Posted on 03/09/2018 11:09:13 AM PST by Oklahoma
The largest steel mill in the U.S. today is located in Calvert, Alabama. It is owned jointly by foreign steel giants ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel. The steel industry in the Rust Belt would have faded even if there was no foreign competition.
Yup. One of the reasons we won WWII is because of our manufacturing capabilities.
“Of course you hurt U.S. manufacturing by raising the price of a key raw material, steel.”
At best, 40 bucks on a 35-40,000 dollar car. And in return for that, we get a steel industry revival. But you never Trumper free traitors never tire of the drama.
Would you have been happier if Reagan would have let Harley Davidson die?
Not to mention Japan has a 778% tariff on rice and a 50% on US beef. Would they be happier to import it all from Louisiana, Texas and California and kill production at home?
Funny how i never see free traitors demanding the 3rd world and China follow the most basic environmental and human rights concepts. I am convinced the would find no issue in buying products made in Auschwitz as long as they would sell at Walmart.
I think Reason’s analysis is mostly not all that welcome on FR. It seems most here are on the side of tariffs.
I would go back to Carnegie. He achieved what he did without any government help or protection whatsoever.
You forgot US tax policies that literally pay US companies to relocate out of the USA.
And it keeps the third world in shackles too. If one nation decides to elevate itself with even the slightest level of concern for the environment or workers, the company simply hops on to the next country full of brown people. It’s a race to the bottom.
The minute some Mexican factory worker wants more than 7 dollars a day, they move to Indonesia and pay 6.50. rinse and repeat.
No, I see the necessity of it, same with energy and food. If a nation can’t provide for itself, what good is it? How does a nation develop wealth, import it? Remember in the 90’s we were going to be a service economy, and get rid of that dirty manufacturing, how did that “service” economy work out? Then, after that, according to GWB, we’re a “consumer” economy. What are we going to do, consume our way into wealth. Just for the record, the steel&alum tariffs will hurt me, but I’m an American first.
Sorry sport, Carnegie was protected by tariffs. The still supplied about a third of the US budget during his heyday. Any foreigner wanting to sell steel rails here would have been met with a tariff.
The rest of the budget was a mix of liquor and tobacco taxes, Panama canal fees, and a small corporate tax.
The reality is that we are the best market on earth for most things, maybe exceed by China on some consumption levels. Foreigners want, make that NEED, to sell here. A tariff is pay to play. Good for us, good for them. If they don’t want to pay, they can drop all their protective tariffs.
China charges us at least for everything we sent there including scrap steel.
Seventy years or so ago I learned about single source from the Saturday afternoon westerns.
The rancher waters his cattle from the stream that runs through his land until the evil rancher to his North decides to dam up the stream.
Any country that can not produce their defense weapons, in house, is at the mercy of the people they buy from.
U.S. manufacturing output is much higher today than it was when manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. We produce different things than we did back then, and we need a lot fewer workers to produce them.
You nail the most serious problem. It was the fact that we were able to produce more than double the combined steel production of the axis powers that gave us the insurmountable edge in World War II.
Guess you will have to change your signon name now.
https://mises.org/library/ronald-reagan-protectionist
The Free Market
Mises.org Publish Date:
May 1, 1988 - 12:00 AM
Author 1:
Sheldon L. Richman [1]
The Free Market 6, no. 5 (May 1988)
Mark Shields, a columnist for the Washington Post, recently wrote of President Reagan’s “blind devotion to the doctrine of free trade.” If President Reagan has a devotion to free trade, it must be blind because he has been way off the mark. In fact, he has been the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover.
Admittedly, his rhetoric has been confusing. In 1986 Reagan said, “Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets. I recognize. . . the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: the freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations.”
But he advocated protectionism early in his 1980 campaign, saying to the U.S. auto industry: “Japan is part of the problem. This is where government can be legitimately involved. That is, to convince the Japanese in one way or another that, in their own interests, that deluge of cars must be slowed while our industry gets back on its feet...”
