Sunday, February 1, 2009

Like I Said


I wrote a few days ago how misguided I thought the protectionist measures in the Senate version of the stimulus package are. From today's LA Times:

Andrew Rose, a professor of international trade at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, said you could practically set your watch by how quickly protectionist sentiment ratcheted up whenever the economy turned sour.

And in almost all cases, he said, "buy American" provisions are a bad idea."It's certainly a bad idea for the rest of the world, and it's a bad idea for us as well," Rose said. "If we only buy American, we'll probably pay more for inferior goods."


Not to mention the global backlash against U.S. produced goods that will occur if we stop buying Chinese. It has got to be a two way street.

On the other hand, I shudder to think what new pork is going to need to be added to get these measures out of the bill.

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