Tariffs have some benefits: 1) National Security as mentioned before. 2) Protection of American Industries and Workers against economic tactics that wouldn't be allowed in US. 3) As a weapon to promote higher worker standards worldwide by implementing tariffs against countries that don't have minimum worker protection. I do see tariffs as a weapon and as a weapon, it should be used with caution.
Your homework assignment for tonight will be to research the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Upon completion of this assignment, I request that you return to this thread with a detailed analysis of how you have changed your position based on a higher level of education.
Credit where credit is due, that was actually pretty damned funny. Though I always remember learning it as the Hawley Smoot tariff and not vice versa?
Wow, thanks for the tip, Professor Trader_Jorge, sir. I brushed up on my Smoot-Hawley knowledge, and learned that it was almost directly responsible for the then-unprecedented 30 year expansion in American industry. Oh, you thought I was gonna say it was responsible for The Great Depression? Silly. The Great Depression started almost a year before the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act passed.
I should have responded with only sarcasm and condescension. That really would have buttressed my argument.
So are you against removing the minimum wage law? Becuase what your talking about will require American manufactoring companies to pay their workers comparable wages to that off Mexico, China, etc. And also strip away their health care, and pension benefits, SS matching, workers compensation and any other benefits associated.
I am against tariffs in a practical sense, but if our goods are tariffed in a nation or if our companies were discriminated against (i.e. Kodak vs. Fuji in Japan, Honeywell-GE merger in Europe) But the premise that we are protecting US jobs, GREENVEGAN's standard of living inference and that it is 'unfair' if utter nonsense. Our standard of living is based on our productivity per individual worker and the shift of our nation from a manufacturing industry to a service industry. If we impose tariffs on items like steel and lumber to protect the workers, we are imposing a slow death on them and are slowing the wheels of modernization and specialization. We have the highest standard of living because we produce sooo much more than everyone else per capita. All they do is slow our economy down when someone else can do it cheaper and it raises the prices for EVERYONE. Now GreenVegan, as a veggie/vegan/environmentalist, I'm puzzled by your position. With no tariff's many of the manufacturing and refinery jobs would leave the US and the Environment here would greatly benefit. I'll tell you it would benefit the environment a lot more then complaining about SUV's, and i'm sure many more animals would not be killed by pollution. Your contradict yourself in your views.
BOTTOM LINE: People should be paid what they're worth. What a novel concept. If someone can do it cheaper in Mexico, then why should we subsidize the difference? That is exactly what a tariff does, it subsidizes the difference and society pays the cost so people can have minimum wages/benefits/insurance etc. You people talk about whats 'fair' so often, yet for the democratically inclined people who attempt to give voting rights and drivers licences to illegal immigrants, it is strange that you wish for people to keep their advantage over others just because they are American. How racist. Of course my opinion is that most Democrat issues and stances are about votes and class-warfare rather than true ideals. I'm not saying that the Republicans don't do this as well, but I don't they do as much and its a lesser of two evils.
From my perspective, this goes for both parties equally. They do it just as much as the Democrats. They are equally evil.
Environmental issues don't just affect the local neighborhood. It affects the entire world -- pollution spreads globally. People in China and people in Houston breathe the same air. The U.S. has some of the highest environmental standards (such as they are) in the world. Products produced here are subject to higher environmental regulations, so less pollution is put into the atmosphere (by which I mean the air, water, soil, etc.). In China, for example, there are virtually *no* environmental regulations. They can spew all kinds of nasty filth into the air at no consequence. I'd *much* rather have industry in a country with environmental laws than in one without. Less pollution is less pollution, period. Allowing American corporations to send labor and industry overseas (only to sell those products back to American consumers) undermines the advances and high standards America is built on. Why should a country with no respect for human life have an advantage? "Free market" is a nice principle, but in a global market where some are playing by the rules and some aren't, it's simply not feasible. America has to protect itself.
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ha/HawleySm.html The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001. Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act 1930, passed by the U.S. Congress; it brought the U.S. tariff to the highest protective level yet in the history of the United States. President Hoover desired a limited upward revision of tariff rates with general increases on farm products and adjustment of a few industrial rates. A congressional joint committee, however, in compromising the differences between a high Senate tariff bill and a higher House tariff bill, arrived at new high rates by generally adopting the increased rates of the Senate on farm products and those of the House on manufactures. Despite wide protest, the tariff act, called the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act because of its joint sponsorship by Representative Willis C. Hawley and Senator Reed Smoot, both Republicans, was signed (June, 1930) by President Hoover. The act brought retaliatory tariff acts from foreign countries, U.S. foreign trade suffered a sharp decline, and the depression intensified.
