I hadn't heard that, specifically... I had heard about the possibility of a trade war with China, which would be insane of us.
"Protectionism" pretty much only hurts everybody. For one thing, with less competition, American companies get lazy -- look at what happened with the automakers in the late 70s. When Japanese cars came along, they were significantly better, and Detroit didn't know how to handle it. Still don't, apparently.
When you're at war, and you want to hurt an enemy, you can blockade his ports -- stop imports and exports. Protectionism is when you do the same thing to yourself.
We seem to have an awful lot of economic illiterates in DC. And they seem set to cause an awful lot of damage, to us and our trading partners.
At least Republicans aren't getting sucked into supporting it... not in the House, anyway. This is the Obama-Reid-Pelosi "destroy the world's economy" bill. They can't stop the Democrats, since Americans voted for them in large numbers, but Republicans don't have to share the blame. Which is cold comfort.
PJ
