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Feb. 16, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
February 16, 2007, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
That is absolutely right, uh Johnny Donovan.
Uh look, ladies and gentlemen, uh uh Rush uh heroically made it through yesterday's show.
Uh but I think he had an illness uh very similar to uh uh mine about a couple weeks ago.
I was laying in bed, uh, you know, it was like one o'clock at night.
I was by myself, and I was coughing and it was pain all over my body, and uh uh and matter of fact, it was so you know I could hardly breathe.
I I thought about calling 911 uh at the time, and I said America could lose uh it's it's you know, uh it's great American.
Uh so uh anyway, I recovered, and Russia probably recover as well.
But however, Roger Hedcock Hedgecock is going to be in on Monday, uh President's Day, and hopefully uh uh Rush will be back uh Tuesday.
But ladies and gentlemen, what we have in store today, we're gonna have a modified uh open line Friday, but there's some issues I want to talk about.
And first, the the first issue is uh I was reading New York Times, and you know a lot of times you're kind of disappointing when you read the New York Times, but on the editorial page they had actually a fairly decent editorial.
And uh the title of the editor uh editorial is The Autoworker's Pain.
And they point out that um uh Daimler Chrysler has announced that it's going to cut 13,000 jobs in North America.
And in 2006, uh Ford and General Motors offered buyouts to 200,000 hourly workers.
And the the Times article goes on to say that these losses stoke fears, uh, that America's manufacturing base is disappearing and there's deindustrialization, and they point out that there's been a loss of three million American factory jobs since 2000.
But however, the article uh fails to or neglects to mention that there have been nine million jobs created since uh 2000.
And so here's what we have with this manufacturing jobs that all you people are upset about.
We find that the manufacturing employment is going down, but however, manufacturing output is going up.
And matter of fact, uh it according to a uh, I guess it let's see where it is at uh oh, according to the United Nations, a study done for that uh for them, uh the United States accounted for 21 percent of the world's manufacturing output in 2000, and uh roughly the same in 2005.
And while Americans, you know, America's only five percent of the world's population, uh, but they they're producing 21 percent of the manufacturing output, and uh there's let's say we we produce a record one point five trillion dollars in goods that year.
Now, a lot of Americans are in a tizzy over this whole business about trade deficits, and we have unprecedented international trade deficits.
But uh should we really be worried about the trade deficits?
Now, a lot of people s uh think, well, a trade surplus is good and a trade deficit is bad.
But let me give you some folk information, folks.
Uh my colleague uh uh Professor Don Boudreau, he's the he's the new chairman.
Uh he succeeded me as uh chairman of the George Mason's very distinguished economics uh department.
And he wrote a piece uh a couple of weeks ago.
It's called If Trade Surfaces Are So Great, the 1930s should have been a booming decade.
And matter of fact, you can read this by going to Catha Hayek.com.
It's Hayek uh H A Y E K. And here's what he said in that article.
During those ten years, the ten years of the Great Depression, we had a significant trade surplus, with exports totaling twenty-six billion and imports totaling only twenty-one billion.
And matter of fact, during the nineteen thirties, we had a trade surplus in nine of those ten years.
But we had an economic disaster in our country.
And matter of fact, a disaster made worse by the President Roosevelt's New Deal legislation.
religion.
And what we find, folks, is that you cannot draw simplistic causal connections between trade deficits and surpluses and on the one hand and economic welfare and growth on the other hand.
Now there's so much nonsense written about uh international trade.
Uh people say things like, well, um we we trade with uh say Japan or China and uh the and but that's nonsense.
I mean it might be a convenient expression to say that U.S. trades with Japan, but is it literally true?
Now here's the question I'm asking, and I want somebody to call up and tell me whether it's true or not, or whether they think the to the uh contrary.
That is, when people say that U.S. trades with Japan, do they mean that the United States Congress and President Bush trade with the National Deity of Japan, that's ja the uh Japanese legislature, and Prime Minister uh Shinso Abe?
Or is it U.S. and and Japanese private parties as individuals and corporations who trade with one another?
Let's let's break it down a little further.
That is, when I purchased my Lexus a couple of years ago, uh Lexus produced by Toyota, did I deal with the United States Congress, the Japanese Deed, George Bush, or the Prime Minister of Japan?
Or this is an important test, or did I deal with Toyota and its intermediaries?
Now, if we think of, if we had the mindset that international trade is something that occurs between uh, let's say the United States and Japanese governments, then all Americans as voters have a say so.
But what is the basis of anybody having any say-so when one American engages in peaceable voluntary exchange with another person, be they Japanese, Korean, British, Chinese, or another American?
