Ian's posting on Bush's commitment (sic) to free trade and
Krugman's comments about "antiglobalism" brought to mind the
following comment by Bruce Little, a business columnist in the
Globe and Mail, this past week commenting on the steel and
softwood lumber cases. Please note that Little is a middle-road,
but thoughtful, regular contributer to Canada's leading business and
corporate newspaper.
"Domestic politics skews U.S. view of fair trade"
Globe and Mail, March 28, 2002.
by Bruce Little
<snip>
The fact that the United States has deep-sixed our softwood
lumber industry with deeply punitive import duties should be a
reminder that the Americans are not our best friends and probably
not our friends at all: they arre simply our neighbours.
You might even say that the Americans have no real friends.
Rather, they have interests -- entirely domestic -- that must be
appeassed. They are only following one of the oldest adages of
international statecraft; succinctly enunciated by a 19th-centruy
British prime minister, Viscount Palmerston: "England has no
permanent friends; she has only permanent interests."
In Washington, the permanent interest of those who make
trade policy lies in winning elections. In this, an election year, it
especially lies in winning control of Congress and the Senate.
Such imparatives leave no room for the interest or concerns of even
permanent neighbours.
Typically, U.S. trade protection measures are gussied up in the
language of fairness. Americans fabour free trade, they will say,
but it must be fair trade. The playing field must be kept level for all
comers.
The devil (for foreigners like us) is in the definition. A level
playing field is one on which Americans win, because, as every
American knows in his bones, Americans always win a fair fight. If
they lose, the fight is, by definition, unfair. And if the compeitors
are foreigners who don't vote in U.S. elections, so much the better.
They can be trampled with domestic impunity.
<snip>
PaulPhillips
