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Thursday, 05 February 2009 11:28 |
Walter Mondale spent many years involved at high levels of the US government - the '84 Democratic nominee for President, former Vice President to Jimmy Carter, former Senator from Minnesota... but it is his time as Ambassador to Japan during President Clinton's Administration that best explains his keen insight and first reaction to the 'Buy American' provisions in the stimulus package.
Mondale is quoted in the February 4 edition of The New York Times (Senate Agrees to Dilute "Buy American" Provisions):
It was in Tokyo, Mr. Mondale recalled, that “I spent a lot of my life trying to cajole politicians into getting rid of ‘Buy Japanese’ laws that were keeping our products out. And so when I saw this in the stimulus bill, my first thought was, ‘This is big trouble.’ ”
Mondale 'gets it' from first hand experience that 'Buy American' isn't exactly all it's purported to be by the provisions proponents. In fact, it has the opposite effect of what we're told happens. The Trade Policy Analysis by Ross Korves to be posted February 6 on the TATT website sums this up clearly:
"All of this activity is a huge waste of time. Legislating an increase in the cost of doing business is not the road to economic recovery. U.S. taxpayers and workers will be the biggest losers as they get less construction and repairs than they were promised and fewer workers are employed on projects. Jobs for lawyers will increase as they sue in the U.S. over what the law requires and lawyers from other countries file cases against the U.S. under WTO and NAFTA. That is a dead weight loss that the U.S. does not need."
Over the past several days there has been a down pour of news articles and opinion pieces globally basically saying "don't do it, don't pass it" to the US Congress and President Obama. To his credit, the President has said the right things lately - that we need to avoid protectionism, that global trade wars and retaliation will help no one. One of the big questions now is, who in Congress actually 'gets it' like Mondale does?
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