President Obama to water down 'Buy American' plan after EU trade war threat

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

But to say that the rest of the world had 'no choice' is simply not true. Of course it had a choice.

You can't just disconnect yourself in the modern economy. The increased contagion is not a choice, it's a result of technological advances.

That I can now work from anywhere in the world and bank elsewhere so easily is nobody's choice, it just happens, the internet and the increasingly small world happens.

The world is connected to each other financially not because of their decisions but because this is an inherent byproduct of technological advancement.

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@Robert Gentel,

I'm not arguing with your perspective, but my perspective is from a different angle. Any country could have had a dictator that rejected the world economy and refused to participate in it. That's what I mean by choice. Of course we are all guided and, in time, become dependent on our own evolvement and the technologies that go with it. But it isn't correct to say that nobody has a choice whether to play. Everybody does unless they are conquered and forced into a different way of life by a stronger opponent.

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@fbaezer,

fbaezer wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

(You did notice somewhere in there I stated that I am 100% a free trader though didn't you?)

Yeah, and also that you have a thin skin when you feel someone it too critical about your country.
There's a sick kind of proud isolationism that's strictly American. Not that all Americans share it, of course.

Well you see it as thin skinned perhaps. I see it as correcting a point of view that I believe incorrect. Must be a cultural thing. Smile

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

I'm not arguing with your perspective, but my perspective is from a different angle. Any country could have had a dictator that rejected the world economy and refused to participate in it. That's what I mean by choice.

Well that way it doesn't make much sense, you said they are "piggy backing" on the US economy by choice, and if by that you meant that they were merely not refusing to participate in the global economy then it's a relatively pointless point.

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@fbaezer,

fbaezer wrote:

You, personally, can. But the "buy American" campaign has to do with not letting the consumer or the investors "buy foreign", through tariffs, quotas and, more ominously, legal restrictions to components -such as steel and cement- of government financed infrastructure or cars from rescued companies.

This conversation is probably stale but I would like to clarify that I thought we were talking about the proposal in the House bill to require infrastructure projects to use American products, not tariffs or quotas. I don't support those. In truth, I don't really care about this provision either and don't believe in stimulus packages much at all. I just don't think the knee-jerk protectionism cries were proportional to what was actually being proposed. If, and I'm not up to speed as I've been super-duper busy, the bill includes tariffs and quotas then I agree that it's counter-productive and bad policy, not to mention that it would embody all of those "so American" things that you've claimed. I think there is some sensitivity that makes it difficult to be clear on this topic.

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President Obama to water down 'Buy American' plan after EU trade war threat

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