on the economy than protectionism
I suppose that's one reason McCain is better than the other two, at least by default.
The others are a religious freak who wants to amend the Constitution to suit God's law, and the other is a moral conservative who forced economic socialism on his home state. And if they're talking about "fair trade," they can both go to hell (which they are already, I'm sure).
To use Walter Williams' analogy, we don't need Hucksterbee or Romney blowing a hole in our side of the boat, just because our trade partners blow one in theirs.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at February 6, 2008 4:58 PM | What do you think? [1]