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To an extent this is moot since the investigation will proceed at a glacial pace and by the time that it concludes it will all be a done deal.

I was giving a specific example where Cato was not speaking the truth. Perhaps they are acting out of incompetence instead of malice.

Cato is staffed and funded by libertarians, so I guess it's true that we're "biased" in a libertarian direction. But that's rather different from saying that we "have shown they are willing to place and promote false information that directly benefits their funders," which was the comment I was originally responding to.

There is nothing about libertarian ideas that prevents them from helping libertarians. So this could be a delusion vs. greed issue. But, as many Cato publications have major issues with their logic and presentation I don't see how this buys them much credibility. The fact that you believe what you're saying does not prevent those who fund you from using use as a shill. Plenty of people are willing to use the libertarian ideas of keeping the government out of X for their own ends when they don't want the government to get into X.

PS: I think we can both agree that Sallie James http://www.freetrade.org/bios/james.html = hot.

> Canada ... look at how the US is screwing us over soft lumber and such. I was actually in Canada about a year and a half ago and still have the paper: This was when the US imposed tarrifs on Canadian lumber despite the free trade agreement, and said, basically "so sue us!" The front page had a headline about this and photos of all the Canadian Negotiators, none of whom were happy. Australia had a similar problem. According to the Aussie press, Australian lamb producers built up the American market for lamb, pumping a lot of money into advertising and promotion. U.S. lamb producers then got Congress to put a quota, and took the market over. The U.S. claimed this was for "unfair practices" which was just a lot of baloney. I doubt most Americans ever even heard of this case, but in Australia its was widely reported. When the U.S. signed a "free trade" agreement with the U.S., Aussie agricultural produce was excluded. A year afterwards the agreement was shown to be heavily favoring the U.S. So there you go. Canada, Britain and Australia. Probably the most loyal friends the U.S. has. Here's some stuff about the Free Trade and the Internet Gambling Laws. BTW the WTO said the U.S. isn't breaking the law, but its against the spirit of free trade and this is what people see: http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/FTBs/FTB-024.pdf http://www.tradeobservatory.org/headlines.cfm?refI D=70041

You are surely wrong. Many Chinese political dissedents support more trade in China as an obvious way to convert the country from the bottom. http://www.freetrade.org/node/169 According to Chinese dissident Wang Dan, "Economic change does influence political change. China's economic development will be good for the West as well as for the Chinese people." Do a search to see how many years Wang spent in jail before.

And of course the US *never* practises protectionism:

http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol35/vol35n40/art icles/Boeing.html
http://www.freetrade.org/issues/steel.html
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004619.php

Regarding trade deficits, they're not all they're cracked up to be.

A fundamental mistake made by the critics of outsourcing has been to confuse the passing pain of the IT recession with an alleged long-term decline in the sector. That mistake is compounded when current output and employment levels are compared with levels at the frenzied peak of the boom in 2000 rather than with more normal levels from the late 1990s. A more accurate and less alarming picture of the industry emerges if we compare the state of the industry a few years after the bubble burst with its state a few years before.

Beginning in the early 1990s, with the takeoff of Windows-based computing and the Internet, employment in the IT industry surged. Employment in software and related services grew by one million between 1993 and 2000, before dropping by 166,000 between 2000 and 2002. The story has been much the same across other IT sectors: stupendous growth throughout the 1990s, then a pullback in employment of 10 to 20 percent during the recession. In the IT industry as a whole, employment levels even after the recession were still no lower than in 1998. During the past decade, annual employment in the industry has still grown at a rate twice as fast as employment in private industry in general.(emphasis added)

i would suggest this article about the subject...

Job Losses and Trade

via NealzNuze

The Cato Institute thinks the following:

"The large majority of America's nonfarm workers, about 85 percent, are employed in service-providing industries, construction, and government--sectors where import competition is minimal. To those workers, imports are an unambiguous blessing that spurs innovation, expands consumer choice, and raises real wages." Full Paper Here

Moreover, this breifing goes on to argue employment grows in proportion to imports . There's a fairly rational reason for this, if we can all stop foaming at the mouth long enough to actually think rationally: when employment grows we (consumers) have more cash to spend on goods and services. Since imports are a relatively fixed percentage of the overall economy, whenever the overall economy grows, so must imports. Why am I discussing imports if the argument is over services? Well, services are imported and exported just like goods. So, let's understand the real numbers, here:

The United States had a $64.8 billion trade (BEG ITAL) surplus in services in 2002, despite economic stagnation in Europe and Japan. Services accounted for 30 percent of all U.S. exports and 43 percent ($3.1 billion) of U.S. exports to India. Full Article Here

But, if half of our exports to India are in the form of services why are so many technical jobs going to India? Actually, there's no real evidence that's happening at all. There are two basic erroneous arguments made by the media today supporting the assumptions in this question. First, is the post hoc mistake: because the US economy is losing jobs and because after that happened India started gaining technology jobs, then India must be responsible for losses in American technology jobs. Actually, poor investments by venture capitalists and fund managers caused the loss in US jobs. The fact those losses occured coincidentally with India's technology boom is completely irrelevant.

