EU attacks 'Buy American' clause

[bardicverse]

draik said:

bardicverse said:

SamuelRSmith said:

. Afterall, if Europeans lose their jobs because Americans have stopped buying their products, then the Europeans won't have any money to buy those American products. (and that's IF the EU Gov'ts don't do anything).

 

And if the US govt lets Americans lose their jobs, then they have more people on welfare, and less and less people paying taxes, which keeps the entire system stable.

Picture it like this - You're a farmer. You just collected your harvest, and a famine is going around making all the soil in the world unusable for the next 2-3 years. Do you horde your harvest and save it for your family to survive through the crisis, or do you continue to sell your crops for the sake of trade/profit on it? And no, you don't have enough to do both.

 

Protectionist laws raise taxes (tariffs) on imported goods and/or impose limits (quotas) on the amount of goods governments permit to enter into a country. aka steel in this case

They are laws that not only restrict the choice of consumer goods, but also contribute greatly both to the cost of goods and to the cost of doing business. So under "protectionism" you end up poorer, with less money for buying other things you want and need. Moreover, protectionist laws that reduce consumer spending power actually end up destroying jobs. In the USA, for example, according to the US Department of Labor's own statistics, "protectionism" destroys eight jobs in the general economy for every one saved in a protected industry.

Yeah Im familiar with tarrif laws etc from the early days, its actually pounded into our minds by 6th grade.

You're ignoring the point that many businesses are closing their doors forever as is, because of services being outsourced, or goods gained cheaply from other nations. So, what good is a nation that is mostly unemployed because businesses in the country fail? What you're suggesting sounds like vampyrism of the American economy - you'd rather suck it dry than let it heal.

Your stat quote applies in a non-recession economy well, but not in one that has a widening pit of crisis.

Face it, the only way to save our nations is to rethink how we live, start scaling back, and brace for the impact of what might actually become a depression.