United Liberty

The Obama Administration is once again proving its protectionist tendencies by slapping tariffs on another Chinese made good:

The United States has firmed up plans to impose up to 15 percent tariffs on imported Chinese steel pipes targeted for wideranging sanctions for alleged unfair subsidies.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday it made a “final determination” to impose tariffs of between 10.36 percent and 15.78 percent following a probe on imports from China of “oil country tubular goods.”

They are steel pipes used to deliver oil and gas in the petroleum industry.

We probably shouldn’t be surprised at what prompted thus:

The department pursued an investigation into the case after complaints from various US industry groups and unions, including the United States Steel Corporation, and the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union.

The end result of tariffs are high prices for Americans consumers. The worst thing the Obama Administration can do is start a trade war with any country, let alone China. Unfortunately, that is what they seem hell bent on doing.

H/T: Club for Growth

Saturday Night Live has some fun with Barack Obama:

Hilarious.

China wants to know the fiscal implications of ObamaCare:

Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.

Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.

Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.

For instance, a new study from the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finds that the healthcare reform bill recently passed in the House of Representatives would increase healthcare spending to 21.3 percent of GDP by 2019 compared with 20.8 percent under current law. That’s bending the curve the wrong way. The study also questions the “long-term viability” of the $500 billion in Medicare cuts meant to help pay for expanded insurance coverage.

China isn’t happy with the trade policies of the Obama Administration:

China on Friday accused the US of protectionist and biased trade policies less than a week before president Barack Obama’s first visit to Beijing.

In a stinging rebuke to Washington, China’s commerce ministry promised to take measures to protect its domestic industry after the US slapped anti-dumping duties on $2.6bn of Chinese steel pipe imports. The duties are part of a growing roster of trade conflicts between the two countries, despite a high-level meeting last week in China aimed at reducing tensions.

“China resolutely opposes such protectionist practices and will take steps to protect the interests of our domestic industries,” Yao Jian, ministry spokesman, said on its website.

“The US should give objective consideration to the fact that the fundamental problem of the US industries in question is the fall of demand brought about by the financial crisis.”

The Obama Administration’s desire to pander to labor interests is going to hurt us in a big way. Trade is necessary to keep prices low and keep an economy robust. History shows that putting restrictions on free trade, on of the most basic economic liberties, will slow an economy as other nations react, just as China is threatening today.

We don’t need a trade war. We need free trade.

Sixty years ago today, the People’s Republic of China was established:

BEIJING — China’s leaders marked their nation’s 60th anniversary on Thursday with a precision display of military bravado, a fleet of floats representing everything from a giant fish to Mount Everest and, improbably, a female militia unit toting submachine guns and attired in red miniskirts and white jackboots.

The celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was immense, powerful and flawless, down to the crystal skies which, just a day earlier, had been laden with smog.

In all that, it was a fitting analogy for how China’s Communist Party leaders wanted their citizens and the world to regard them — and, perhaps, how they may be feeling themselves these days. The last such parade, in 1999, was of interest mainly to foreign military analysts and China hands. This time, the world’s news outlets reported raptly on the significance of every detail, and China’s state-run television network streamed video coverage over the Internet, in English and other languages, to viewers worldwide.

Beyond that, however, the Chinese made few concessions to their global audience. The 60th celebration was slightly kitschy and indisputably retro, a carbon copy of the prior once-a-decade celebrations. “On one level, they are naturally aware of the international audience, but in the end this is a parade and show for Chinese leaders and the people of China,” Geremie R. Barmé, professor of Chinese history at the Australian National University, said in an interview. “It has always been such a show. It is a display of China’s might and power. When it comes to this kind of parade, international perceptions are just not that important.”

The Chinese have responded to Barack Obama’s tire tariff with some aggressive trade policies of their own:

Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) — China announced a probe into the alleged dumping of American auto and chicken products, two days after U.S. President Barack Obama imposed tariffs on imports of tires from the Asian nation.

Chinese industries have complained that they’re being hurt by “unfair trade practices,” the nation’s Ministry of Commerce said on its Web site yesterday. The Beijing-based ministry is also looking into subsidies for the products, it said. It didn’t specify the imports’ value.

Irwin Seltzer, meanwhile, thinks that Obama’s decision is a sign of bad things to come:

Hundreds of years of economic theory notwithstanding, the United States takes another step toward protectionism by forcing Chinese tire makers to pay a 35 percent tariff on their imported product. As trade expert Dan Ikenson says, “Short of armed hostilities or political subversion, no state action is more provocative than banning another’s products from entering your market.”

It’s a shame to see a president who spends so much time talking about caring for the poor, forcefully rise the price of a common product for all Americans just for the sake of paying back a few special interests that have donated heavily to his campaign efforts.

Free traders had very high hopes for the new president when it came to reducing protectionism, but despite his rhetoric, Obama’s actions are dreadfully dissapointing.