The Bush administration seems unwilling to see the white elephant in its White House living room. Turning a blind eye on the upcoming Kyoto Protocol and continuing unilateral compromises in the Doha Free Trade agreement, Bush and Co. won’t admit that the true culprit to environment degradation, as well as the regression in America’s standard of living, loss in manufacturing jobs, growing national debt, and record trade deficits is due to international free trade. “Competitive protectionism is a proven idea with a lot of success. Free trade is historically a relatively new idea with a lot of failure,” said Dr. Ravi Batra , international economist, in his book, The Myth of Free Trade. “Free trade has done to the us what Hitler and imperial Japan could not do during the war,” he said.
Congress can’t pass a lot of laws that protect labor and the environment and then expect our businesses to thrive without protection. Government cannot pass laws and then relinquish control to the governance by a free market.
The American marketplace has enormous value and should have been sold to the highest bidder – the government willing to allow the maximum tariffs.
Protectionism, according to conventional wisdom, is a bad thing. However, protection of our rights is the only right that government really has; the only job of a government is to protect their citizens. To insinuate that protection of the marketplace is bad establishes a dichotomy because protection, in one form or another, is the sole purpose of government.
The free market is actually a form of anarchy, which is not necessarily bad. But if anarchy is to work, forces that cause disruption have to either be eliminated or controlled. The forces that disrupt can be internal (caused by our own government) as well as external (pirates).
The American marketplace has enormous value and should have been sold to the highest bidder – the government willing to allow the maximum tariffs. The marketplace access should be sold in intervals, perhaps a year. The only rule should be that our government accept the highest bid; the highest tariff. This is the easiest solution to our mess.