Nope. I'm just happen to believe that The Cato Institute and Von Mises are right and the anti-free-trade bunch are wrong. I'm still waiting for some real evidence to prove I'm on the wrong track. The standard of living in this country is extremely high, perhaps the highest in the world. We must be doing something right.
And BTW, I just got back from WalMart. If you want to know where those Chinese goods are being sold you don't have to drive further than your local WalMart. Virtually everything they sell that is manufactured is Made in China.
The people of the United States are the ones who are voting with their pocketbooks for trade with China. They are not stupid. They can read the labels. They can add up the cost of goods they purchase at Walmart. They think they are doing the right thing because they keep coming back.
Are these people stupid?
Actually, the question is not if the shoppers are stupid. But is their electoral voting behavior intelligent? Since the actual situations are clearly not one of free trade, but of a mercantilist attack (on steroids) against our nation, the question is how long the support for the policy of China-favoring trade rules...will be allowed to persist. If there wasn't a war against terrorism currently preoccupying our attention, the general consensus is that trade issues would likely have percolated to the top of voter consciousness.
It also helped that the democRAT John Kerry, who briefly tried to demogogue on the issue, was a purely unconvincing champion of industrial american labor...having consistently backed every global U.S.-attacking give-away-scheme he could. From the blindered backing of the U.N., to NAFTA, to the WTO, to permitting China's MFN status...and on and on...meanwhile his wife is outsourcing Heinz's 57 plants as fast as she can. The voters saw through it, thank God. But, if only by accident, the bum was on to a real issue.
I have been warning that if Hillary would move rightward on immigration her approval would skyrocket for her run in '08. She has. And the approval ratings are where I would expect. Now if she moves far, far rightward on trade, attacking (without saying so, Bill's legacy) what the UN, WTO and China MFN have become... one-way give-aways of trade advantages to China...I am afraid that even Ronald Reagan would have difficulty beating her. She will be able to implode the support of the GOP. And the false-color free traders will be responsible.
Cato has not ever, is not now, and never will be a 'conservative' organization. They are libertines, at least economically, revolutionaries against the Old Order which placed labor ahead of capital in all Governmental policy.
Cato, in fact, is pushing the ChiCom philosophy.
And by the way, if things are so excellent here, howcumizzit that since 2002, real earnings (private industry, after inflation) have gone DOWN.
This is what you call 'good news?'