Posted on 08/29/2015 9:14:18 AM PDT by Hojczyk
By Stephen Moore & Lawrence Kudlow
Here's a historical fact that Donald Trump, and many voters attracted to him, may not know: The last American president who was a trade protectionist was Republican Herbert Hoover.
Obviously that economic strategy didn't turn out so well — either for the nation or the GOP.
Does Trump aspire to be a 21st century Hoover with a modernized platform of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff that helped send the U.S. and world economy into a decade-long depression and a collapse of the banking system?
We can't help wondering whether the panic in world financial markets is in part a result of the Trump assault on free trade.
Trump is also now running full throttle on an anti-immigration platform that could hurt growth as well and alienate Republicans from ethnic voters that the GOP needs if it is going to win in 2016.
We call this the Trump Fortress America platform. He clearly sees international trade and immigration as a negative sum game for American workers.
He recently announced that as president he would prohibit American companies like Ford from building plants in Mexico. He moans pessimistically that "China is eating our lunch" and is "sucking the blood out of the U.S.?"
But strategic tax cuts and regulatory relief after the anti-business rule-making assault by Obama, not trade and immigration barriers, are the solution to America's competitiveness deficit.
A draft of Trump's 14-point economic manifesto promises that, as president, he would "modify or cancel any business, or trade agreement that hinders American business development, or is shown to create an unfair trading relationship with a foreign entity." Special: Engineers Call This the ‘Solar Panel Killer’ His immigration stance would not just deport illegal immigrants, but even lock the golden doors to those who come lawfully
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
It is illegal immigrants....And fair trade....Wall Street Journal..
Yeah, no doubt.
The Chamber Of Commerce types have destroyed American manufacturing and made us dependent on China.
I don’t consider that free trade much less than fair trade.
Every one else is dumping here while we are locked out of their markets.
No wonder they don’t like Trump’s platform.
Every friggin day it’s a series of hit pieces from these media morons. I refuse to even read their crap any more. This is horrible how he threatens their little self-made empires, so they must destroy him. This isn’t vetting - people just have to have something to write about, the same way they went after Sarah Palin. I hate all of them.
is offshoring the same as “free trade”?
I see you like the Establishment/Globalist approach.
Where we have rigged Trade deals, open borders, out of control spending and perpetual state of war.
In other words...., you want more of the same crap that will eventually destroy the United States.
As others have pointed out, the answer is not protectionism, but a lowering of barriers to producing things competitively in our own country.
Nothing but a bunch of paranoid freaks. We are locked out of foreign markets yet these anti-American pinheads claim we should send even more manufacturing to foreign nations while also letting in more foreign workers.
America First! America Wins!
FREE TRADE IS AERIAL CARPET BOMBING OF AMERICA EVERY SINGLE DAY
Smoot Hawley! Smoot Hawley!
Booga Booga!
The bankster class has been babbling this for decades to divert attention from the real facts about the Depression that they don’t want to talk about: the Reserve bank caused it by incompetent moves in 1932 limiting credit to struggling regional banks.
From Fisher to Greenspan to Bernanke this was documented. Everything Bernanke did after 2008 was the opposite of what the ignorant stiffs of the 30s banks did.
Smoot Hawley affected maybe 4% of the economy because we did not have significant imports or exports then: the United States were self sufficient up until they made the mistake of getting on the national bank train in 1913.
We are now talking about tariffs against a nation that runs a trade imbalance with us on the order of 100s of billions every year and controls us through bond ownership.
All that would do is remedy the worst trade situation in American history.
Stephen Moore is a shrill ideologue parroting theoretical ideas which take no realities of national interests into account.
Love it!
Everyone is dumping here while we are kept out of their markets but a little birdie tells me that the early bird caught the worm. The early bird meaning those powerful insiders who hand wrote the trade deals. I’ll bet that they made out like bandits.
Scratch all the defenders of illegal immigration and you will find who the economic traitors are.
The Federal Reserve Bank was supposed to prevent depressions from happening. Remember. :^}
The protectionist countries are destroying their own economies by locking out other countries' consumer goods. They are raising the cost to their consumers who also happen to be their producers. A country like that can't survive. See what is happening in China.
Say no to government controlled tax increases, a.k.a tariffs in this country. Instead lower corporate taxes, regulations and government spending.
God bless who ever thought up the word “bankster”, it describes them perfectly, half banker, half gangster. What happens when crooks get too “respectable” and too big to arrest?
By saying “Protectionism” is ABSOLUTE RUBBISH! The trade agreements we have are like a rigged poker game where everyone can cheat but us.
We led the world with Tariffs for over 50 years after World War II. It was only after NAFTA, GATT, etc..., we began are slow slide.
Furthermore, we still pay Tariffs to China and Mexico and they do not. That’s a rigged deal that we will lose.
That type of we Dumb@ss thinking is why our country is going to $hit.
The only people who love it are the corrupt politicians that have sold our people out.
The only time you can have “free trade” is if EVERYONE is playing by the same rules. Which is impossible. Thus, one of the main reasons why you have tariffs.
You have to be a certified DUMB@SS to believe this Bull $hit!
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