Originally Posted by Bristoe
Originally Posted by sdgunslinger
Yup , and protective tariffs are hardly as un-american as many of these later day free traders make out .

The American industrial machine was born and nutured under tariffs basically from the birth of the republic , and well into the 20th century .



That's right,... Reagan wouldn't have tolerated the nonsense that's going on today.

http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=1134

Ronald Reagan: Trade Realist


The conventional wisdom about Reagan as free enterprise, free market champion is largely true. But on trade policy, Reagan acted decisively in five instances to save major American industries from predatory foreign competition. Moreover, as I detailed in a 1994 article in Foreign Affairs, in each case, the temporary import relief succeeded spectacularly, resulting in improved performance by these industries and avoiding the captive market prices that conventional economics teaches will always flow from restricting foreign competition.

Reagan's best-known protective policy was a tariff placed in 1983 on imported motorcycles at the request of American icon Harley-Davidson. The tariffs were to last five years, but the company's comeback proceeded so quickly that it relinquished the final months of import relief. Moreover, the tariffs encouraged Japanese rivals like Honda and Kawasaki to build or expand factories in the United States and create still more jobs for American workers.

Yet in many ways, the Harley tariffs were the least important examples of Reagan's trade realism. Far more significant and beneficial for the U.S. economy were Reagan trade policies that helped revitalize the auto, machine tool, semiconductor, and steel industries.

Reagan's tactics were flexible. In autos, machine tools, and steel, his administration subjected foreign producers to so-called voluntary export restraints. In semiconductors, Reagan officials negotiated an agreement to secure a specific share of the Japanese market for U.S. companies, and then imposed tariffs on Japanese electronics imports when Tokyo briefly refused to keep a promise to halt semiconductor dumping.


Reagan really made you feel good to be an American. He'd have been a better president senile than anyone since him with their faculties intact.