Editor,
There is never a time in American politics when there isn’t something new to be learned and analyzed.
In the New York Times’ “Throwing Free Trade Overboard,” writer Robert Lighthizer revealed yet another quirk in the Tea Party Movement’s political platform: the majority of members are opposed to free-trade policy.
That is, they wish to steer the country in a new direction, characterized by protectionism and tariffs. Lighthizer mentions that the irony is, of course, these views somehow coexist with the movement’s nostalgia for the “18th-century protest against import levies.”
Though not a Tea Party member, I did once mildly sympathize with their “instinctive aversion to deficits.” Needless to say, outsourcing and trade imbalances are issues that Americans are rightly concerned about — and topics both sides of the political spectrum emphasized during the most recent election.
However, we are looking at an economically fringe-oriented movement that breaks from trade policies traditional conservatives have supported for years, and favors a strategy that aims to restore America’s greatness, “even at the cost of the country’s free trade record.”
Sounds good, right? Don’t bet on it.
I do apologize, Tea Partiers, but what you’re aiming for will, in reality, drive an already frail, import-dependent economy into isolation. It will limit our market choices in a nation that has forgotten what import substitution is. Not to mention, it will stagnate foreign investment and scale back the strides globalization has made.
I never thought I would say this, but for once, I agree with mainstream Republicans.
Jeremiah M. Wall
UNM student
