Candidate Profiles: Obama, Clinton, and McCain on trade

Barack Obama is probably the most uplifting speaker the Democrats have the potential to nominate since John Kennedy. It's a pity then that he uses his silver tongue to lash out against free trade policies. Trade policies which have made the country wealthier, kept costs down, and expanded the free marketplace and enhanced it with goods and services we'd otherwise only witness by going to the product's original country.

His website says he will fight for "fair trade" (re: if he doesn't like the fact that Japan makes cheaper steel than the US, he will tariff the shit out of it), renegotiate NAFTA, and punish trade partners who don't live up to what we think is adequate environmental protection.

However he does think trading with other nations will benefit America's economy.

Lately Hillary Clinton has gone to workers in the manufacturing sector and lamented the downsizing and outsourcing of factory jobs that deals like NAFTA and CAFTA have led to. Ignoring the fact her husband created NAFTA, this is a bunch of white-collar bullshit being fed to people she thinks are too stupid to remember Bill Clinton is NAFTA's daddy. She is arguing a similarly protectionist line like Barack Obama is on free trade, and she's demanding that countries without the resources or abilities to, live up to our standards with regards to environmental protection.

Finally, in a speech that probably made Pat Buchanan puke, John McCain said this: "Protectionism and isolationism are not the answer." He wants to continue opening up the trade market to less and less regulation (I mean there's a limit to deregulation of trade, but keeping markets as open as possible is good for everyone involved).

All in all, John McCain wins the trade argument. Protectionists need to understand, raise the costs of imports, you raise the price of goods. There won't be a corresponding raise in income, so you're hurting those people who you claim to speak for. And all tariffs do is put more money in the federal government's pocket.

And unless the tariff is disgustingly high, companies will still import the goods and pay such tariffs, it just means they'll have to cut domestic labor to compensate for the loss of revenue such tariffs would bring. I took a total of three economics courses my entire life and even I know this.