Brits upset with boneheaded Dem 'stimulus'

Times:

Lord Mandelson risked causing the first clash between Britain and President Obama's Administration yesterday with an outspoken attack on US plans to launch a “Buy American” campaign.

The Business Secretary turned his fire on a provision written into Mr Obama's $825 billion fiscal stimulus plan presently in the US Congress. If passed into law, the proposal would prohibit foreign-made steel from being used in US projects paid for by the economic rescue package.

In a broadside against the plan, Lord Mandelson said national schemes to encourage countries' own consumers to buy products made at home created a serious danger of igniting protectionist trade confrontations.

“I understand why people want to make their own choice. That is why if these ‘Buy American', or ‘buy this', or ‘buy that' campaigns get underway you will stand at risk of translating that into real barriers to trade, which is the last thing we need in the global economy,” he said.

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The Obama administration and the Democrats are ruining our relations with our closest allies by their protectionist policies to please the labor thugs in the Democrat party. While the Democrats claimed that George Bush hurt our relations with our allies he never did anything that prompted this kind of rebuke.

Protectionism is a way to turn a recession into a depression. The Republicans should be all over the Democrats on this issue and they will have every intelligent economist on their side.