Douglas K. Bereuter Quotes

The arguments for protection are more easily made attractive than those for free trade.

Every restriction of trade creates vested interests that are from then onward opposed to its removal.

People favor discrimination and privileges because they do not realize that they themselves are consumers and as such must foot the bill. In the case of protectionism, for example, they believe that only the foreigners against whom the import duties discriminate are hurt. It is true the foreigners are hurt, but not they alone: the consumers who must pay higher prices suffer with them.

I personally do not believe in protection mechanisms. It’s like a false friend. It makes you believe that you can compete, but you can’t compete and as the protection mechanisms fall away—the world is going for this—then you are in trouble.

Free trade ideas often look great in prospect but less in retrospect.

Here, as everywhere, Protection involves this great disadvantage, that, once given, it is difficult to withdraw …. the system, once established, led to perpetual wrangling on the part of rival industries

I think that the level playing field is so unlevel - it is tilted so much in favor of Chinese companies - that it's time for the United States to do a little bit more, see.

Unfortunately, the United States has entered into several free trade agreements that do not sufficiently protect and support our manufacturing industries and the millions of American workers they employ.

We are on pace this year to have a trade deficit that is larger than $800 billion. We have never faced that before, but we continue to put forward trade agreements like these that leave us naked to competition that is neither free nor fair.

You can’t have free trade of others don’t play by the same set of rules that our guys play by…. Free trade works if we open our markets and they open theirs.

Free trade would place our farmers and workers in competition with peasant and sweated labor products.

China must voluntarily cut back on exports to America otherwise American politics will become unmanageable.

In revising our tariff our own interest is the only thing that can guide us.

Unfair foreign trade practices are not isolated acts.

Immediate restrictions must be introduced to drastically reduce imports. We waste millions of dollars on provocative imported commodities, like dog food, nuts, and ice cream.

It's not just free trade verses protectionism any longer, you've got the concepts of managed trade and reciprocity, and environmental issues.

Protection to American Industry

At this moment came the direful struggle between the great parties in Congress founded upon the claim which the majority ... from the north of the Potomac made to the right to lay any tax upon the importations into the United States which was intended to act as a protection to northern manufacturers by excluding foreign fabrics of the same kind. Hence all the states to the south of the Potomac became dependent upon the Northern States for a supply of whatever thing they might want, and in this way the South was compelled to sell its products low and buy from the North all articles it needed from twenty-five to one hundred and twenty-five per cent higher than from France to England. .

Free tariff or no tariff would close up our manufactories by the scores.

There is nothing inconsistent between standing up for free trade and standing up for American workers.

One of the strongest arguments against a protective tariff is the impossibility of estimating what the indirect effects of it may be. No one--not even those in whose interest it in passed--can predict the result. Modern commercial relations are so intricate and multifarious, there are so many hidden and yet important connections between different occupations, that the wisest protectionist cannot foresee how a tax laid upon one import which he wishes to exclude from the domestic market may affect the production or consumption of some other which he has not the least desire to touch.

Free trade is opposed by most people who call themselves “free traders”.

It is the system now called free trade that tends to the destruction of commerce, as is shown wherever it obtains.

The benefits of trade diffuse across the economy, but the cost of trade are concentrated.

U.S. trade policy has been a disaster for American workers.