The Public Policy/Competitive Urges

...NEWSWATCH makes a continuing contribution to this important task...

...Each month NEWSWATCH uses specific examples, not just generalities, to expose the media's liberal bias...

...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...

...growth while the economies of our trading partners have been lagging...

...Something could have been done back in '87," he says disgustedly...

...dollars...

...economy has been undergoing 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987 a major change during the Reagan years...

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...Thus the Democrats, joined by somein the business community and organized labor, have discovered "competitiveness...

...Nevertheless, 'tis the season to be a pessimist, especially inside Washington...

...was able to raise its labor costs almost with impunity because it had little or no competition...

...Raw U.S...

...The U.S., by contrast, has never been a big exporter of manufactured goods...

...Senator Jesse Helms • 'The media have great power in our public life...

...But since Panasonic stereos, for example, will soon be more expensive than American-made ones, we are reaching the bottom of a "J" curve that will soon start on the way back up...

...To try to fashion policies that would somehow return the U.S...

...In his State of the Union address, Reagan talked tough about not being "trade patsies" to the rest of the world and even threatened to impose massive import restrictions on European wines and cheeses...

...exported raw materials and agricultural goods and directed its manufacturing sector almost exclusively towards the domestic market...

...Jeane Kirkpatrick • consider NEWSWATCH to be the most important conservative project to come along in many a moon...

...Thank the Lord that you folks are pinpointing the demagoguery of the major media...

...LibertyPtess ORIGINS OF THE COMMON LAW By Arthur R. Hogue -Thrst published in 1966 by Indiana University Press, A Arthur R. Hogue's Origins of the Common Law looks at the deep medieval roots of our legal system during the early formative period of the common law...

...The quotas stayed on for nearly five years and undoubtedly saved jobs...

...manufacturers often do little to tailor their products to the Japanese market, in contrast to the prodigious market research the Japanese do before introducing a product here...

...It is important that they be submitted to scrutiny and held to high standards of evidence, truth, and balance...

...timber also cannot be sold to Japan, despite its desire to buy...

...Keeping out lower-cost shirts and dresses made in the Far East may save a few jobs in North Carolina (where the unemployment rate is something like four percent...

...Now that brake is gone...

...There's no question that Secretary Baker's effort to drive down the value of thedollar over the last year and a half has resulted in the worst trade deficit figures in history—a record $60 billion with Japan and nearly $25 billion with the European Community...

...Early in this decade, "free trader" Ronald Reagan slapped a "voluntary quota" on the number of Japanese cars that could be imported into this country...

...Exactly what sacrifice the editors of Forbes are talking about is not immediately clear, since during those forty years the U.S...

...and now the doom-sayers are arguing that there is something structurally wrong with the U.S...

...The temptation to grant them must be resisted, or we may well end up worse off than when we started...

...This thoughtful, lucid account is a work of history, not a technical legal treatise, and should be of interest to the general reader and the specialist alike...

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...Productivity in the last six years has been the highest in our history, rising at a stunning 24.3 percent, far outclassing Japan's performance...

...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...

...Paraphrasing Professor Hogue: in the form of writs, judicial decisions, treatises, royal ordinances, and parliamentary statutes, the common law, in large part the definition of established customs, emerged into explicit written form and formal procedure to order better such ordinary relationships among Englishmen as those between landlord and tenant, merchant and money lender, and buyer and seller...

...workers in these areas paid with their jobs...

...To a large extent they did not...

...The idea was to allow the inefficient and unresponsive U.S...

...The cause of this, though, is not a malaise in American capitalism, or an abundance of slothful workers and incompetent managers...

...In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S...

...The computer market, supposedly the salvation of the American industrial economy, is now 25 percent held by foreign makers...

...had a $13 billion surplus in manufactured goods, which had turned into a $145 billion deficit by last year...

...Unfortunately, the Administration has been wobbling like a gyroscope on this issue...

...The best graduates of the elite schools shun manufacturing for the glamour of high finance and the law, choking the country with litigation and accounting tricks that prop up dying corporations...

...That is why the barriers to imported goods are often so frustrating to navigate: the Japanese want their people to buy mostly their own goods in order to subsidize them for cheap export...

...In comparing the U.S...

