From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] [Fwd: March 24 column - steel quotas]
Date: 24 Mar 1999 06:26:34 -0500
To: piml@egroups.com


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Vin Suprynowicz wrote:
> 
>     FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
>     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MARCH 24, 1999
>     THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
>     Congressmen want everything to cost more
> 
>     So much political steam gets vented over "free trade" versus "fair
> trade" that the public can perhaps be excused for falling under the
> temporary spell of the latest opportunist windbag promising to "protect
> American jobs."
> 
>   But the founding fathers had a choice between two models when they
> considered the way trade would move between New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
> say, or (nowadays) between Nevada and Michigan.
> 
>   Under the "free trade" model , trucks and trains hauling goods would move
> across state lines with impunity. Yes, a few minor exceptions might be
> allowed to inspect fruit for unwanted pests. But by and large there would
> be no "duties" or "tariffs" charged -- no long lines of snarled traffic
> waiting for everyone to "declare value of goods," no customs inspectors
> trying to catch a "smuggler" moving celery or cement blocks without paying
> the tariff from Michigan across the border into Indiana.
> 
>   Thus, goods could be produced in whatever locale proved most cost effective.
> 
>   On the other hand, the founders could have allowed the impoverishing
> mechanism which they had long witnesses in Europe to be re-established on
> this continent. They could have allowed Nevada to slap a 75 percent
> "tariff" on cars "imported" from Michigan, the better to "protect domestic
> Nevada automobile manufacturing," with some government "development " grant
> setting up some politician's nephew or poker buddy to develop a
> "made-in-Nevada" automobile all Silver Staters could be proud of -- an
> ill-designed, expensive-to-produce rattletrap with no efficiencies of scale
> which would have trouble making money even at $30,000 per copy (versus the
> $20,000 Michigan car now selling for $35,000 here, thanks to the "tariff,"
> you understand.) But darn it all, this would "protect Nevada jobs!"
> 
>   Of course, Michigan would then respond by slapping a 75 percent punitive
> tariff on silver and beef from Nevada, "protecting our hard-working native
> Michigan herdsmen and miners" from "unfair competition." Who needs silver
> quarter-dollars and beefburgers, anyway? Michigan coins would be proudly
> made of the finest steel, while fast food there would soon consist of
> ground up rabbit and lamb, by state decree.
> 
>   Fortunately, the founding fathers chose plan "A," and the resulting
> competitive pressure on industries to locate where they can produce and
> deliver their goods and services at the lowest consumer cost has been part
> of the genius of America's financial success ever since.
> 
>   But for some reason, it is recurrently argued that what works so well in
> maximizing division of labor and thus prosperity for all when applied
> between Connecticut and Texas, or Florida and Oregon, would (start
> ital)never(end ital) work if we simply, unilaterally extended the same
> free-tree doctrine to goods moving between, say, Connecticut and Jamaica,
> or Nevada and Japan.
> 
>   No, shout the tribalists, that's totally different. And so a public that
> would laugh aloud at a proposal to jack up the price on Detroit automobiles
> in order to "protect Nevada jobs" now listens with a straight face to those
> who (having accepted huge campaign contributions from America's steelmakers
> and their unions) now contend it's "unfair" to allow Japanese steelmakers
> to ship us steel "at a loss" -- with a well-bribed Congress defining a
> "loss" as anything below a 5 percent profit, higher than that consistently
> reported by any steelmaker in America.
> 
>   Yet sure enough, the House of Representatives last week voted 289-141 to
> set quotas on foreign steel imports -- not to let American industries buy
> as much as they want -- in order to stop Japanese manufacturers from
> "dumping" their steel on our shores at "fire-sale prices."
> 
>   By encouraging other nations to erect similar tariff walls against
> American goods, this "blatantly protectionist bill" will only "accelerate
> the global financial crisis," the Journal of Commerce editorialized on
> March 22.
> 
>   And get this: Both of Nevada's congresscritters voted to make any product
> made of steel (or hauled in a steel truck or train) more expensive for
> Nevadans, starting next year.
> 
>   That Las Vegas Congresswoman Shelley Berkeley, a liberal Democrat whose
> party has been embracing such nonsense on behalf of their constituent trade
> unions for 65 years, would vote for such impoverishing protectionism is
> perhaps no great surprise.
> 
>   But the steel quota bill also received the support of Northern Nevada
> Congressman Jim Gibbons, a so-called "free-market Republican."
> 
>   So the next time you go to buy an automobile, Mr. or Mrs. America, or to
> rent space in a building erected of steel girders, and you find the price
> is higher than it was last year (assuming such transactions aren't entirely
> foreclosed by a new world-wide Depression, as occurred the last time this
> was tried, by Messrs. Smoot and Hawley in 1930), at least you'll know whom
> to thank.
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
> Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers," is available at
> $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6 UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through
> Mountain Media, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127-4422. The 500-page
> trade paperback may also be ordered via web site
> http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at 1-800-244-2224.
> 
> ***
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com
> 
> The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
> Hay, 1872
> 
> The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
> get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
> to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
> soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
> against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
> 
> * * *

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