So the Byrd amendment is working brilliantly.  Maybe if Walmart, Target, and about a hundred other US corporations would stop f*cking around with China we could get back to the good old days of factory jobs and the industrial revolution. 

Is that what we want though?  Do we really miss working in factories?  I don’t, and I did. I nailed picture frames together with a pneumatic brad-gun for a summer. It was incredibly exciting. So why are we so nostalgic about standing in one place for 10 hours and screwing plastic things onto metal things, or vice versa? It’s the security, stupid!

Let’s get on with it America.  The industrial revolution is over.  Maybe we should think about starting a new revolution.  Hmmm, let’s see.  What’s on the horizon?  Nano-tech?  Fossil-fuel replacement technologies?  Space exploration?

There’s a list a mile long of new things we can build.  That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?  Making something with our own two hands.  First it was stone tools, then metal tools, then plastic tools.  Time to make new tools!

Tariffs and duties on imports treat the symptoms and will slow the bleeding, but curing the disease will require an entirely different economic model. 

Stay tuned for more ramblings from an opinionated, self-indulgent blowhard.

From the International Herald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/26/business/wto.html

The World Trade Organization on Friday authorized the European Union, Canada and five other countries to impose about $150 million in trade sanctions against the United States in retaliation for an import duty law that the WTO ruled illegal last year.

"It’s been approved," said Amina Mohamed, the Kenyan ambassador to the WTO and chairwoman of the organization’s dispute settlement body, referring to the sanctions.

Sanctions could be aimed at a wide range of American exports, possibly including steel ball bearings, cod, shoes and apples. Most would be imposed by Japan and the European Union, which have been the hardest hit by the U.S. law.

Known as the Byrd amendment, after Senator Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who proposed it in 2000, the law hands American companies the proceeds from duties levied on foreign rivals for alleged dumping - selling goods at below-market prices. Seven trading partners of the United States complained that this punished importers twice over: once with the levy and again by giving a financial windfall to their American competitors.

The other five complainants are Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico and South Korea.

After the WTO ruled against the law early last year the United States appealed the ruling in a bid to avert sanctions. But the trade arbitrator has stood firm.

Although the amounts involved in this trade dispute are modest compared with other recent cases, the Byrd Amendment decision is unusual in that it involved several countries taking action against one.

The coordinated action could set a trend in future disputes, said Lourdes Catrain, a trade lawyer and partner in the Brussels office of the law firm Hogan & Hartson. She noted that Europe had built up a coalition of other countries in this case.

"This is very significant," she said. "It sends a very important message to the United States: Its trading partners are getting tired of the way the United States behaves."

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