...The same Japanese-made goods that are cheap in this country cost a good deal more in their land of origin...

...Improvement is coming, but the changes will be slow and gradual...

...But Congress is responding to different pressures...

...Nobody here wants protectionism," says South Carolina Republican Strom Thurmond...

...The deficit has been showing declines in recent `NEWSWATCH is great...

...That was averted, but the Administration has also offered its own "competitiveness" package that would give the Democrats blocks to build on...

...also has the highest rate of employment in its history, with 61 percent of Americans over sixteen holding jobs...

...Meanwhile the poor (especially) end up having to shell out more for their clothes...

...Then there's textiles...

...Western Europe has not created one since 1974...

...While these efforts are meant to undercut the opposition's arguments, they also have the effect of undermining the Administration's ability to say no when a protectionist bill is finally passed...

...A study of how the media used the term "Reaganomics" as the economy turned downward in 1982, but stopped using it when the economy recovered...

...year, we will be the largest debtor, owing perhaps as much as $500 billion around the world—easily eclipsing Brazil...

...For business, it means labor working longer hours for lower wages...

...Meanwhile, the competitiveness bandwagon provides excellent cover for business and labor groups seeking special advantages from government...

...The most government can do is to create as favorable a climate as possible for economic growth...

...Everybody, it seems, admits that the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act strangled world commerce and largely brought about the Great Depression...

...for scientists, it means more government grants for "basic research...

...has without question been the most prosperous country in the world...

...That's the nub of the problem: high U.S...

...This is another advantage that may be lost if imports are shut out...

...Government is very limited in what it can do to make uncompetitive industries competitive again...

...economy: Reaganomics is built on a house of promissory notes, and the 1980s will be remembered as the last spree before the start of our post-imperial decline...

...And so on...

...The list of complaints seems endless...

...Devising a cure for a problem whose origins are so long standing and diffuse is both impossible and dangerous...

...Figures showing increases in the trade deficit are almost always revised downward a few months after their release, when no one is watching...

...There is no secret to what the Japanese have been doing since the end of World War II: they have been starving their domestic economy in the interest of exporting everything they can as cheaply as they can...

...Restricting those imports, of course, would hurt consumers...

...No more Mr...

...for the education lobby, it means higher salaries for teachers...

...The "Gephardt Amendment," which actually passed the House last year, would have imposed punitive sanctions on any nation that ran a consistent trade surplus with the U.S...

...The surviving, slimmed-down industries, however, are becoming more competitive, largely because of intense foreign competition...

...For starters, they could point out ways the U.S...

...The U.S...

...auto industry to get back on its feet...

...But as so often happens when we .13 are warned of looming public policy disasters, the problem has begun to resolve itself just as the debate reaches a crescendo...

...Almost from its beginning, the U.S...

...A federal law passed back during the height of the "energy crisis" in 1973, however, forbids the sale of Alaskan oil overseas...

...in 1980, the figure was seven percent...

...American cars need 3.5 repairs a year compared with 1.1 for Japanese cars...

...Background on Ted Kennedy and Mario Cuomo aides who now hold top jobs with ABC, CBS and NBC...

...Each job "saved" cost something like $150,000, money that won't go to create other jobs in other sectors of the economy...

...But even after Treasury Secretary James Baker succeeded in forcing down the value of the dollar, the deficit continued to grow...

...Check enclosed ^ Bill me Name Address Send your contribution to: Newswatch National Conservative Foundation 1001 Prince St...

...How the networks smear the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters...

...The 1988 trade deficit, assuming Congress does nothing to botch things up, could be as low as $100 billion, down from the current $178 billion...

...Unfortunately, U.S...

...The U.S...

...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...

...But the competitiveness boys are trying to make larger points as well...

...The repeal of these two laws could slash the trade deficit with Japan by as much as a third...

...with Japan the protectionist lobby ignores the very major differences between the two economies...

...For going on forty years, the U.S...

...The trade deficit is in fact shrinking, and the demagogues must be held at the gates a few months longer before they can do anything that will wreck this happy situation...

...was the only going concern around...

...Nice Guy," blares Forbes magazine...

...L Alexandria, VA 22314 r * * * THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987 33 months...

