Our Threatened Freedom

Who Gets Hurt by Trade Controls

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 153-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 153

Dictation Name: Vol. L - Part 10 - Who Gets Hurt by Trade Controls

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Who gets hurt by trade controls? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

In 1982 an interesting protest took place in Japan, and the United States was the target. Japan’s dozen top petro chemical companies are in trouble. They are each losing about four million dollars a month, and they demanded that the Japanese government act at once to stop the flood of cheap foreign chemical imports. Those cheap imports were coming from the United States, and American prices are half those of Japanese companies. This sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? Some American companies complain about the cheap Japanese imports, and some Japanese companies complain about cheap American imports. Both sides say that the other country is costing them jobs. What is the answer to this dilemma?

There is another factor that needs consideration before we answer that question. The consumer. If you and I, or the man in japan, can get something from abroad at half the price, we save money. And it gives us more funds to spend on something else. This means that besides the American and the Japanese corporations and their workers, our own personal economic wellbeing is at stake. If Japan taxes American imports heavily to make them closer in price to Japanese products, and if we similarly tax Japanese goods, the consumer is the loser. Economic freedom in international trade benefits the consumers, who are the majority over any other group, and certainly the majority over the industries.

If our automobile industry cannot compete with foreign imports, all the protection we give it will only postpone the day of reckoning. On top of that, we need to realize that the United States has usually done best with new products and new inventions. By the time other countries start producing them economically, we are up ahead in a newer technology.

It is a mistake to think therefore that foreign goods are a threat to us. They usually free us from one kind of production to a newer one. Some very able experts predict that we are on the verge of the greatest of industrial revolutions, and it is happening in Silicon Valley in California and will change the face of American industry, and vastly improve the standard of living.

Economic freedom promises us some dramatic changes and improvements in our material advantages.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.