Word: buchananism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...trade, as on immigration, Buchanan yields to no presidential contender in the extremity of his policy. Not only did he vocally oppose NAFTA and the creation of the World Trade Organization (unlike Dole, Gramm and Clinton), now that these agreements have passed, he won't let bygones be bygones. He wants to dismantle both pacts and erect new trade barriers: a 10% tariff on Japanese goods, a 20% tariff on Chinese goods and a "social tariff" of unknown size on goods from Mexico and other developing nations...
...list of job-stealing aliens not only to swarthy workers abroad, but also to wily Japanese bureaucrats, "foreign lobbyists," the unpatriotic heads of "transnational corporations," and the shadowy figures who sit on the wto's dispute-resolution panels (who in turn represent the ominous new world order that, Buchanan says, threatens American sovereignty...
...substantive virtues of Buchanan's proposal are less clear. If stagnant real wages are the problem, raising the cost of imports is a curious solution. As shoes and microwave ovens at Sears or Wal-Mart get pricier, the real wages of the average American worker go down, not up. When economists cite lower prices as benefits of free trade, protectionists sometimes reply that we should worry more about "workers" and less about "consumers." But, of course, workers are consumers...
Sharply raising tariffs might, in the short run, protect some jobs in industries facing import competition. But even if these tariffs didn't trigger a full-scale trade war, they would probably inspire counter-tariffs that would cost American jobs in export industries. To point this out, says Buchanan, is to counsel "fear and timidity...
...tools of Democrats, not Republicans. Trade deals like NAFTA can require member nations to have a high minimum wage, maintain strict environmental regulations or guarantee the right to unionize. Such rules directly confront the problems of inhumanely low wages and reckless environmental degradation--the Third World production shortcuts that Buchanan says justify his social tariff. But Buchanan's ideology won't countenance this solution since it involves the transnational panels of adjudication that he deems inimical to sovereignty. Nor do many mainstream Republicans like this leftish solution. One reason NAFTA's environmental and labor side agreements are bare bones...