Tag Archives: Mexico

News

Obama’s naive trade policy angers Canada, China, France, Mexico, etc.

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The economic effects of massive government waste and naive protectionism
The economic effects of massive government waste and naive protectionism

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

The Wall Street Journal explains the high costs of economic ignorance.

Excerpt:

The smell of trade war is suddenly in the air. Mr. Obama slapped a 35% tariff on Chinese tires Friday night, and China responded on the weekend by threatening to retaliate against U.S. chickens and auto parts. That followed French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s demand on Thursday that Europe impose a carbon tariff on imports from countries that don’t follow its cap-and-trade diktats. “We need to impose a carbon tax at [Europe’s] border. I will lead that battle,” he said.

Mr. Sarkozy was following U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who has endorsed a carbon tax on imports, and the U.S. House of Representatives, which passed a carbon tariff as part of its cap-and-tax bill. This in turn followed the “Buy American” provisions of the stimulus, which has incensed much of Canada; Congress’s bill to ban Mexican trucks from U.S. roads in direct violation of Nafta, prompting Mexico to retaliate against U.S. farm and kitchen goods; and the must-make-cars-in-America provisions of the auto bailouts. Meanwhile, U.S. trade pacts with Colombia, Panama and South Korea languish in Congress.

The article goes on to explain how the Smoot-Hawley tariff helped cause the Great Depression. This is exactly the path that President Teleprompter is treading. He is taking us head-first into the next Great Depression because he knows less about economic policy than my keyboard. He did legal work for ACORN, for God’s sake – have you seen who ACORN hires? I’m sure that woman can read a Teleprompter, too.

What do economists think of Obama’s economic policies?

I noticed this post on Greg Mankiw’s blog, where links to a survey of economists.

Click here to read the results of a new survey of AEA members. This updates previous survey results, summarized in Chapter 2 of my favorite textbook.

Note that 83 percent agree that “the United States should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.” I presume that would apply to tariffs on Chinese tires.

Greg Mankiw is a Harvard University professor of economics.

UPDATE: New Michele Bachmann video!

Wow, is she ever pretty when she’s explaining free trade! Sigh.

News

Obama tells Mexico that opponents of amnesty are “demagogues”

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Story from CNS News.

Excerpt:

At a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Guadalajara, Mexico on Monday, President Barack Obama referred to American opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens as “demagogues.”

[…]Obama was asked by a reporter whether “given the fight that you’re having to wage for health care, I wonder if you can tell us what you think the prospects are for immigration reform, for comprehensive immigration reform, which you’ve said is your goal; and whether you think that the blows you’re taking now on health care and that the Democrats are likely to take around the midterm elections will make it hard, if not impossible, to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in this term and what you’ve told President Calderón about that?”

Obama gave a long answer indicating that he believed he could secure an immigration reform package that included a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants. In his answer, he characterized opponents of this “pathway” as “demagogues.”

“Now, am I going to be able to snap my fingers and get this done? No,” said Obama. “This is going to be difficult; it’s going to require bipartisan cooperation. There are going to be demagogues out there who try to suggest that any form of pathway for legalization for those who are already in the United States is unacceptable. And those are fights that I’d have to have if my poll numbers are at 70 or if my poll numbers are at 40. That’s just the nature of the U.S. immigration debate.

Offering a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens while restricting the legal path to citizenship is unconscionable. We should be encouraging legal immigration of skilled immigrants, who come here legally to work and who respect our laws.

News

Is illegal immigration helping to drive California bankrupt?

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Story from the extremely left-wing LA Times. (H/T  commenter ECM)

Excerpt:

The largest costs to California’s budget from its illegal residents are in three areas:

* Education: The state has no official count of how many students are in the country illegally because school districts do not ask. But the state legislative analyst estimated, based on data from the Pew Hispanic Center, that the state’s 6.3 million public school students include about 300,000 illegal residents. At an annual cost of about $7,626 each, the total comes to nearly $2.3 billion.

* Prisons: In fiscal year 2009-10, California expects to spend about $834 million to incarcerate 19,000 illegal immigrants in the state’s prisons. In Los Angeles County, illegal immigrants add between $370 million and $550 million annually to criminal justice costs, including prosecution, defense, probation and jails, according to Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

* Healthcare: The expected state tab for healthcare in fiscal 2009-10 is $703 million for as many as 780,000 illegal immigrants. Of that, $486 million goes to emergency services. But low-income illegal residents are also eligible for some nonemergency health services, including prenatal and postpartum care, abortions, breast and cervical cancer treatment and certain types of long-term care, such as stays in nursing homes. Most of the nonemergency care for illegal immigrants was authorized by the Legislature in the 1980s.

The story was linked by Fausta’s blog and Fausta noted this:

In addition, the article states that 48,000 children in families headed by illegal immigrants receive a monthly average of $472.

Compassion sounds so wonderful until you have to pay for it during a recession. I am in favor of increased legal immigration and work permits. Anyone who can find a job, learn English and American civics, obey the law, and pay for their own education and health care for 5 years should get a green card. But there should be no pathway to a green card ever for anyone who entered the country illegally at any time.