Myths of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act The assertion that the Smoot-Hawley tariff was responsible for the Great Depression is a myth based on ignorance of historical facts in favor of pursuing economic textbook theory. The Smoot-Hawley tariff post-dated the stock market crash, and therefore could not have caused it. There is no convincing evidence that it made the Great Depression more severe, or was responsible for significant retaliation by foreign countries. There are no reputable claims of evidence that point to the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 as a contributor to the second world war which occurred several years later. During his years of serving in Congress, Senator John Heinz III was appointed to the Chairmanship of the Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policies. He had this to say about the Smoot-Hawley myth in 1985: “It gravely concerns me that every time someone in this administration or the Congress gives a speech about a more aggressive trade policy, or the need to confront our trading partners with their subsidies, barriers to imports and other unfair practices, others in Congress immediately react with speeches on the return of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, and the dark days of blatant protectionism and depression... It seems that for many of us that Smoot-Hawley has become a code word for protectionism and, in turn, a code word for the depression. Yet, when one recalls that Smoot-Hawley was not enacted until more than 8 months after the October, 1929 collapse, it is hard to conceive how it could have led to the Great Depression...the changes supposedly wrought by this single bill in 1930 appear fantastic.” It is interesting that practically every writer today blames the Great Depression on the Smoot-Hawley tariff, when most writers who engaged the issue closer to that era – the ones who actually lived through it - had a completely different opinion. Even after Smoot lost his Senate seat at the age of seventy to a man twenty years younger, the New York Times had much good to say about him, calling him “a statesman of the highest type.” Unfortunately, with Smoot’s loss, the protectionist era, America’s policy since the first tariff in 1789, had ended. Speaking before the American Bankers Association in 1931, the ABA President remarked, “We, the men in this hall, who control the economic destiny of this nation, knew in 1927 that this terrible depression was coming and we did nothing about it.” Analysis of the economy during the depression years reveals that nearly two-thirds of the drop in imports between 1929 and 1933 occurred prior to the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Free traders point to the writings of Adam Smith, author of “The Wealth of Nations,” whose work expressed his theories on international trade in 1776. But Smith emerges as a protectionist when one reads his the following quote from his book: “Every individual endeavors to employ his capital as near home as he can, and consequently as much as he can in support of domestic industry."
you say that like it's a bad thing It's DUMB to send jobs over the borders because the money leaves and it doesn't circulate like it does here. All actions to protect the home crowd are designed to protect the home country's interests. That is not a bad thing. What do you think our military hegemony around the world is about? It's out there enforcing business dominance. Take away our military and see how fast our economic strength diminishes. When we send jobs to Mexico, we stop paying employees here. Since Bush took office, it's been 100,000 jobs a month lost. That's 100,000 fewer people paying Social Security taxes, federal taxes, and unemployment. That's another 100,000 who are being carried by the rest of us. I don't give a DAMN about the free market and the hallowed manner in which some hold it. We don't have free markets. We have constantly manipulated markets, and the people doing the manipulation are the ones who use government to do their bidding. While the free market is a wonderful ideal, it's the stuff of college discussions. In reality, every major company in America uses government at all levels to gain advantage. From tax breaks they extort from cities, to zoning changes they payola their way to create, to competitors kept off the market, American business is about using government as your b****. The biggest corporations in the world are every bit as evil as I make them out to be. From White Plains, to Pennzoil Plaza, to 1301 McKinney, they will lie, cheat, steal, and use government at every level to gain advantage. No movie has ever captured the wholesale lying and hiding of evidence that mega-corps engage in. However bad you think it, it's worse. Free market? Pul-leeze. Doesn't exist. It's something well to do guys use to pay not so well to do guys as little as they can. We all have entry barriers to our competition. You gotta get that doctorate. You gotta pass a test. You gotta practice for a certain number of year. ENTRY BARRIERS TO COMPETITION. The last thing most businesses want is a free market. They want their competition to be on a level playing field. They don't want the other guy to have an advantage. So we try to require the same of all of them, to call it fair. But with foreign competitors, we can't do that. So how do we protect the home country competitors? TARIFFS. They are a necessary evil, and they have to be adjusted according to market conditions.
Okay...looked at the source of your quote a bit...one of the most ridiculous sources I have seen quoted here...if that's all you could pull up... About the Author: Roger Simmermaker -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger Simmermaker is the author of How Americans Can Buy American. The first edition was published in 1996. The second edition will be published in September 2002. He has given over 100 speeches and been featured on over 100 radio and television talk shows concerning buy American and trade policy issues. He is a member of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union (IAM&AW) and the National Writers Union (NWU), and serves as the Platform Chairman for the America First Party. How Americans Can Buy American has been made available in over 100 bookstores and over 200 libraries nationwide. Roger has appeared on over 100 radio and television talk shows including Chuck Harder's For The People, WGN Radio Chicago, the Talk America Network, and the Southwest Radio Church. Roger has an Associates Degree in Electronics Engineering Technology, and lives in Orlando, Florida with his wife and two children. How exactly his Associates Degree in Electronics Engineering qualifies him to rewrite history regarding the Smoot-Hawley Act is unclear to me. That is the same guy that is affiliated with the "America First" party. Some quotes from their agenda: " Since NATO no longer serves a defensive purpose for the United States, it is therefore time that we withdraw from NATO and permit Europe the task of defending itself. The United States must withdraw from the United Nations immediately and require the UN headquarters to relocate out of the United States. Our participation as a member nation in this organization was never constitutional and now places our nation's sovereignty in extreme peril. The United States must promptly withdraw from all international monetary and financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, WTO, NAFTA, GATT, etc." Those are not the worst quotes from that site. They look like a party of extremist nationalists. If that is where you are coming from, I am done arguing with you.
There is no rational human with knowledge of economics that would argue that Smoot-Hawley was a wise policy move. Well, actually there is one person -- Pat Buchanan. Politics makes strange bedfellows, doesn't it GreenVegan? Reminds me of an old Spanish proverb: Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres. "Tell me the company that you keep, and I'll tell you who you are." GreenVegan = Patrick J. Buchanan EXPOSED
And yet you didn't refute any of these "ridiculous" claims. Instead, you played the easy card: jump on the author. No, he's not the best source to refute 70 years of flawed logic on the issue; he was just the first that came up on google (No offense, but I didn't want to spend four hours thinking of how I can best Sir Jackie Chiles in a Smoot-Hawley debate). The author is just a regular guy, like you and me. Which makes it all the more interesting that your best defense against this "extremist's" statements is that the author has an associate's degree.
