Pat's Problems

Subprime Nation - Pat Buchanan

As always, the ever insightful Pat Buchanan points out the obvious problems with our nations foreign, domestic, and personal spending problems. These are problems which most Americans ignore or dismiss and problems which politicians either don't understand or don't want to mention. He doesn't offer solutions in this column, but he has already done so on numerous occasions. I tend to agree with him on foreign policy, but on domestic and economic policies, he is essentially a moralist and a populist. This puts his heart in the right place for the most part, but his policy recommendations would lead to more problems than than they would solve in our economy.

The one dilemma that comes up time and time again concerns free trade. Almost every country is guilty of some form of mercantilism. We seem to do it a lot less in this country compared to other nations though. Many free traders say that mercantilism does more harm than good to the economies that practice that policy and so we should not be upset if free trade appears to be very one-sided in nature. I believe the argument goes that in the long term, the free trade economy will always win. I'm not sure if that is the case or if that is even the argument, but it sure does appear at first glance to be a problem and potential downfall for a nation extolling the virtues of free trade if no one else is practicing it.

I believe that we have to pursue free trade however because that is the only way our economy will survive. The rest of the world will pass us by at some point if we keep competition out and markets closed. Right now, our markets are relatively open and free. The question is though whether we should join the WTO and insist that other countries abide by Free Trade, or if we can just ignore mercantilist policies with perhaps only the faith (maybe proof exists) that in the end, we will be better off with or without the WTO and trade negotiations.