Bush takes a stand for America first: Pat Buchanan praises president for tariffs on imported steel

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Friday, March 8, 2002 | Pat Buchanan

[ValenB4]

Jude Wanniski has a very interesting chapter in "The Way the World Works" that deals with the Smoot-Hawley tariff, but more importantly, the effects of the political process that led to it - thus deepening the Depression. There is a day by day account of the process that led to it, as well as how the markets reacted almost instantaneously to what was going on during the political debate in Washington. It is a credit to his writing style that he could make this interesting and exciting reading. However, he claims the tariff increase was not enough. I quote pg. 152:

"Most one term presidents only have time for only one truly disastrous decision, but Herbert Hoover squeezed in two. Having widened the international wedge (tariffs), he proceeded to put the domestic tax wedge back where it had been when Harding took offic in 1921."

Everything is on a Laffer curve. I doubt Bush's tariff increase will be that big of a deal. I believe if tariffs are raised a few percentage points and income taxes lowered substantially, the American consumer still comes out ahead.

[TopDog2]

All furnaces are placed in "hot idle" status if they are not running. If a furnace cools down, the steel left in it will solidify. If heat is reapplied, it can cause an explosion as the steel melts close to the heat source, but is still solid a distance away.

[Willie Green]

Seriously, Brian: your FReeper homepage states that you've been "AKA: "brallen" -- [June 26 1998] -- and several other handles before then, "John Galt" -- "Zedair" -- etceteras -- way back to Prodigy "Whitewater Board" days!"

I'm truly puzzled as to how somebody can be around FreeRepublic so long, and yet be so uninformed. Steel is a vital material, both for strategic, high-tech defense applications as well as myriad industrial/commercial applications throughout our nation.

Please enlighten us as to why someone would want to intentionally undermine our nation by encouraging collapse of our domestic steel industry. Is it some extreme envionmentalist beliefs in your background? Or perhaps just an overpaid Gen-X geek who thinks the whole world revolves around computer code and the stock market? What is the "profile" of such a moron?

[Willie Green]

Jude Wanniski loses credibility by grossly exagerating the effects of Smoot-Hawley.
He earns a good living peddling that revisionism to gullible globalists.
It's quite a cottage industry, but not credible history or economics.

[Brian Allen]

I guess you got me there. I can't argue with that eloquent statement...

Now, THAT's better!

<];^)~<

FReegards

Brian

[11th Earl of Mar]

I praise Bush and apologize for all the globalist rhetoric.

Bump for honesty.

[ValenB4]

He's hardly a globalist and is good friends with Buchanan, with whom he agrees often. He is directly responsible for the economic policies of Reagan. Not exactly a cottage industry. I am far from being an expert (I don't have time to become one), but his analysis has been right on. As much as I like and admire Buchanan, concerning economic matters, I have more confidence in Wanniski, Laffer, and Mundell.

[tet68]

If the WTO says the steel tariffs should not stand, then Mr Bush can claim he tried to protect Big Steel but those terrible foreigners would not let him.

You don't really know George Bush,do you.Eight years of Bill Clinton has warped your perception that bad.

[bob808]

If this cycle is as black and white as you describe, foreign steel would ultimately go under. Then the heroic American steel unions would have no competition.

Doubtful, as most other nations also impose tariffs to protect their domestic industry.

[bob808]

...your mindless bloody sloganeering, surely beats the Hell out of addressing my contention...

As opposed to your brilliant rebutal in post #35, eh?

[ContentiousObjector]

What bush is saying is "I'm a free trader, but I will take a Lewinsky from the unions too."

Lets see who is laughing when counties start evicticing Wal-Mart and putting 40% tariffs on American goods

[ContentiousObjector]

Hawley-Smoot didn't cause the great depression, but it did make it consiterably worse and the United States fell deeper into the depression

[Cacophonous]

I am now waiting for all of Buchanan's Bush bashers here on FR to show up and praise Bush and apologize for all their globalist rhetoric.

And I am waiting for all the Buchanan bashers to apologize...

Actually, I do not totally agree with Buchanan on this. I do not think the tariffs went far enough..it was a half-assed effort. Leaves too many loopholes.

[Willie Green]

Lets see who is laughing when counties start evicticing Wal-Mart and putting 40% tariffs on American goods

I have absolutely no idea what the heck "evicticing" means, but I DO know that counties don't levy tariffs.

Could you try reposting after you sober up?
If it makes any sense, I'll be glad to reply.

[Cacophonous]

Lets see who is laughing when counties start evicticing Wal-Mart and putting 40% tariffs on American goods

This is stunning...

Having conceded that -- in a market where our competitors cheat -- you are willing to let American industries lose. Then you are unwilling to let the US level the playing field, figuring that US industry (the most efficient in the world) will lose in a fair trade war anyway. How horribly cynical.

It is pathetic that you think so little of American ingenuity and know-how, and of the American work ethic.

You don't seem to recognize...Japan, China, et alii are playing entirely different trade games, under entirely different sets of rules. It's like asking the Arizone Diamondbacks to play a football game against the New England Patriots. The D-Backs are a helluva baseball team, but that doesn't help them against the Patriots.

I'm all for tariffs...let's get the US competirors playing the same game. Then, if they want to start a trade war, bring it on. "Let's Roll!".

And for those pinheads calling it a tax increase, I propose this: we never had an income tax until 1913 (the never-ratified 16th Amendment). How do you think the US Government paid for itself until that time? Right...TARIFFS! And we ran a trade surplus, a mighty one. So let's can the income tax system and go back to funding the Fed on tariffs.

[Brian Allen]

You sloganeer and construct liberal-styled straw men in support of you unsupportable, phony, corporate-welfare/union-thug nonsense in support of an industry that has for decades been demanding feral-gummint featherbedding while voluntarily committing suicide -- and call ME names?

Whats the matter?

Overdose of selective socialism cause you to be unable to rationally support your unsupportable demand for corporate welfare for an industry too damned unprincipled to stand up even to its gangster unions?

Let alone to even remember how to pronounce the words, Capitalism and FRee Enterprise!

[Cacophonous]

Please provide for me your definitions of capitalism, free enterprise, and free trade. Then describe how our trading partners are adhering to any of these principles you define.

[Willie Green]

Well, your FReeper homepage has some Jefferson quotes on it, let's see if you have any respect for these:

"The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence requires us to establish at home, with the patriotic determination of every good citizen to use no foreign article which can be made within ourselves without regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse into foreign dependency."

--Thomas Jefferson to Jean Baptiste Say, 1815.

"I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may."

--Thomas Jefferson to B. S. Barton, 1815. ME 19:223

"We are infinitely better off without treaties of commerce with any nation."

--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1815.

[Brian Allen]

..... describe how our trading partners are adhering to any of these principles you define .....

And the point of that little exercise in relativity would be, of course, made in a FRuitless endeavor to rationalize and to justify your own departure -- and insofar as this issue is concerned, President Bush's departure -- FRom Principle, FRom Moral Integrity -- and FRom Treaty Obligations?

[Principles, by the way, are not subjectively "defined"]

[Brian Allen]

..... Well, your FReeper homepage .....

Too bad, Willie, that you want to discuss only your opinion of me -- and not the thread's topic.

I am not much interested in what folks think about me -- and would prefer, were I to agree to become the topic here, [And I do not] to stick with what God and I know of me.