Copyright by John T. Reed

In the run-up to the Ohio primary, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama denounced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

This is one of those situations where they are either extremely ignorant or lying. Since they have degrees from Wellesley, Yale Law School, Columbia, and Harvard Law School, they’re probably lying.

Economist agree on only a few things. Indeed, one often sees the adjectives “liberal” or “conservative” applied to the words “economist” or “economics.” That’s a sign of an academic “discipline” that has no business at a university. There is no such thing as liberal structural engineering or conservative physics. That’s because those two subjects are real academic disciplines.

Anyway, among the few facts on which the dismal scientists agree are that wage and price controls and protectionist tariffs are disastrous for the jurisdictions that enact them.

Clinton and Obama are educated enough to know that. So when they say what they have been saying about NAFTA, we know they are lying—pandering to the ignorant unemployed union members in Ohio.

Virtually every newspaper has editorialized against the Democrats attacks on NAFTA. Neither Democrat candidate will breathe a word about NAFTA in Texas where another primary is being held the same day—because NAFTA is rightly recognized as a good thing there.

NAFTA is one of the good things Bill Clinton did. John McCain, to his credit, is strongly in favor of NAFTA and said so recently.

Free trade is good. We need more NAFTA agreements with the entire world. Indeed, NAFTA is probably not free enough.

Free trade means nothing other than that you are free to buy from whatever country you want. If you want to buy only American, you may do so. Good luck with that, though. Virtually everything sold in the U.S. is either foreign made or has foreign-made components. U.S. unions want the government to put tariffs on foreign-made products in order to force you to pay higher prices so that they can continue to get overpaid. If you are that dumb, bust yourself. Buy American. More likely, you will just buy the goods where you perceive the best value. That will cause companies organized by unions that have gotten their members’ wages ratcheted up above market value to go out of business. Then Michael Moore will take a camera crew there and blame the corporation that brought the jobs there to begin with for ending those jobs. But the fault lies with the greedy union members who still live there whining about NAFTA. They killed their own golden goose.

You can see the folly of protectionism with a simple mental exercise. Think how your life would change if you refused to buy any product or service outside of your state. No car that was not built in your state. No clothing the fiber for which was not grown in your state, spun into cloth in your state, and manufactured in your state. No food that was not grown in your state—that is, no oranges in Washington State and no apples in Hawaii. No TVs or computers that were not manufactured in your state with components manufactured in your state. Obviously, the costs of things you want would go way up. Your choices would go way down, as would the quality of the goods and services you consumed. That is also what happens when you enact national protectionist measures with regard to foreign trade. Everyone is best off in a free country where anyone can buy from whomever they want.

Politicians like to say they want to replace “free trade” with “fair trade.” Hillary and Obama have been saying exactly that in Ohio.

It’s bull!

“Fair trade” advocates say that we should not open our markets to countries who refuse to open their markets to us.

Why not?

The late Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman said that threatening to impose tariffs on another country’s goods because it imposes tariffs on your goods is like threatening to kick your own citizens in the shins if another country kicks its citizens in the shins. Stupid.

U.S. citizens ought to be able to buy from whomever they want. We are a free country supposedly. If we did that, we would have the highest standard of living in the world because we would be able to buy the cheapest goods. The rest of the world, with their stupid tariffs, would have to pay more for imports to protect their own greedy unions at the expense of their population in general.

People say, “Yeah, but Americans would all be unemployed.”

It doesn’t work that way. Some people in manufacturing that foreigners can do more cheaply—because of lower wages and/or weaker environmental regulation—have to find new industries to work in. Generally, industries that care for people, their pets, vehicles, and homes cannot be outsourced to other countries. Industries like food service, medical care, auto repair, within-U.S. transportation, and so forth. Do those industries pay as much as old-time union manufacturing jobs. Nope, not usually. If they did, they’d bankrupt those industries too. There are plenty of high-paid jobs still, but they probably require more skill, education, and so forth than the union extortion factory jobs of old.

C’est la vie. The unions getting more than market value for their members’ labor was bull. It couldn’t last for long. And it didn’t. Neither Hillary nor Obama can turn back that clock. If the public went to Wal-Mart and found prices had been raised 300%, they would be up in arms. Ain’t gonna happen.

Obama got caught lying about NAFTA when he sent an envoy to tell Canada not to pay attention to his NAFTA bashing, that he was just lying to get votes in Ohio. Hillary is lying too, but she is smart enough to know that the Canadians will figure that out without her saying anything. (On 3/7/08, the media revealed that Clinton operatives also assured the Canadian government that they were lying in Ohio to get votes. I stand corrected about overestimating Hillary’s smarts.)

I appreciate informed, well-thought-out constructive criticism and suggestions.

John T. Reed