But uh but people say, well, Williams, we're losing our manufacturing jobs.
Well, that might be a good thing.
We we lost a lot of our agricultural jobs, that is at the turn of the century, let's say in 1900, uh 40 percent of Americans were involved in agriculture, and now about two and a half percent.
Are we any worse off?
And then there's another, you know, what's so great about a manufacturing job?
I mean, uh let's let's pretend that you are a textile worker, or think of yourself as being a textile worker, or somebody else being a textile worker.
Do you think that textile worker is saying uh about his little daughter, I hope my little daughter Sally grows up and one day have her own sewing machine?
Or do you think that they might say, well, I hope my little daughter Sally has a nice service job, such as being an accountant, or being a nurse, or being a doctor, or being a professor of economics.
I think it's the latter.
That is, people d deride or demean uh service jobs as if they're uh not very, very important.
Anyway, I I wish to congratulate the uh New York Times uh editorial uh uh writer who wrote the uh the piece Auto the Auto Workers Pain for uh uh having uh a little bit and not listening to the resident economist, which is uh uh who is uh Paul uh Krugman.
But I think that in the wake of the new elections and uh or the successes of the Democratic Party, we're gonna find even greater pressures for protectionist legislation, that is tariffs and quotas on foreign goods.
And who will tariffs and quotas help and who will be harmed by them?
Well, the people who will be helped by tariffs and quotas are those people who uh business owners or or workers in the so-called in the protected industry that is protected from international competition.
The people that will be hurt are American consumers in general.
They will have to pay higher prices.
Well, uh people might say, well, Williams, uh uh, well, look, uh, the j Japanese or the Chinese, uh, they they don't uh they have all kinds of trade restrictions.
Well, that that's okay for them to have ter uh trade restrictions.
That is, if they want to screw their own people, let them do it.
I mean, for example, yeah, you know the Japanese, I don't know the precise figures I haven't kept up with it lately, but I think that the Japanese uh citizens uh pay two or three times the world price for rice.
And that's because of tariffs and restrictions on the importation of rice to China.
So the uh Japanese in order to protect the Japanese uh farmers, uh rice uh growers.
Now, how do we retaliate against Japan for having those restrictions on rice?
Should we say, should our legislature say, well, look, since the Japanese are screwing their consumers, we ought to get even with them by screwing American consumers.
That is, to make Americans pay uh uh two or three times the world price for uh sugar or or rice or other uh imports.
Then I mean that that is the height of stupidity.
And so my my point of view is that if j if Japan wants to screw its citizens, let them go ahead and do it.
But we should not retaliate uh by uh uh making our consumers pay higher prices.
You know, Milton Friedman, my colleague uh my my uh uh my late colleague uh Milton Friedman, uh he explained it this way one time.
He said, Look, if you are an and I are in a rowboat at sea, and if I shoot if I take my gun and shoot a hole in my end of the boat, what are you supposed to do?
Are you supposed to retaliate by shooting a hole in your end of the boat?
He says to do so would be highly stupid because you'll send both of us down instead of sending uh uh and you would not improve the situation.
Folks, we'll be back with a bunch of your calls after this.
We're back, and it's Walter Williams sitting in for the recovering Rush Limbaugh.
And uh Rush hopefully Russia will be back on Tuesday, but we have Roger Hedgecock uh in on President's Day.
Uh with this New York Times uh editorial, there's another little feature.
And it talks about Toyota.
Well, American uh cars uh car manufacturers are having all kinds of problems.
Uh Toyota reported record profits and sales uh uh this year.
And matter of fact, it's something interesting here as well, another little uh tidbit in this uh editorial is that Toyota provides 29,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Now, what that shows, ladies and gentlemen, all you people who want to uh w w uh calling for protectionist measures, it shows that foreigners are willing to invest trillions of dollars in United States.
I mean, they just can't find a better place to put their money.
Now, what do you think about a country?
You know, people in uh in a tizzy over this international trade and uh and and deficit.
Now, what do you think about a country whereby people all over the world are chomping at the bit to put their money into?
Well, it that's that says something uh that's very, very good about the country.
It says they have they have uh confidence in in the stability in the United States, they have a confidence in a high rate of return.
Uh so people who are calling for protectionist measures, they are people who are calling for us to be less wealthy in a less robust economy.
Uh folks, let me get out the number.
So you guys can call, we've got a bunch of calls and that we'll get to in a minute, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882, and let's go to the phones and take a call from Steve from Des Moines, Iowa.
Welcome to the show, Steve.