...If anything, it is precisely the opposite...

...for big labor, it means "managed trade" and a "level playing field...

...F ree traders in both parties should counter-attack...

...But Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution estimates that during that period consumers paid about $1,500 more per car, thanks to the quotas...

...But once Japanese steel and auto-makers could produce higher quality products at less labor cost and with more modern equipment, the U.S...

...economy has boomed these last few years, creating 12 million new jobs since 1983...

...Americans bought the goods out of patriotism or convenience...

...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...

...is the king of technological inventiveness but cannot exploit its own discoveries—the VCR, for example, was invented on these shores, but it took the Japanese to market it...

...It is much closer to home and a far more reliable supply than that from the Persian Gulf...

...For a tax-deductible contribution of $29.00 to the National Conservative Foundation, you will receive 12 complimentary issues of NEWSWATCH...

...Our export of manufactured goods in the postwar age was an advantage that grew artificially out of World War II, when the U.S...

...In 1980, it is pointed out, America was the world's largest creditor nation, with over $150 billion in outstanding loans...

...Japan, for example, would love to buy Alaskan crude oil...

...The interests affected by those "excess" imports are large and often concentrated in congressional districts...

...steel and auto industries had to adapt...

...A few examples, however, show the hidden damage of the "competitiveness" obsession...

...We just want to keep out a few imports, that's all...

...a wonderful term that can mean almost anything to anybody...

...T f anything, Japan has become a little less protectionist," says Max Destler of the Institute of International Economics...

...Between 1154 and 1307, from the reign of Henry II to that of Edward I, common law experienced a spectacular growth as a legal system enforced in the English Royal Courts...

...Hardcover $10.00 ISBN 0-86597-053-X Paperback $ 4.50 ISBN 0-86597-054-8 Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...

...Order NEWSWATCH and read: - The "Janet Cooke Award," a focus on the month's most outrageously distorted piece of reporting masquerading as fact...

...has been sacrificing national interest to the bigger cause of keeping the Free World prosperous...

...Now none of this is intended to suggest the dreaded p-word`protectionism...

...William Rusher Publisher, National Review Special Offer for American Spectator Readers...

...S101 Indianapolis, IN 46250 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987...

...Then, at the fade-out, the logo of the United Auto Workers flashes on the screen and a voiceover warns: "We need a tough trade policy...

...It is certainly true, as they say, that the U.S...

...The 1981 tax cuts, combined with last year's tax reform, and the big slowdowns in inflation and government spending are all solid accomplishments of the Reagan years...

...to that sort of dominance is just misplaced nostalgia, and dangerous nostalgia at that...

...Because imports go up in price faster than Americans stop buying them, there is a lag of as much as eighteen months before more expensive American goods become competitive again and people start buying those...

...shoots itself in the foot on trade issues...

...Fortunately, the Republican Senate said nix...

...It's a damn shame," he declares...

...Simple arithmetic says the party is over...

...The U.S...

...Consumers, on the other hand, are an amorphous breed, dispersed around the country and largely uninterested, as a class, in the ramifications of trade policy...

...In his final chapter, "From Medieval Law to Modern Law," Hogue concludes, "The rule of law, the development of law by means of judicial precedents, the use of the jury to determine the material facts of a case, and the definition of numerous causes of action—these form the principal and valuable legacy of the medieval law to the modern law" And one might add, to the growth of the concept of liberty as well...

...The idea is catching...

...But apparently nothing was and the result, we surmise, was disaster for America...

...Anything could happen this year, and Reagan will have to have his veto pen ready...

...In 1980, the U.S...

...For as long as the dollar appeared to be overvalued on world markets, the growing trade deficit could be safely dismissed as nothing more than a phase...

...IBM, for example, is the largest retailer of computers in Japan...

...Such an analysis, if correct, undercuts the entire protectionist argumentthat the American economy requires structural changes which only Democrats and their allies can identify and bring about...

...Consequently they are rushing to pass a protectionist trade bill before the news gets any better...

...Slapping tariffs on Japanese goods for the first time since World War II, as Reagan did in April, also indicates the Administration may be starting to believe its own rhetoric...

...By the end of next John A. Barnes is chief editorial writer for the Boston Herald...