Quote:
Originally posted by Sir Kenyth:
As far as tariffs go, I think we need more. Our production sectors are going to hell in a handbasket. Part of the reason is us being unable to compete with foreign markets that employ cheap laborers that aren't protected by good labor laws in factories that don't have adequate environmental protection measures.
|
Tarrifs aren't the panacea that many think them to be.
Take US Steel tarriffs - has it saved US steel jobs? Hell yes!
But more jobs have been lost than saved
in the manufacturing sector as a direct result of the tarrifs.
Because now US manufacturers have to pay *more* for their base steel material than they did before - and can no longer compete with their foreign competitors as a result. Fiddle with one of the scales and you will cause movement in the other. And to make matters worse, there's now a WTO trade dispute too.
Twenty years ago, British manufacturers in the north of the country experienced the very same problems affecting US manufacturers today. They were found that they just couldn't compete with the foreign markets anymore.
Margaret Thatcher had the answer - it was a cruel but long term view: Darwinism.
Pure and simple - let the weak die and the strong survive. Let the small animals get swallowed by the large ones. Offer no government assistance and bargain for no tarrifs. It worked. What was left was lean and mean and able to compete with the best of them. But thousands of manufacturing jobs were lost, unemployment rose to extraordinary levels - and then began to sink. They sank because new businesses began to spring up to replace the old - new businesses in new sectors. New custom built factories with new technology and new practices.
Recently, the British government announced the lowest unemployment figures (according to the ILO for 28 years).
Tarrifs are not the answer - that only encourages firms to maintain the same uncompetitive status-quo. Rationalisation, modernisation and the development of new industrial sectors provide the answer.