Patrick Buchanan, the political commentator who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996, argues about the necessity of a protectionist trade policy in the wake of the financial meltdown. Buchanan defends Bush’s Detroit bailout: “Bush may believe he has sinned against free-market principles, but he is following the path of his great free-market predecessor. Ronald Reagan, too, was not prepared to see Japan take down the U.S. auto industry…Reagan put patriotism before ideology and imposed quotas on Japanese imports….Libertarians of the Milton Friedman school may be unforgiving of Bush. But what has their free-trade globalism given us, but $5 trillion in trade deficits since Bush 1 and a new dependency on foreigners for the necessities of our national life and the loans to pay for them?”

 

George Bush, Protectionist (by Patrick J. Buchanan, Townhall)