Buy American foolishness

Canadians are known for being polite, sometimes to a fault -- and Canadians know that their economy is joined at the hip with the U.S. economy so nasty defiance is seldom prudent. But Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper managed to get the point across, during Obama's visit to Ottawa (not Iowa) that the Buy American provisions in the "stimulus" bill are not exactly welcome among our closest friends and allies. But the congresscritters were playing to the yahoos who think that the less we trade the more prosperous we become.

Democrats reinforcing ignorance on trade

Here's a link to the Register's editorial about the House Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, embracing benightedness on trade by refusing even to consider the Colombia trade agreement. It's not that the agreement is a perfect one, or that bilateral trade agreements like this one are necessarily the best way to get to free trade. But the Dems are trading on and reinforcing sheer ignorance and the tendency to blame furriners for problems they have little or nothing to do with. Not only would this agreement not have destroyed American jobs, it would likely have increased them, since U.S. tariffs for Colombian imports are already near zero, and the impact of this agreement would have been to reduce Colombian tariffs on imports from the U.S., which are at about 35%. Furthermore, trade, especially with Colombia, has almost nothing to do with problems in the Rust Belt. Changing technology is far more significant, along with regulations that deter innovation. Democrats used to be internationalists but now they're xenophopes.