When you spend a dollar in the USA what is the return? THAT is what we should be looking for.

I think there are several major goals:

Create jobs to counteract the awful job losses we’re seeing.

Invest in infrastructure which is in disrepair or in need of improvements.

Put a lot of capital out in the economy to counteract the contracting money supply caused by the recession (which began over a year ago) AND the lessening of bank lending.

Perhaps do something to continue the work on the mortgage problem.

Offer tax breaks to businesses to help them keep employees on or hire new ones.

The obvious difference is that an investor has his $$’s on the table and in-play, and thus facing considerable risk. OTOH, the economist has his hard-worked opinion readily available for all to read and hear. And therein, is the difference when it comes to ‘fair trade’.

Jaango

Jaango

Permit me to respond to all three in order to save time and effort. And thanks in advance for your permission.

I come out of the Sonoran Desert, I’m a Chicano, and have extensive business experience of many years in the Latin America Region. Hence, we live well within an Indigenous Hemispher, whether we acknowledge this fact or not. Moreover, I come out of a migrant family, and I am thoroughly familiar with Cesar Chavez, and thusly, I am on the side of the Angels, and not the Angles, when it comes to “improving lives!”.

As such, my view is that Free Trade is just that, Free Trade. In addition, lest we forget, the “competitive price point” is an agreed upon understanding when it comes to the purchase of the respective “goods and services”between nations, and no one is being taken advantage of, unless one wants to discuss America’s-owned Oligarchy in the Region, and to the speficiity of how financing is “arranged” and “structured” between the corporate entities. Therefore, I advocate for EFCA to be installed within any Free Trade Agreement, for in doing so, Latam governments no longer be the ‘drivers’ that control the economic wealth of a nation and consequently, the winners and losers.

For my part, it is easily understood that when employees band to together to create a union movement that fights for an equal share of that nation’s wealth, only then, will a small by still existing middle class, can and will be expanded. Thus, a tangential benefit, is that a lessening of the existing migration pattern will occur since a economic livelihood can be readily achieved in the Nation of Origin. And from another perspective, we, here in the USA, have failed to address the economic impact that is visited on our Littlest Citizesn, kids born in the USA and who have been repatriated by their Undocumented Immigrant parents to their Nation of Origin. And are our Littlest Citizens eligible for food stamps, TANF, or other relative ‘goods and servies’ delivered by our federal, state, and local agents. As such, we have dispossessed or stripped these kids of their citizenship, due to our abject neglect and outright dismissal.

To keep this post short and far from a rant or a ‘vent’. in this instance, we have a “values deficit” when it comes to Free Trade. And by suggesting that Free Trade is an oxymoron, is more of that ‘values deficit’ surfacing into our public discourse. Of course, I advocate that this indigenous hemisphere is comprised of over 800 million hardworking consumers, then Free Trade is Free trade since Indigenous History for these past 50,000 years, and until recently or the inception of Founding Fathers for the Constitution, it’s easily understandable that our foreign policy, is predicated on a Manifest Destiny Exported. And as Democrats, we should readily recognized what the Republicans have given us for these past eight years.

Jaango

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/0…../index.htm

Outsource yourself. IBM is offering its own laid-off US workers to go work in one of IBM’s plants abroad, in places like India, presumably on local terms. They’ll help with the visa application.

In a global recession where everyone is getting hammered demands for retalitory trade measures against an America that is (once again) holding itself to different standard than the rest of the world will be irressistable. Just in case this actually needs to be said, after the last eight years the US has no reserves of goodwill on which to draw in demanding special treatment for itself.

imo, exactly right. but as i wrote above, i will try to get some info from folks who have been working with our allies in argentina, etc.

hope we’re just having a discussion… doesn’t mean we always have to agree, but when we don’t agree i don’t consider that a fight. (((katymine!)))

i agree that the risk of a worldwide depression is very real – i’ve been seriously worried (actually more like freaking out) since at least the end of september about it. and i agree about food stamps – effective stimulus, improving the safety net, restructuring and reregulation are all things i’m completely behind. i just can’t see how “buy american” is going to help more than hurt.

The Buy American provision is outright protectionism, and is being viewed as such all over the world. It’s enactment will lead to demands for retalitory measures and quite possibly a trade war.

Consider the stupidity of the “Europeans are protectionist too!” argument. If the US had objections to European trade policy it could have contested them through the WTO a long time ago. The fact it did not do so suggests the US really didn’t think European trade policy was that objectionable -until it needed an excuse to justify its own protectionism.

Similarly, I can’t believe Dean Baker’s sophism on this issue is being given any credibility. The only conceivable way Buy American can “increase European exports” is if it has consequences that are exactly the reverse of those intended by its proponents. If the stimulus package works then demand for exports will presumeably increase, but that effect has nothing to do with Buy American. In fact the practical effect of Buy American will be to reduce demand for imports below the level they would be without this measure (again, exactly what it is intended to do).

Moreover, regardless of the economic merits of this argument, it is politically naive. In a global recession where everyone is getting hammered demands for retalitory trade measures against an America that is (once again) holding itself to different standard than the rest of the world will be irressistable. Just in case this actually needs to be said, after the last eight years the US has no reserves of goodwill on which to draw in demanding special treatment for itself.

What this episode illustrates above all else is how quickly nativism reasserts itself when people are confronted with a real crisis. What this policy amounts to is a huge finger to the rest of the world that says “screw everyone else, we’re looking out for our own and don’t give a damn who else gets hurt in the process”.

When attitudes like that are readily being adopted even among progressives then there is no hope of meeting this crisis through any meaningful degree of international cooperation and solidarity.

And in the end we will all be a lot poorer for it, even if it does save a few American jobs in the interim.

Today I heard on Thom Hartman that for every dollar in food stamps there is a return of $1.38, the Return on investment for the WWII GI bill was for every dollar spend it returned to the economy $8.00. THAT is what I am looking at, I could care less about all the other issues.

When you spend a dollar in the USA what is the return? THAT is what we should be looking for.