Here's an excerpt from Jack Kemp's excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Incidentally, Mr. Kemp will be joining us on this evening's Kudlow & Company to discuss this unfortunate and ill-advised strain of GOP protectionism."...Protectionist views on trade resemble Al Gore on global warming: Pessimism permeates their arguments and they misuse statistics to drive their propaganda on these very important issues. Mr. Buchanan, for example, argues that the U.S is witnessing the passing of our nation as the greatest industrial power the world has ever seen. Nonsense: Half the wealth our nation has ever produced was generated in the last 25 years or so.
With the recent passing of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan, we've lost two great champions of the free-enterprise and free-trade policies that helped lay the groundwork for the last two decades of low unemployment and low inflation, fostering the growing class of working families who own stocks, bonds and property.
The answers to our challenges in today's global marketplace can be found in sound money, lower tax rates on capital and labor, an easing of regulatory burdens, and the welcoming of foreign investment and trade with nations like Japan. Isolationism and protectionism are not worthy of 21st century America."
