Thursday, June 18, 2009

Bailout or a Subsidy?

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When is one country's bailout, another's industrial subsidy? BusinessWeek says rising tension could lead to damaging trade wars.

The New Protectionism

2 comments:

Robert Rogers said...

This is going to be an interesting fallout of many of the "Buy American" clauses of the Recovery bill. We are starting to see "Buy Canadian" or "Buy Chinese" clauses in the respective countries. The unintended consequences here can be bad especially for out export companies that may have 20-40% of their market here in the US and the rest internationally. These "Buy American" policies may do more harm to US companies than are benefited by the Recovery bill. I thought that protectionism was old hat, but it seems to be rearing its ugly head again.

Scott Robinson said...

After reading this article, protectionism is a term that I believe can be closely defined with selfishness. It seems that once one country reverts to protectionism, the others are quick to follow. This is another example of how countries around the world are not working together to fix problems and create solutions. The slogan "Country First" is not a healthy principle for the long run.