Manufacturing Not in Trouble Jude Wanniski August 15, 2003

Memo: To Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From Jude Wanniski
Re Goods Production Better Than Ever

It is rare that I run across an opinion column I think is so good that it deserves nomination for a Pulitzer Prize, but this gem by Bruce Bartlett is so full of insights on the economy that it rates the prize. It was prompted by recent columns by Pat Buchanan and Paul Craig Roberts, both decrying the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. I'm actually in sympathy with Buchanan and Roberts to a degree, in that there are people losing manufacturing jobs even while others are being created elsewhere. It is the American Textile Manufacturing Association that is almost always the first to complain of unfair foreign competition. We now see the Carolina Senators, including Liddy Dole and Lindsey Graham, complaining that China is "manipulating its currency" to steal jobs from the U.S., when the Chinese central bank is doing what it has been doing since 1994, pegging the yuan to the dollar. It is a silly argument, also being pushed by Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, undoubtedly responding to the city's textile workers union. [If China were manipulating its currency to gain a trade advantage, it would not be fixing to the dollar, but devaluing against it.] Bruce Bartlett does not concentrate on opinion, but hard facts and superior analysis.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/printbb20030814.shtml