We are now sixteen months into our bear market, and fourteen months into our recession.

And if we give in to our worst impulses, we can lengthen both well beyond their normal, allotted lifespan.

I’m referring to the dangerous turn towards protectionism and the open hostility to free trade.

It crops up in several manifestations.

During last year’s campaign, there was a great deal of gratuitous NAFTA bashing. This despite all evidence that it has benefited all three economies…Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.

Then there is the ongoing absurdity with the unrealistic H1-B Visa.

The H-1B Visa is used by tech firms to allow talented scientific and engineering immigration to boost our critical technology infrastructure.

Sentimental nativists responds that they want to preserve such jobs for Americans….but our talent pool is skimmed and diverted into finance… and a growing glut of lawyers and accountants.

Vivek Wadhwa, in an essay published on BusinessWeek.com in February, has researched this self-destructive policy. He concludes that more than half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants over the last decade.

Further, these tech companies employed 450,000, and produced sales in excess of $50 billion in 2005.

So we cap this quota and fill the meager number of slots on the first day of the annual quota…and let millions of immigrants with no comparable skills in.

In order to staff their advanced teams, companies like Microsoft must expand in other countries, which are not so short sighted.

Finally, we have the “buy American” gang in Congress.

They are intent on sliding in these poisonous and protectionist clauses in the endless bailout bills.

So why stop there? Why not have a “buy Texas” clause in our state budget, to keep out those infernal Yankee imports produced by the high labor cost blue states?

Or maybe even a “Buy Houston”clause, to keep out those effete Dallas products.

The possibilities are limitless, once you throw logic and responsibility out the window.

This shameful outburst has infuriated our trade partners and has the potential to plunge the world into another beggar-thy-neighbor trade war, similar to the 1930’s global depression ignited by our myopic and draconian tariffs.

Don’t just take my word for it.

One of the most astute observers of the global scene is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, author of “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” and “The World Is Flat.“

Friedman is not easily characterized as being of the left or the right. He comes across as a technocrat, more interested in effective and efficient management than as an ideologue.

Check out his February 11, 2009 essay “The Open-Door Bailout.”

We must pray that all this saber-rattling is simply a cynical gesture to palliate the virulent hostility of the left leaning unions…and not to be remotely taken seriously.

Seriously.

Posted: 02|27|09 at 6:24 am. Filed under: international, politics.
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