The International House of Bacon

Yes, I’m bothered by Obama in a lot of ways, but a good deal of it is, at its root, philosophical differences. As said elsewhere, I don’t doubt that Obama generally has the best interests of the country in mind, but I simply think he’s going about it the wrong way. One of the most major ones that keeps popping up for me is Obama’s protectionism.

The root of the issue comes in the fact that we’re now a global economy. The internet has facilitated it on an individual level, and the ease of which to transport goods and services has made it a basic inevitability among the Western world. The idea of a “domestic economy” is in the past, and those who are still fighting the war against globalization have simply lost.

Unfortunately, at least rhetorically, Obama still appears to be fighting that fight. To his defense, he may have had to - both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton have taken positions against outsourcing and NAFTA, and the misguided idea that free trade is hurting “ordinary Americans” seems to be a pretty solid meme amongst “concerned” Democrats. The problem is that the protectionism simply doesn’t work, hasn’t worked, and is not doable in the current economic atmosphere.

Here are the facts: While Obama and Hillary trade blows about who’s more against NAFTA, they both ignore that unemployment has dropped since NAFTA was implemented. No, correllation does not necessarily mean causation in this case, especially in the tech boom of the 1990s, but there’s something to be said about employment levels improving as trade is opened up on both sides of the border, while protectionist policies like steel tariffs adversely affected the economy..

The position certainly has some place in massaging the xenophobic populace’s straining muscles (how soon we forget the Qatar/port authority flap), but it also has root in the old populist canards of the jobs that Americans are somehow entitled to flying away overseas, or the mythological tax breaks for offshoring, ignoring the facts of the matter for an easy scapegoat in an era of budget deficits. The position is not only pandering, but it’s simply unrealistic.

For one, as Daniel Griswald at Cato notes, the choices to the upcoming President aren’t many - unilateral withdrawal will result in tariffs on our trade, Canada and Mexico aren’t going to be interested in reopening the treaty. So this sort of rhetoric has the double-edged sword of angering our allies (which, I’m told, is bad to do given how Bush has allegedly treated our allies over the last year - not to mention unilateralism in just opting out of the treaty, but that’s beside the point.) and possibly harming our economy in a significant way.

But there’s also the outside chance that Obama’s just trying to get elected anyway. His campaign’s been assuring Canada (and this back-channel communication could be illegal if true) that it’s “just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously.” Or not. Maybe. Well, that’s nice in any regard - he may be taking a position that will actively hurt our economy, but that might be all a lie just to get elected, a lie that’s probably hurting our relationships with other countries. How pleasant.

Whichever way you slice it, this is pretty bad news. Especially in a time of a slowing economy, any help we can get should be a positive one, and Obama seems pretty set on looking toward the opposite.