Re: Chest puffing on Steel trade

["Charles Jannuzi" <jannuzi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > How the hell can W. pretend to be in favor of the wonders of
> free trade
> > and want to put the imports on steel, just to get Ohio, PA and
> WV votes?

Because it's about --and has been since at least as far back as Bush
I--managed trade, not free trade and not fair trade. That is, managed trade
to benefit the vested interests able to buy access to the two political
parties.

If you have lived in Japan as I have and have followed US-Japan trade
relations over the past 12 years, you would have no illusions about what
'globalization' actually means to the US of Carlyle Group.

Next, do you think that the US gov't is going to embrace free trade and let
Toyota, Honda, and Nissan wipe out Ford and GM? Sure, credit deals are
pumping up the GM bottom line, but let's face it, if given a free trade
choice most Americans would choose Japanese cars. This has been true since
the quota era of the 1980s (in which there were quotas on Japanese cars and
Japanese memory chips, and a constant barrage of 'dumping charges' against
everything else).

If the US loses another WTO case, so what? It can just say liberalization of
'networked, integrated' services (telecommunications, financials, and I
guess Enron-markets) is the priority here.

Charles Jannuzi