http://www.amconmag.com/2004_04_12/buchanan.html
> Suicide by Free Trade > > by Pat Buchanan > > They are calling it ?the jobs issue.? For 43 straight months, manufacturing jobs have > disappeared. One in six has vanished since Bush took his oath. Now Americans are > alarmed over reports of the outsourcing of white-collar jobs. It is an issue on which > the presidential election could turn. > > And what has been the response of the candidates? Kerry is denouncing executives > who move plants overseas as ?Benedict Arnold CEOs,? and Bush is echoing his > father?s rants against ?isolationism and protectionism.? > > ?Some politicians in Washington want to build a wall around the country and to > isolate > America from the rest of the world,? said Bush in Ohio. ?The old policy of economic > isolationism is a recipe for economic disaster. America has moved beyond that tired > defeatist mindset ...? > > Both candidates and both parties seem clueless about what is going on and what to do > about it. For Bush Republicans and Kerry Democrats both backed NAFTA, GATT, > the WTO, and MFN for China. > > There is this difference, however. Republicans are principled free traders, while the > Democratic Party, as a wag put it a while ago, is simply a gathering of warring > tribes > that have come together in the anticipation of common plunder. > > Democrats worship power. They will do what they must to get it. Thus they have > begun to drop the free-trade mantra and play to the populism of the people. And they > have tapped into the public mood. USA Today cites a University of Maryland poll that > reveals that, ?among Americans making more than $100,000 a year, support for > actively promoting free trade collapsed from 57 percent to less than half that, 28 > percent.? This is the first time this has happened. > > If President Bush is going to spend eight months as a traveling salesman for free > trade > and a crusader against ?protectionism,? as his father did, he is inviting the same > result > his father got. > > An opportunist is to be preferred to an ideologue who will not entertain the idea he > may be wrong and that the philosophy in which he was schooled and devoutly > believes may be irrelevant to the new era. Like companies that continue to make > products no one wants to buy anymore, parties that persist in policies that are > visibly > failing?like LBJ in Vietnam?end up being abandoned. > > If the GOP persists in this free-trade fanaticism, it is courting suicide. For the > policy > is not working in the eyes of the people. And if Republicans insist the returns from > global free trade?a disintegrating dollar and a merchandise trade deficit of $550 > billion a year and rising?are good for America, folks are going to conclude that > Republicans are too out of it to govern. > > Given that the GOP today controls both Houses of Congress and the White House, > this may sound alarmist. Yet GOP dominance today does not approach what it was in > the 1920s under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, before the wipeout. > > If the GOP does not offer ideas to halt the de-industrialization of America and the > hemorrhaging of blue- and white-collar jobs, it is going to wind up on a landfill. > > The problem with the columnists and think-tank scribblers who make up the > intelligentsia of the GOP is not that they believe in free markets but that they > worship > them. They believe that if NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and MFN for China mean > production goes overseas, the market is telling us where production ought to be. And > the voice of the market is to be obeyed, because that is the voice of their god. > > When Reagan, a devout free trader, saw the U.S. auto industry sinking, he did not let > ideology interfere with a rescue. He imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars and > saved Detroit, though he was denounced for apostasy and heresy. > > Free-trade Republicans are like militant Christian Scientists who prefer to let > patients > die rather than call in a doctor?which is fine, as long as you?re not the patient. > > Americans believe that the interests of U.S. workers and their families come ahead of > what may be good or best for the Global Economy. For years they have seen > industrial jobs disappear. Now white-collar jobs are being outsourced. They want to > know what Bush and the Republicans are going to do about it. > > If the president?s answer is to echo his father and denounce opponents as > ?isolationists and protectionists,? he risks ending up like his father, a one-term > president. > > Indeed, if the issue is jobs, Republicans ought to be thrown out. For not only are > they > not creating them, they have no idea how to stop exporting them. In their hearts, > some of them think it a good thing. They are like the doctors of old who sincerely > believed bleeding the patient was the way to get rid of the disease because that is > what > their textbooks and wise men told them. > > April 12, 2004 issue > Copyright Š 2004 The American Conservative