When he imposed a 100% tariff on selected Japanese electronic products for allegedly “dumping” computer memory chips, he said he did it “to enforce the principles of free and fair trade.” And Treasury Secretary James A. Baker has boasted about the protectionist record: Reagan “has granted more import relief to U.S. industry than any of his predecessors in more than half a century.”
It’s true that the administration has fought with protectionists in Congress, but only over who should have the power to restrict trade. As Reagan put it, “It’s better policy to allow for presidents—me or my successors—to have options for dealing with trade problems.”
Defenders of the Reagan policies will say that he has engaged in protectionism to open foreign markets. But they cannot deny that one-quarter of all imports are today restricted, a 100% increase over 1980.
Nor are foreign markets more open. The Reagan administration talks about exporting free enterprise, but in fact it has exported economic intervention to Japan, South Korea, and other nations.
When the United States imposes import quotas or pressures a foreign government to do so, a compulsory cartel must arise in the exporting country, since its government will assign the quotas among private firms and administer the system. Ronald Reagan has forced nations that export textiles, apparel, sugar, steel, and other products to cartelize these industries.
Can trade restrictions open foreign markets? The use of government power to regulate trade is more likely to produce conflict of which American consumers and exporters become the victims. It is also naive, because it ignores the political pressure to maintain existing restrictions. The United States, for example, could impose new limits on Japanese autos to force Japan to accept beef exports from Iowa. But, as syndicated columnist Stephen Chapman asks, “Does anyone believe that when Japan starts buying Iowa beef, Ford and Chrysler will stop trying to keep out Japanese cars?”
Considering our own intricate web of trade restrictions, it is sanctimonious for the U.S. government to lecture others about opening their markets. It might be in a better position to make demand~ if it first stripped our economy of those restrictions. But wouldn’t we be giving up bargaining chips? Yes. But the objective is not to negotiate; it is to enjoy the benefits of productivity and the international division of labor. The bonanza of unconditional free trade would be so great for the United States that it would set a good example for the rest of the world.
The value of free trade does not depend on open markets abroad. It is good for the nation that practices it, regardless of what others do. The purpose of an economic system is not to produce jobs or sell products abroad. Those are means. The end is satisfaction of our material wants. Free trade is good because our standard of living depends on how easily we can get the products and services we want.
One is led to ask: with free-traders like this, who needs protectionists?
The administration has thus far:
Forced Japan to accept restraints on auto exports;
Tightened considerably the quotas on imported sugar;
Negotiated to increase the restrictiveness of the Multifiber Arrangement governing trade in textiles and apparel;
Required 18 countries, including Brazil, Spain, South
Korea, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Finland, Australia, and the European Community, to accept “voluntary restraint agreements” that reduce their steel imports to the United States;
Imposed a 45% duty on Japanese motorcycles for the benefit of Harley Davidson, which admitted that superior Japanese management was the cause of its problems;
Raised tariffs on Canadian lumber and cedar shingles;
Forced the Japanese into an agreement to control the price of computer memory chips;
Removed third-world countries on several occasions from the duty-free import program for developing nations;
Pressed Japan to force its automakers to buy more American-made parts;
Demanded that Taiwan, West Germany, Japan, and Switzerland restrain their exports of machine tools;
Accused the Japanese of dumping roller bearings on grounds so that the price did not rise to cover a fall in the value of the yen;
Accused the Japanese of dumping forklift trucks and color picture tubes;
Extended quotas on imported clothes pins;
Failed to ask Congress to end the ban on the export of Alaskan oil and timber cut from federal lands;
Redefined dumping so domestic firms can more easily charge foreign competitors with unfair trade practices;
Beefed-up the Export-Import Bank, an institution dedicated to distorting the American economy at the expense of the American people in order to artificially promote exports of eight large corporations.
The World Bank estimates that import restrictions in 1984 had the same effect as a 66% income tax surcharge on America’s poorest citizens. Less obvious is the harm to American producers, who lose exports and pay more for capital goods because of protectionism. For example, everyone, including the beleaguered American auto industry, has to pay more for steel because of the Reagan administration’s restrictions on imports. Even the steel industry is hurt because artificially high prices stimulate the search for alternative materials.
