Trade

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What is your view on international trade?

Try to read the answers for the poll as naturally as possible. The free-est trade answers are at the top and some of the more opposed answers are at the bottom, so I don't want anyone trying something cute and screwing up the poll like that, but rather I want as much accuracy as possible.

Hopefully this thread is good for something.

My initial reflex is to choose to protect our industries and workers, but I will admit I am biased.

I first thought this thread was probably about slave trade, given your last thread

well, I woud say.... "We should make sure that we engage in FAIR trade with the world".

Is this because the Chinese took your pets to eat them?

We do not have enough threads about slavery, do we?

Carried to its logical conclusion this would mean protecting ill managed, technologically inferior and broke-down industries and firms at public expense. It amounts to subsidizing the weak sisters.

Consider General Motors, at one time (a long time ago) an innovative corporation. But now it is a malignant tumor on our economy. Should we keep it alive by preventing better products from coming in from abroad?

ruveyn

No. It just ticks me off that I have to fear foriegn products from countries that do not adhere to safety regulations. Any parent who has thrown away toys, crayons, and toothpaste due to safey recalls for lead content can relate. I have also seen people I care about suffer economically due to their job being shipped overseas.

Historically protectionism has had some disastrous outcomes, WW2 for example

How timely given the current surge in protectionist sentiment.

I voted the top one.

If gas prices had never hit four dollars per gallon, then the public might not have been compelled to buy more fuel efficient, foriegn cars. But really, I do not know. I onced owned a Dodge with a Mitsubishi engine...??...but my knowledge of economics is very lacking. Like I said, my reaction is instinctive and biased.

GM's biggest woes are not just the shift to fuel efficient cars. The ridiculously inflated labor costs, IIRC, led to a rather beefy loss with each car sold. When competition is reduced abuses on the part of those no longer facing competition are inevitable.

Yes, yes it is.

Yeah, I regret the term "free right", but oh well, I couldn't edit it after I spotted it.

I said "We should manage trade policies so that they benefit us."

Pretty much what that means to me is to just make sure that we don't rely on any other countries for any vital commodity (right now we're importing a large percentage of our food, and that greatly worries me).
In addition, we shouldn't rely on any one country for any good. That's why we have such a problem with tainted goods from China. We get almost everything from them, so there's no competition to compel them to give a crap how much lead they put in toys.

I started a post about this, which has turned into a discussion on what sort of Marxist ideology I subscribe to
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt89825.html

I tend to buy things produced here in Western Europe.

I've stopped buying Chinese goods for two reasons:
1. They are often very poor quality and break / fail quickly, especially tools or anything mechanical.
2. No food related products / toothpaste etc because of the risk of contamination.

There aren't many American imports here but they tend to be mostly good quality but overly expensive so sit on the shelf in shops for months not moving. I guess that is down to the high cost of American labour and then shipping on top.

Why are those little pencil sized American aluminium torches so damn expensive? My local diy store has them - all covered in dust - they are 5 times the price of identical ones made here in France.

How many people bother to look on products for the country of origin label?

If I see "made in China" or "PPR" I treat it as a hazard warning label and put the product back on the shelf.

Top choice.