Then there’s trade protectionism. A week ago Friday, late at night, the Obama administration slapped import tariffs on Chinese tires. The Chinese retaliated by imposing tariffs on auto parts and chickens — take that, United Auto Workers and Tyson Foods! Upshot: American consumers will pay more for tires, and auto-parts and chicken-processing jobs will be at risk.
And more of that may be in store. “The smell of trade war is suddenly in the air,” writes The Wall Street Journal, and Global Trade Alert reports that 130 protectionist measures are ready to be implemented by countries around the world. Are we seeing a repeat of the job-destroying protectionism that followed the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930? It’s starting to look like it.
Then there are the additional burdens on the private-sector economy that would be piled on by the congressional Democrats’ health care bills and the cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House in June. In the job boom of the middle years of this decade, these policies looked like something we might be able to afford. They look less like that now.
Meanwhile, it’s plain that consumers are not going to spend money anytime soon at the rates they did when their house prices were bubbling up and that the $787 billion stimulus package passed last February was not — how to put this? — optimally designed for job creation.
It is literally one job-killing piece of legislation after another. Today, the House voted – overwhelmingly – to strip all funding from ACORN. Unfortunately, they did so as part of yet another job-killer – a takeover of all student lending by the Federal government. Some 35,000+ jobs will be lost in the private sector.
(By the way, if you cannot see that this takeover of student lending is the natural extension of a “public option” plan, you are either a fool or one of the people plotting to use that particular Trojan horse to ultimately take over all health care. This is exactly what the advocates for a public option are trying for.)
Nancy Pelosi is shedding crocodile tears over reelection prospects of Democrats. I personally take a little comfort in the fact that a goodly number of jobs that will be killed by the Democratic politicians currently belong to Democratic politicians.
40 in ’10 and repeal the madness.
