Of course there should be a “Buy American” clause in any American legislation requiring that anything be bought. Why is this not already the case, as a matter of course? Better, why is there not already a statute on the books to that effect in any and every event?
Likewise, why is there not already a “Buy British” statute here? British law can be made to override EU law (which it should always do anyway) simply by a resolution of the House of Commons to that effect. The clause is clearly there.
Nowhere produces everything, or necessarily enough of anything, so there would still be trade.
Whether in goods, services, capital or labour, the United Kingdom should give absolute priority to British goods, services, capital and labour. Then to the Irish Republic, to those Commonwealth countries having the monarch as Head of State, and to Fiji for so long as the same person is both our monarch and her Paramount Chief. Then to the rest of the Commonwealth, and to such other countries as may come into a comparable relationship with the Crown. And then to the rest of the world.
And whether in goods, services, capital or labour, the United States should give absolute priority to American goods, services, capital and labour. Then to those countries in which predominate one or the other of America’s two (endlessly related) founding peoples: the people of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish descent; and the English-speaking mixed-race people of West African slave descent. And then to the rest of the world.
In view of the fact that all but two of the countries having priority only after America herself would be Britain and countries having priority only after Britain herself, some sort of arrangement could doubtless be reached. After the prodigal Irish, why not the prodigal Americans, still family after all? If, of course, they were prepared to act as such, as set out above.
In the United Kingdom, at least, you know what you have to do.
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So you're suggesting that Britain and America should adopt a quite explicitly racist trade policy? Good luck with that one.
ReplyDeleteQuite the reverse.
ReplyDeleteFour fifths of the Commonwealth Realms other than Britain are overwhelmingly non-white, and those in the West Indies comprise all but two of the countries to which America is related on the black side.
In any case, citizenship has nothing to do with race.
But it is giving priority to the EU that in practice gives priority to whites over everyone else.
how did global trade protectionism work last time it was in common usage?
ReplyDeleteDepends when you think that that was.
ReplyDeleteWell how about the Great Depression? Not caused by protectionism, but the Smoot-Hawley Act passed by the US which significantly increased tarriffs led (unsurprisingly) to tit for tat retaliation by other countries, a consequent drop in both imports and exports from the US, and massive negative effects on precisely the farmers, smallholders and the like whom you claim to represent.
ReplyDeleteSmoot-Hawley was enacted in June 1930, nine months after the Crash of 1929, which occurred, as Milton Friedman won a Nobel Prize for proving, when the stock market bubble, caused by the Fed's easy money policy, burst.
ReplyDeleteSo Smoot-Hawley had nothing to do with a Depression that began in 1929 and lasted through FDR's first two terms.
Protectionism is the structuring of trade policy to protect national sovereignty, ensure economic self-reliance and (since you cite America "prosper America first". Or Britain first. Or Wherever first.
America began her great era of it in 1860 with one half of Britain's production and ended it (at the departure of Calvin Coolidge) producing more than all of Europe put together.
China, with her uncompromising economic patriotism, is doing much the same thing today.
if you read my comment properly, you'll see I clearly said that protectionism didn't cause the Great Depression. But S-H did, undeniably, cause imports and exports to drop in the US, and the standard of living to fall. Many small famers lost their livelehoods because they could not export their produce and pay back their bank loans. Haven't you read Grapes of Wrath?
ReplyDeleteAnd if China is using protectionism, why on earth is Wen Jiabao currently touring the world making the case for free trade? Because China's whole economy depends on free trade for its goods - both inwards and outwards.
He is not doing any such thing. He is making the case for the rest of us to buy Chinese goods. China has no intention of, or need to, buy ours. That is how countries make themselves economic superpowers. Failing to do it is how they make themselves economic vassals.
ReplyDeleteAnt is worried about having to pay proper wages.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
ReplyDeleteThere are always two types or Tory, or Republican, or whatever. The good kind. And the "free" trade/"free" market kind.
This mirrors, and is closely connected to, the split between good Labourites/Democrats/whatever and the Blair/Clinton (Bill or Hillary) types.
Hey, Anon 16:20 - nice ad hominem attack!
ReplyDeleteWell, though I say so myself, I think that my reply to him (her?) broadened the attack. We know what, and whom, we are up against. They are easy to spot.
ReplyDeleteWhat *does* China buy from us?
ReplyDeleteNothing.
ReplyDeleteWell, nothing much?
No, it really is pretty much (if pretty much) nothing.
But we happily buy from China things that could be made perfectly well here.
All so that Ant et al do not have to pay proper wages.
Sorry David, I don't know Ant. Who is he/she?
ReplyDeleteBecome dependent on China economically and UK/EU/US will become dependent on China culturally and militarily.
ReplyDeleteThe black, white and brown countries you list for UK are closest to UK culturally, so should be closest to UK economically.
The black/brown and white countries that you list for US are closest to US culturally, so should be closest to US economically.
How much is nothing? Like £10m? 50m? Surely not more than say £100m?
ReplyDeleteWell, we can all see what he/she is, Volque, and that is what matters.
ReplyDeleteAnt has been trying to post some personalised abuse citing a wholly discredited academic source, but I'm not allowing up that sort of thing. Persoanlised abuse might be on thing. But wholly discredited academic sources are quite another.
