David Harsanyi, writing at the National Review, is none too happy with President Trump's call to buy American, hire American. There's the mythical problem of Disney bringing in foreign workers to replace and then outsource Americans because there just aren't enough American math majors. And buying American is picking winners and losers.
The second part of the order cuts down on waivers and exemptions to President Herbert Hoover’s Buy American law. It instructs agencies to use American-made goods and services rather than saving taxpayer dollars or searching out the best deals they can. This is how we incentivize rent-seeking and cronyism. Until a couple of months ago, this is what Republicans used to call “picking winners and losers.” If you thought General Motors shouldn’t be bailed out because it couldn’t compete in a global marketplace, why would you support a state-impelled “Buy American, Hire American” when it comes to steel, for example?
Because we're Americans.
Picking one American company over another, or one industry over another, can be picking winners and losers. But if government is in the business of spending American money, it should be spending it at home.
There's nothing wrong with picking American winners over Chinese ones.
That doesn't mean going all in on state supported industries or bailing out failing companies. But if the government is going to buy a car, steel or a hat, it should be made in America. Even if it's more expensive, it saves taxpayers money that would otherwise be being spent on social subsidies for the Americans who could be making those things.
The product price difference is a whole lot cheaper than Medicaid, disability or any of the rest of the list.
And boosting American industries boosts national power. Buying American is a whole lot cheaper than a war with China. And our allegiance to the ideal of the free market cannot surpass our allegiance to America. We've seen from the left what happens when ideologies surpass nations to their detriment. Trump is, among other things, a response by a natural Republican constituency to a blind allegiance to opening our borders with no reciprocity and only faith that a free market in which our competitors protect their companies and industries to the hilt will put us on an Obamaesque right side of history.