Although I am a Dean supporter, I also like Clark and Edwards as candidates. I certainly don't like everything about Edwards, especially his stances on the war in Iraq and on the USA PATRIOT act, but he has a good message with which to take Bush on that I think will resonate with many Americans. However, Edwards has just come down
in favor of quotas on Chinese goods:
With job losses in the textile industry, Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said Monday that U.S. officials should extend quotas on certain Chinese goods until China pledges to follow international trade law.
As unpopular as it is among liberals, I am a staunch believer in free trade. I don't particularly like Dean's stance on the issue, but it is now one that doesn't distinguish among Dean, Edwards or Bush. I understand both Bush and Edwards are pandering to the South by favoring trade quotas with China, but Edwards takes this silliness one step further:
The North Carolina senator said the Bush administration's pressure on China, which included a decision last week to impose quotas on three types of textiles and clothing, is not enough to stop China from flooding U.S. markets with cheaper imports.
The quotas are scheduled to expire Jan. 1, 2005, but Edwards wants them to last until China halts illegal practices like manipulating its currency and providing illegal government subsidies to its businesses.
I know Edwards is a smart guy, but this is dangerous. First of all, revaluating the Chinese yuan could destabilize both China's social system and its fragile financial markets.
Second, China is the third-largest owner of U.S. Treasury bonds, after only Japan and Britain. A weaker yuan would hinder China's ability to buy U.S. debt, which would lead to falling Treasury prices and an increase in interest rates. This would in turn crumble our nascent economic recovery.
Third, Edwards is blaming China on something that isn't its fault. Stephen Roach, an astute economist at Morgan Stanley says that our large trade deficit with China is, "... an unmistakable outgrowth of the U.S. penchant for outsourcing and China's rapidly emerging role as a global outsourcing platform of choice." China is the world's largest recipient of direct foreign investment. According to Roach, the real reason we have a trade deficit with China is that we invest more than we save. We therefore have to import foreign capital to make up for the shortfall. In other words, if Edwards wants to point blame, he need only look around Washington to find the culprits.
As a nation, we have to leverage our creativity in creating the next generation of new jobs, not abandoning free trade to protect the old ones. Doing the former will help us stay as the world's economic leader. We're bound to fail at the latter. The Dems ought to be thinking about what the U.S. will be in the next hundred years, not what where it was.