America’s Trade Policy – Stuck in the past, Ruining the Future

When President Bush takes his farewell trip to Europe this week he should tour the continent in a dilapidated 1949 Ford as a symbol of the horrific trade policies he and every other American president have wrought on American industries since the end of World War II.

On his visit the President should make good use for his time and see what the policies have accomplished.

He can ask the Germans for another loan to prop up the dollar and for an air conditioned BMW. He can use the world’s number-one luxury auto to continue his tour and visit the European owners of America’s wine vineyards, the British owner of many of America’s most popular processed food brands and the Netherlands to chat with owners of one of our larges supermarket chains. Maybe a side trip to France would be in order to talk to the new owners of what once was America’s Bell Labs.

The main culprit of these woes that have off-shored entire industries and made America unable to compete is the disaster known as the World Trade Organization.

The WTO grew in 1990 out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which was formalized under President Harry Truman in 1950 as a way to quickly restore manufacturing and trade to a war-torn world. The policy behind the treaty was to avoid wars brought on by trade barriers that many believed encouraged WWII and to shift some of the “imbalance” of trade and manufacturing domination from the United States to the bombed out war theater.

The policy certainly has worked to the benefit of Europe and the detriment of America; the U.S. trade deficit with Europe and the weak dollar against the European Euro are prime examples. These current policies no longer sustain America- rather they destroy our ability to compete.

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