[Cruisingdad]

I am NOT for protectionism. I am for Fair Trade, which is different from protectionism in my opinion. We keep saying the same thing, but you throwing up these protectionism arguments which I do not necessarily agree with.

From what I understand, Obama is protecting the Tire industry so that they can catch up with the CHinese, or whatever. I am not sure I understand how three years will help them catch up. I will tell you as someone that just put tires on their car this last week, no one is particularly excited about Chinese tires. They say that they have issues and are not as good as US tires. Maybe that is true, maybe that is not. I do not know. But that is not where I am coming from when I talk about Fair Trade. Let me give some examples.

Let's pretend we are in the Cherry Business.

Let's pertend that you cannot use certain poisions on your cherries and lets pretend that you have ot pay minimum wage and not use children to pick your cherries. Fine. The world is as we know it in a modern, civilizded nation.

Now let's pretend that China gets into the Cherry business. Let's pretend that China uses outlawed poisions and uses prisoners and children to pick their cherries. As such, the only true cost of the cherry business is labor and they are getting it for free or very cheap. In addition, let's pretend that China gives their cherry pickers huge tax breaks and supplements every outgoing crop of cherries with huge government sponsored rebates that go back to the business, which seriously and artificially reduces the cost of their products. These they ship to Canada.

Now Canadians, shopping in the grocery store, do not exactly look at name brands on cherries. They have two options: The Canadian cherries that are $3.99/bushel and the other Cherries conveniently called Tom's Cherries (imported via a Chinese Government owned Canadian company) which only cost .99/bushel. Which ones do you buy? Now wait: due to transport and time, the Chinese cherries are not as good as the Candian... but at 1/3 the price, you can buy a whole lot more and pick off the bad ones.

After many months, or years, Cherry pickers in Canada have lost so much business that they start going out of business. Competition falls in favor of the Chinese. As such, they can now start slowly ramping up their costs and reducing their government sponsored industry. Before you know it, the Chinese now have the entire market on Cherry's and you are paying as much or more than you did before. Within years, as they well know, they have made up their 'losses' considerably and now control the entire market. In order to collectively keep these markets from then on, they can artificially float their currency to make their goods cheaper than everyone else. No matter what the US DOllar does or the Canadian dollar, they can keep their currency just a bit lower to make their good just a bit cheaper and prevent foreign competition from ever being able to get a foot hold again.

Now, in this scenario Windy will tell you that that is just plain old Free Trade and what happens happens. I tell you that the practice simply is not fair and I tell you that Canada should have stepped up and put a tarrif on the Cherries to keep it from happening. How can we tell our companies that they cannot do 'X' when the rest of the world can... and pretend that our companies are going to be able to be competitive? It is not fair compeition.

Now, some would say that this should be handled in the WTO. I wonder how many Canadian Cherry producers are going to sit back and wait for the worlds most highly political organization (outside the UN) to finally come up with a ruling on Cherries? How long will it sit in the courts of determination? How long can the Canadian Cherry producers go without business? How big is their savings? How long can their families starve?

As I have shown before in this thread, with WTO charts and US Government data, we can trace our trade imbalances TO THE YEAR of the WTO. Perhaps it is just an odd coincidence, but I doubt it. And remember how much it jumped when China came in?

The only saving grace from this is that China cannot remain the cheapest forever. The general feeling was that they too would increase their standard of living and things would balance out between them and the US. Well, they were partially right. Their style of living is increasing and they are losing business. But what these economists did not count on is that instead of it balancing out bewteen them and the US, instead it is going to other countries like India and the Phillipenes - to name a few. The bottom line is that we are raising their manner of living but at whose cost? Ours and our jobs.

These are my opinions and this is why I support Fair Trade, not Free Trade. Nothing in life is free.

- CD