Well all I know is our national trade deficit went up signifcantly, during Bush’s time in office.
I consider Bush an enthusiastic globalist.
Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with globalism, except that is sells American down the river.
I do not believe anything which happened during Bush’s regime really counts, toward validating or invalidating aspects of global commerce.
Bush was a great president in a lot of ways, but in other ways he was a bit of a flop.
I do not consider his national communications to have helped him or the GOP on balance.
I also do not consider what happened with steel during his time in office to be representative of anything other than an experience with failed globalism. I don’t see America currently running a huge successful steel industry.
America was just one generation ago, the undisputed king of global commerce.
Now China is the world’s chief exporter, and that is rapidly growing.
We need to bring back industry right here to America again.
You are saying we should keep working to make America more deserving of business, before bringing home our industry.
I say China is rapidly growing stronger.
And is becoming a bigger concern.
We are on the same side basically, but I think China’s growth at some point, becomes more critical for America to start to focus on, that our “free market”.
I say we have run our current experiment to its logical extreme.
We need to change the rules.
America needs a national industrial base.
America needs industry.
America needs growing tax revenues, and a balanced budget.
All of those things are currently out of reach.
I believe it is time for America to change the way we do business with the globe.
America must compete once again.
RE: We need to bring back industry right here to America again.
Seeesh, such a long response and everything is essentially distilled in that one above line.
You still have not answered the question -— HOW? other than to propose tariffs.... which did not work under Bush ( and did not work under Hoover either ).
tariffs protect inefficient domestic producers from more efficient foreign rivals. Take steel manufacturers. American firms that buy domestic steel are forced to charge consumers more. So retail sales decline, and thousands of jobs are then lost in countless industries that use steel as raw material.
And as American consumers and companies are forced to pay higher prices for products with domestic steel, they have less money to spend on other purchases. That’s billions of dollars in sales lost to other industries, resulting in lower production and even fewer jobs.
Protectionism also provokes retaliation. Not so long ago, representatives of Canadian cities, upset with the “Buy American” rules, voted for “Buy Canadian” policies that could block American companies from bidding on city contracts. The inevitable result will be a decline in trade with our largest trading partner, and a loss of yet more American jobs.
Luckily, we did away with that tack too.
Let’s take another example other than GW Bush’s steel tariffs....
Consider what happened in 1930 when the U.S. raised tariffs on 20,000 foreign goods despite the protests of more than 1,000 economists. Our trading partners fought back, and U.S. exports and imports fell by 70 percent, causing huge job losses here and around the world. In fact, some would argue that it was protectionism that helped to make The Great Depression so “Great.”