Second, is the hasty generalization mistake: Bob Smith has just lost his job because his company opened a software development office in India, therefore all American technology jobs must be moving overseas. There just isn't enough evidence to support the generalization made by reporters. We may suspect that India is taking some portion of American jobs, but news reports by well-intentioned NPR and New York Times reporters aren't evidence that its hurting our economy.

All this panic and paranoia about jobs moving overseas doesn't even make sense when we consider the real economics of it. The "entire employment of the US" can't possibly be outsourced. Even if your argument wasn't a textbook example of the slippery slope fallacy, you'd still be wrong on an economic basis. If the USA loses a sufficient number of jobs, i.e. unemployment rises, the consumers will have less capital with which to buy foreign-made products. Domestic workers who are out of work will be willing to work for less, thus driving down the cost of locally made goods. When the cost of local goods and services drops below the cost of foreign made goods and services, then jobs will start to flow back into the USA. Adam Smith's invisible hand at work.

During the Clinton Administration monetary policy for the dollar kept our currency strong, which helped keep prices for foreign made consumer goods low. This was a good thing during that time because Asia and Europe were both in the midst of deep recessions and American consumer spending helped to bolster those economies through that trying time. The Bush Administration has since let the US Dollar sag in relation to other currencies. This has helped decrease the price of American goods and services abroad

"Dumping is only an issue when:
a) One is selling below cost. The per-unit production cost of Windows is nominal. It would be *very* hard to argue that Microsoft is selling below cost."

Dumping has nothing to do with selling below cost -- the basis for comparison is selling price in the producer's home market. The best quote I could find was written from the US import instead of US export point of view, but take a look at http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/articles/di-12-23-02 .htm where you will find: "Dumping is said to occur when an exporter's prices in the United States are lower than those it charges for similar merchandise in its home market."

"b) The intent is to drive someone else out of the market. There is *one* provider of Windows, and that is Microsoft. Industrial-style economic terms just don't make sense here."

Precisely. Microsoft is the only company that makes Windows, but they certainly are NOT the only company that makes an OS for x86. We all know who Microsoft wants to drive out of the market. Refer to the "Halloween memos". Software just like many other products that have a high development cost combined with nominal production cost.

You are right!

Here is an article of interest: The Myth of the Race to the Bottom.

It is easy to be fearful due to the short term pain due to economic dislocations, but growth will continue. We haven't come close yet to exhausting all the new areas. Note two emerging revolutions: nano-tech and bio-tech. Also, we still have a long way to go in the whole knowledge revolution area. My own belief is that total programming jobs in the US will grow over time, not shrink. Expect a new expansion in a few years time. Look for jobs in small business and nich industries.

NB - Some idiot modded the original comment I made down as a "Troll", obviously because it didn't endorse said idiot's protectionist agenda. If you disagree with a comment, why not respond to it instead of trying to hide it from the view of others?

"Afterall, who wants to lose his job and investments? But that doesn't mean the rest of the country ought to help subsidize your employment.

The reality is that:

• DRAMs are a commodity, and as such provide very little value-added. There is no good reason why the U.S. has to have a domestic manufacturer of DRAM.
• The way in which U.S. antidumping laws operate makes even the most frivolous claims likely to succeed, so the fact that Micron has managed to obtain a ruling on its' behalf proves squat about the truth of its' complaint.

For those who want to understand the sordid reality behind the claims of "unfair" competition, and how rigged the system is against foreign manufacturers, I recommend the following paper: Antidumping 101: The Devilish Details of "Unfair Trade" Law."

Afterall, who wants to lose his job and investments? But that doesn't mean the rest of the country ought to help subsidize your employment.

The reality is that:

• DRAMs are a commodity, and as such provide very little value-added. There is no good reason why the U.S. has to have a domestic manufacturer of DRAM.
• The way in which U.S. antidumping laws operate makes even the most frivolous claims likely to succeed, so the fact that Micron has managed to obtain a ruling on its' behalf proves squat about the truth of its' complaint.

For those who want to understand the sordid reality behind the claims of "unfair" competition, and how rigged the system is against foreign manufacturers, I recommend the following paper:
Antidumping 101: The Devilish Details of "Unfair Trade" Law

• the orange grove picker jobs that have been exported to Florida
• the snowmobile rental jobs farmed out to Colorado
• the Chicago tourism jobs exported to Chicago...

You can't retain the ability to arbitrarily manipulate commerce like that and expect a powerful united economy to rival the USA.

Excuse me but if the US are so strong and so keen to enforce free commerce, why do they tax 20% steel imports ?

http://www.uksteel.org.uk/nw73.htm
http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/speeches/ct-dg022599 .html

Some Cato Institute refs:

Too Many Sanctions
A Chance to Rethink Sanctions
Stuck in Sanctions
Time to Stop Sanctioning the World