Elite Protectionists

Elite Protectionists

by WILLIAM GREIDER
[from the April 11, 2005 issue]

A man-bites-dog story of momentous implications is unfolding in Washington: The US multinational establishment, having successfully championed free-trade orthodoxy for decades, may now be flirting with protectionist heresy--a stiff tariff against China to stanch America's hemorrhaging trade deficits. Fred Bergsten, the multinationals' leading economic authority, warns that the United States is in "big trouble," taking on foreign debt beyond anything any industrial nation has experienced and comparable to Mexico and Thailand just before they crashed in the 1990s. Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, is lobbying elite circles to demand decisive action by the Bush Administration--an "import surcharge" as high as 50 percent on all Chinese imports--to avert financial meltdown.