President Reagan missed a unique opportunity to begin freeing the American economy from the shackles of trade restrictions. He need not have given the American people a technical lesson in economics. He could have said that free trade requires no more justification than domestic economic freedom; indeed, it requires no more justification than the traditional American values of a humane and open society.
Citation:
Richman, Sheldon L. “Ronald Reagan: Protectionist.” The Free Market 6, no. 5 (May 1988).
That is not aaccurate.
Historian Howard K. Beale argued that high tariffs were needed during the Civil War, but were retained after the war for the benefit of Northern industrialists, who would otherwise lose markets and profits. To keep political control of Congress, Beale argued, Northern Industrialists worked through the Republican Party and supported Reconstruction policies that kept low-tariff Southern whites out of power. The Beale thesis was widely disseminated by the influential survey of Charles A. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (1927).[35][36]
In the late 1950s historians rejected the Beale-Beard thesis by showing that Northern businessmen were evenly divided on the tariff, and were not using Reconstruction policies to support it.[37][38]
Politics of protection
The iron and steel industry, and the wool industry, were the well-organized interests groups that demanded (and usually obtained) high tariffs through support of the Republican Party. Industrial workers had much higher wages than their European counterparts, and they creditied it to the tariff and voted Republican.[39]
Democrats were divided on the issue, in large part because of pro-tariff elements in the Pennsylvania party who wanted to protect the growing iron industry, as well as pockets of high tariff support in nearby industrializing states.[40] However President Grover Cleveland made low tariffs the centerpiece of Democratic Party policies in the late 1880s. His argument is that high tariffs were an unnecessary and unfair tax on consumers. The South and West generally supported low tariffs, and the industrial East high tariffs.[41] Republican William McKinley was the outstanding spokesman for high tariffs, promising it would bring prosperity for all groups.[42][43]
After the Civil War, high tariffs remained as the Republican Party remained in office and the Southern Democrats were restricted from office. Advocates insisted that tariffs brought prosperity to the nation as a whole and no one was really injured. As industrialization proceeded apace throughout the Northeast, some Democrats, especially Pennsylvanians, became high tariff advocates.
“U.S. manufacturing output is much higher today than it was when manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. We produce different things than we did back then, and we need a lot fewer workers to produce them.”
Pure sophistry. The plants that produce things use plenty of labor, just not here. And the corporations are literally paid by the tax incentives to move out of the USA.
Dems have nothing to do with it. Trump has always believed in tariffs.
Tariffs by themselves might have harmed the economy but combined with a massive corporate tax cut and billions cut in regulations, there won't be a negative impact.
The net impact of Trump's economic policies will be more jobs.
More jobs in China, not here. We are just helping China.
If Trump always agreed with that, why was all his manufacturing done in China, Bangladesh, and Mexico?
“Free trade is good because our standard of living depends on how easily we can get the products and services we want.”
And he says the purpose of an economy is not jobs, just products and services. A flood of cheap crap does America no good if nobody has a job beyond lower paying service type work. Service work that is rapidly being taken over by the flood of cheap foreign labor the same free traitors allow in!
Also, the flood of products is cheap poor quality crap. Walk through Walmart, or any grocery store. Order half the “products” on Amazon. You’ll find it’s mostly stuff we would have called pure junk 20 years ago. Nothing but a lunatic would eat the frozen seafood from asia, or feed their dog the Chinese dog food.
“If Trump always agreed with that, why was all his manufacturing done in China, Bangladesh, and Mexico?”
Because then, his duty was to his corporation’s bottom line. Now his duty is to promote the well-being of the US economy.
Wow, it’s Obama all over again. I thought, as bad as Obama was, at least I wouldn’t have to deal with him and his followers after January 2017. Boy, was I wrong.
So, in your mind, it’s the job of business owners to screw over the United States, and it’s the job of government to force businesses not to do it? Marx, anyone?
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