Abu Wabu

Via Hot Air
As if the world needed more proof that idiots never learn from previous idiots' idiocy, the WaPo reports that blatantly pro-union "America-first" trade provisions contained in the Messiah's non-stimulus bill could very well provoke other countries to close their borders to American trade, the same response triggered by Smoot-Hawley, which directly caused the Great Depression.

The stimulus bill passed by the House last night contains a controversial provision that would mostly bar foreign steel and iron from the infrastructure projects laid out by the $819 billion economic package.

A Senate version, yet to be acted upon, goes further, requiring, with few exceptions, that all stimulus-funded projects use only American-made equipment and goods.

Proponents of expanding the “Buy American” provisions enacted during the Great Depression, including steel and iron manufacturers and labor unions, argue that it is the only way to ensure that the stimulus creates jobs at home and not overseas.

Opponents, including some of the biggest blue-chip names in American industry, say it amounts to a declaration of war against free trade. That, they say, could spark retaliation from abroad against U.S. companies and exacerbate the global financial crisis.

Ed Morrissey says it well:

This is the end result of the protectionist rhetoric of the Democratic campaign in 2008. And it’s not hard to see why they pursue it. Buy American is a slogan that practically guarantees popularity. What could be more patriotic than looking for the Made in the USA label, especially when taxpayer dollars are on the line?

Nothing, if you don’t mind killing the entire American export sector. We already have large trade deficits, thanks to our massive wealth transfers each year to oil-producing nations based on our unwillingness to pump our own crude. If we touch off a trade war, which this will almost certainly do as it violates all of our WTO and bilateral trade agreements, other markets will close their doors to American products, such as cars and technology. Instead of closing our trade gap, we will explode it, and even those oil imports could get retaliatory tariffs from our two closest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, our two largest foreign suppliers of crude...

America doesn’t need a trade war at this moment in time. We need to ensure our access to as many foreign markets as possible. Protectionism now will take us down a primrose path that we have traveled before, and the end result will be bread lines and 25% unemployment, and worldwide misery.

John Hinderaker:

Once again, we see the Obama administration thrashing around like a bull in a china shop, apparently oblivious to the consequences of its actions overseas. This is rapidly becoming a pattern.

As a young man my grandfather Jack pedaled his bicycle everywhere throughout his poverty-stricken, dispirited, flatlined, shuttered city, for seven years looking for work during the Great Depression. That's right: seven years. Those hellish times, which set back the fortunes of millions of families by decades, were the direct result of the same immoral, big-government, socialist, business-killing, protectionist, redistributionist, totalitarian stupidity embodied today in the Messiah and his idiot cheerleaders.

If my grandfather Jack were alive today to watch it happen all over again, he'd probably spend the next seven years kicking idiots in the nuts.