Demand French Apologize for Insulting our Intelligence

Every sensible country protects its industries and companies from foreign takeover. Protectionism is a matter of self-survival.

Outsourcing our manufacturing, and insourcing our foreign competition is leading to the demise of the American economy. Protectionism has been given a bad rap by Americans, but other countries utilize protectionist tactics successfully to their benefit.

Recently French Prime Minister Francois Fillon criticized the United States' handling of a multi-billion-dollar aerial tanker competition, charging that the U.S. Air Force's rules favored rival Boeing. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to make the bid a point of discussion during his visit to Washington at the end of March.

Our government did not have to open the contract to other nations and could have easily done what every other nation in the world does by only making procurements for domestic companies. Instead, we contract out to foreign firms all the time, which hurts our economy in the long run.

Other countries limit and restrict the amount of American-made goods flowing into their markets. The United States puts up no such regulations, and is thus flooded with foreign-made goods. The WTO, NAFTA, and other “free trade” agreements favor the producers in this equation, and the United States is not one of them. We are told by these international trade regimes that we cannot and should not protect our own economy. The U.S. must instead open itself up to all foreign interests.

Our government has eroded its own regulations regarding capital infusions, mergers and acquisitions, and foreign-takeovers. To make matters worse, all successful American companies are for sale on an open stock market. As a result the United States has lost thousands of companies to foreign takeovers in the past 30 years, and stands to lose even more as the economic crisis deepens. The same cannot be said of other countries, where takeovers are closely regulated and major industrial champions rarely – if ever – get purchased by an interest overseas.

Although Europe is currently pointing the finger at the U.S., the E.U. gives its domestic defense industry high priority. France and other European Union countries recently awarded a massive contract to build its own A400M military transporter.

When President Sarkozy meets with President Obama he should not be expecting an apology on America's behalf because the U.S. did nothing wrong. The defense department took several offers and, after going through all proper due process, ended up with an American firm as the only company left in the bidding.

Countries protect their own domestic weapons industry so that their defense capabilities and military intelligence stay in that country. The U.S. is simply following suit and defending itself against predatory practices.

The aerospace industry is an industry in which the U.S. still excels. If our government did allow EADS to make airplanes for our defense, how could we expect any other country to buy airplanes from us? It would be bad for business, bad for industry and bad for the security of our country.