Way Fewer Widgets

In the New York Times, Nelson D. Schwartz on the global manufacturing decline emanating from the financial meltdown:

The pattern of manufacturing and trade ominously recalls how the financial crisis of 1929 grew into the Great Depression: tightening credit and consumer fear reduced demand for manufactured goods in one country after another, creating a downward spiral that reduced global trade.

The Latest In "Nixon In China" Similes

Gerald F. Seib:

Just as only a Republican president, Richard Nixon, could open the door to Communist China, it may be that only a Democratic president, Barack Obama, can save free trade amid today’s global economic upheaval.

For Pat, Smoot-Hawley's Moot

Pat Buchanan bangs the drum for a trade war:

We are about to decide, perhaps for all time, whether we believe in a deepening interdependence leading to one world government, or we restore the independence won for us by the men on Mount Rushmore: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

All four were economic nationalists. All would today be decried as protectionists. For all believed that the nation's independence and prosperity hung upon its ability to stand alone in the world, and that foreign goods should never enjoy as privileged access to America's markets as American goods made in the U.S.A....

Those who prattle about the perils of protectionism need to be asked: What has free trade produced, but a bankrupt America that must go hat-in-hand to Beijing to borrow the money to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure? Are we also to use Chinese iron, steel and cement because they, with their Third World wages, will work for less than our fellow Americans?

As for Europe's threat of a trade war, bring it on!

We would eat their lunch.

Haven't They Seen "Ferris Bueller"?

From Douglas A. Irwin, a sober warning about the protectionist provisions in the House version of the stimulus bill:

When the United States imposed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930, it helped set off a worldwide movement toward higher tariffs. When everyone tried to restrict imports, the combined effect was a deeper global economic slump. It took decades to undo the accumulated trade restrictions of that period. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

The Crossed Signals Of Gold

While I can't begin to have an intelligent debate about monetary policy, I also can't quite figure out this comment in the Wall Street Journal by Judy Shelton:

When President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, it marked the end of a golden age of robust trade and unprecedented global economic growth.

So speaking of robust trade and global growth, what was all that going on in the 1990s?