Ant, your days of importing both sweatshop produce and sweatshops themselves are coming to an end. You are just going to have to put up with proper wages, and proper working conditions, and workers who understand what you (and each other) are saying even beyond commands, and the unions that they therefore form and maintain.
Jack, spot on. These people loathe any sort of cultural life (they characteristically have none of their own, after the manner of Thatcher, Reagan, Dubya and Blair), and they are determined to destroy it. They must be stopped. And now, they will be.
A negligible percentage of what they consume, Terry. By contrast, you and I are probably typing away wearing clothes made in China. Not very long ago at all, the rag trade was a mainstay of the British economy.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't seem to answer Ant's point though about the Smmot-Hawley Act? I don't know too much about it, but I'm intrigued that it seems to have affected farmers and not benefited them.
ReplyDeleteBut they're far bigger than us, David. Even if we (for example) traded everyhting we made with China, it would still be relatively small to them. But it would represent 100% of our activity, and 100% of our jobs. So surely we want to know how big the figure is in terms of UK trade?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you didn't answe my question. How big is it?
I'm a small farmer. I sell most of my produce to Tescos. That's a tiny proportion of what Tesco buys, but it's still really important to me (around 85% of my income). So it would really matter to me if we lost that, even if it wouldn't bother Tesco.
ReplyDeleteSheer defeatism, Terry and Nigel. China has always had an enormous population, far larger than America's, never mind Britain's. Yet first Britain and then America have towered over her economically (as we towered over vast America in our time). But not any more.
ReplyDeleteThe latest official figure that I can find indicates an eleven billion pound trade deficit with China. But it will be higher than that by now, and it will soon become higher still.
Every time that you see anything produced outside this country, ask yourself it it could have been produced here. Sometimes, the answer is no (bananas, for example). But far more often, the answer is yes. And there is the scandal.
Verity, it is something of an urban myth that Smoots-Hawley had the detrimental effects usually attributed to it, including by Ant.
Writing in 'Research in Economic History' (1989), Barry Eichengreen and Mario Crucini argue that Smoot-Hawley's impact on the economy was negligible and possibly even expansionary.
Eichengreen says, "Contrary to the presumption informing most analyses of the subject, holding constant both the impact of Smoot-Hawley on the rest of the world and feedbacks to the United States, the direct effect of the tariff on the U.S. economy is likely to have been expansionary."
Crucini, writing in the 'American Economic Review' (June 1994), agrees, concluding that "the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930 did not have the massive deflationary implications that are widely attributed to it."
1989 and 1994 are a while ago, but the facts have not changed. Now that various fraudulent operators writing what certain people wanted to read have been exposed, these and other rather more serious defences of sovereignty, liberty, democracy and cultural identity, with economic activity in a vital but nevertheless subordinate role, will gain their deserved hearing.
The fall of the neoliberal economists is of course inseparable from the fall of the neoconservative foreign policy crowd, with which it shared the same court historians, to whom very good riddance indeed.
Smoot-Hawley was in place throughout the New Deal.
ReplyDeleteA good example (like the New Deal itself) of the best of the Right - often associated with agriculture and rural areas - acting in concert with the best of the Left.
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine how much worse off those helped by the New Deal would have been if they had also had all manner of dumping and undercutting to contend with? And thus how much harder it would have been to deliver the New Deal? It would have been practically impossible, and would probably never even have been attempted.
Why do you keep asking us to visit your website when it's had no new content for several months?
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could add a section explaining precisely what it is that visitors "have to do"?
"Writing in 'Research in Economic History' (1989), Barry Eichengreen and Mario Crucini argue that Smoot-Hawley's impact on the economy was negligible and possibly even expansionary."
ReplyDeleteHow strange that the same words and in the same order are written by Bruce Bartlett in this article from 1999.
http://www.ncpa.org/oped/bartlett/oct2999.html
Are you going to sue Bartlett for plagiarising you, David?
Dear me - sounds like Obama doesn't quite agree with you though, does it?
ReplyDelete"I agree that we can't send a protectionist message," Obama said in an interview. "I want to see what kind of language we can work on this issue. I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we're just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade."
Holly, never said he did.
ReplyDeleteJack, never said they weren't. But I haven't plaigarised him any more than he plaigarised these fully acknowledged sources. That's called research, dear boy. Those of you hanging on the every word of Oliver Kamm or some other discredited figure from the Bush-Blair years wouldn't know, of course.
They have never quoted or cited anyone in their lives, because they have never read any books.
ReplyDeleteThat's right, Tom, they have never read any books. They have been educated beyond their intelligence at pseudo-comprehensives, at which they were not required to read any books. They subsequently went on to study at Oxbridge, where they were not required to read any books. The essays they produced there cited and quoted no sources. In fact, I would go further, and suggest that they have not only never read any books, but do not even know what a book is. Their ignorance is matched only by their complacent assumption that they know everything.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I reckon, anyway.
You are being unkind. They have of course read that book on neoconservatism by the late Douglas Murray, and the one by the late Oliver Kamm. But nothing else. So nothing by anyone who has been alive since the Obama Inauguration.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, they have trying to post all the tired old rubbish on here today. As if I'd put it up! They cannot see, either that no one cares what they think any more, or that being attacked by them of all people is if anything positively in my interest, or that no one does or should believe anything said or written by the people who lied this country into war.
This is a cold, cold, cold new world for them. And they had better get used to it.