1. I am a trade protectionist because:

a. I don’t think people in this country should be able to get cheaper and/or better stuff from overseas. Consumers have too much stuff. Other people here who take cheaper and/or better stuff from overseas and build it into products which they then sell here and overseas are making things way too complicated.

b. I don’t think people who live overseas and who I don’t know and whose languages I probably don’t speak should be able to make a living. I think more people, who I also don’t know but who live closer to my house, should be able to make a living. How increasing the input costs for products a business might make and stifling competition in those products accomplishes this I’m a bit hazy on at the moment. That does not alter the fundamental truth of the proposition.

c. I believe in fair trade, not free trade. Fair trade is a doctrine that in California in the 1960s said that you cannot sell liquor at a discount or in a supermarket. The more modern meaning is that a nation must have elaborate negotiations akin to what peacocks and peahens go through to have peachicks in order to trade with other nations. The alternative is to have none of that and unilaterally just lower your own barriers to trade all to hell. Simpler, perhaps, but other countries will then be left to pay more for goods and create jobs by some mechanism I am still hazy on. While our country would be forced to endure the “advantages” of free trade. It’s just not fair.

d. Boeing. There I said it. I love him. I want to be his girlfriend. But who am I kidding? He’s always looking at that stuck-up foreign-exchange student from Nor-swe-denmark or East Jesus, Finland or something. She doesn’t understand him. No one does. I do. He’s just too busy making totally ultrabitchin’ airplanes and missiles and satellites in his garage to open a bank account. We all need to pitch in, show some school spirit, and open one for him. Just like those big cheaters in Franco-Germany do for their Mr. Bitchin’ or whatever they call him over there. Miss Wooden-Shoes-and-Tulips knows all about it. Instead the mean kids are making him have to move away. Well, while they’re saying “don’t let the door hit you in the butt on your way out, Boeing,” I’ll be in my room playing Leader of the Pack OVER and OVER and OVER again and waiting by the phone. And crying. You won’t understand. That’s why I hate you. By the way, just for you’re information, I’m not the conceited one. You’re conceited.

e. Frankly, I’ve never been all that clear on what “trade protectionism” actually means. Are we protecting precious trade from something or are we protecting ourselves from the depredations of trade? Either case, I say a mercy-killing works. So while trade sleeps peacefully on the couch, let us go upstairs and get a pillow. Then approaching ever so quietly (but muttering “Trade, you were too good for this world. Trade, thy guilt is great.”), we …

f. We need to manage our trade balances more effectively. Did you know that we’ve run serious trade deficits for most of our nation’s history? Does our chronic and persistent impoverished condition now finally at long last make sense to you? We could be Argentina, people. Fortunately the sure and simple cure for a trade deficit is a recession. I am confident that as a nation we have all the theoretic economic savvy and political will necessary to pull that off.

g. Other. ____

Pencils down.

(By the way, I have no intention of following this thread. I’ll be in my room playing Deborah OVER and OVER and OVER again. Because I like the song. Not that you’d understand. And if Donnie, Bernie, or Boeing call, tell them they can KMRIA. If they don’t know what that means, tell them to read Ulysses. Which is a book. And not the Tennyson poem. Geez.)