Sunday, February 1, 2009

President Obama Has to Get "Buy American" Law Out of Stimilus Bill

For all the talk in the last few years of listening to our allies and having a global view we learn a huge truth. No matter you party most Americans are not listening. Conservatives and Liberals both will pay as much attention as to Canada as they did 4 years ago.

There is a horrible provision that will sound good to 99 percent of Americans and thus sounds good to 99 percent of politicians. That provision is that all money doled out in the stimulus must be used to BUY AMERICAN ONLY. Now you go that makes sense because we are trying to get our economy started.

The problem is that the American Govt is about to dump a trillion dollars and everyone outside the USA is excluded from that if this goes through. The problem is this violates various trade agreements. Also a major problem is that every other country is about to do the same and American companies want to have a piece of that.

CNN highlighted this problem this morning with the Caterpillar corporation. 50 percent of their business is overseas. If this provision goes through the world will retaliate and we will have a huge trade war.

Something similar happened during the start of the great Depression which is viewed by many of making the economic situation far worse

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