Hey, Dr. Walter, you are dead on, and I'm glad it's a subject you're bringing up.
You know, if you go back and just look at farming here in the heartland, as you alluded to, 40 percent of the labor that comprised GDP in 1900 was done on the farm.
Well, now it's a it's less than two percent, but it's not because the farmers have done a bad job, it's because of the productivity gain.
So that was one of the things that Greenspan hit on an awful lot as well.
And the other thing that is that kind of cracks me up is everybody's so concerned about quote unquote our deficit.
Well, look at what happened in Japan, a giant contraction, a deflationary period, because there were continent savers.
Yes, we spend money here, but the productivity gains and the wealth that we create allowed our economy to expand threefold over theirs in the same period, and they're still digging out from a deflationary period.
So you're you're you're dead on.
It's unfortunately most Americans don't realize that.
And and and thank you very much.
You're absolutely right.
And and the way that uh and and I believe that we we don't measure savings uh properly, uh that is we do not include uh the kind of capital goods that uh Americans uh are investing in that don't show up in normal uh savings uh uh and and stocks and and bonds and IRAs and Kios and and other kinds of uh programs like that.
Uh let's go back to the phones and welcome David from New Madrid, Missouri.
Welcome to the show, David.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call, Dr. Williams.
Yes.
Um I would like to uh offer an open line Friday questions specifically for you.
Um you're probably no doubt aware of the uh cartoon stat Mellard Fillmore by Bruce Kinsley.
Yeah.
Okay.
Have you seen in recent days where he has been trying to get a draft Dr. Walter Williams for you would be so interested, and the second question, where could I sign up?
Well, thank you very much.
I've I'm very flattered, and for the uh those of you who uh who aren't aware, uh Bruce Tinsley, he's the uh cartoonist, and he has uh a feature called uh mallard and it's in a whole bunch of newspapers across you uh across the United States, and Mallard is a duck.
And I have been drafted for the United States presidency uh by a by a duck, which is uh probably unprecedented in American history.
But uh but down through the years I've I've been flattered by many of my fellow Americans that I should ride I should run for high political office.
And um and I I'm flattered, I'm I'm deeply flattered, uh and uh but however, I my response, and it might be somewhat flippant uh response, I tell my fellow Americans that in order to win high political office in our country, I would have to rise above principle and do the right thing.
That is, I would have to sound like the rest of them.
And um and and ladies and gentlemen, that's too heady a trek.
And and moreover, uh if if the American people would would elect a person like me to be president of the United States, they would not need me because they would look what kind of guy I am.
I believe in obedience to our rules of the game, namely United States Constitution.
And most politicians, those politicians in Washington, they have utter contempt for the United States Constitution.
I only know of three, uh two or three Congressmen that if the founders of our nation came back, if they were some uh uh miraculously uh uh resurrected from the dead, if they were to come back, they would not have any respect for the members of Congress And the White House, except for two or three Congressmen.
Uh and my uh uh longtime friend Ron Paul, uh Congressman Ron Paul from uh uh Houston, Texas would be one of them.
Uh and you might say, well, what is this guy talking about, the not no respect for the United States Constitution?
Well, if you read the United States Constitution, you read it carefully, in Article 1, Section 8, it says what Congress can do.
And the Constitution, and if it's not in the Constitution, well, Congress does not have authority to do it.
And matter of fact, there's 21 things that the Congress can do.
And uh there's no authorization for handouts for farmers, there's no authorization of bailouts and no author authorization for food stamps, etc.
etc.
But however, anyone arguing those points would not be elected President of the United States.
We'll be back with more of your calls after this.
We're back, and for those of you just tuned in, uh this Walter Williams uh sitting in for Russia who has a bit of illness, uh, you know, and and uh uh Kit Carson called me yesterday, he almost didn't get me because uh I was on the uh on the way out of my house uh to Mrs. Williams was uh shoveling our driveway, and I was on the way out of the house to get her a uh cup of hot chocolate because she is very she was shivering out there while she was doing it.
But just as I closed the door, I heard the telephone ring and so uh I said uh I answered and for so fortunately uh I'm up here substituting today.
Uh there's another New York Times uh study uh story today.
Um and and it's kind of related to another story, and that is it's a story uh it says numbers of people are fleeing Iraq.
And it's estimated by uh some world body, uh some or yeah, international organization for migration, that uh a million people will uh flee their homes uh this year, and uh United States will graciously graciously accept uh seven thousand Iraqis in the United States this year.
Anyway, they're fleeing uh for and and okay, before I I say why they're fleeing, uh you probably know why they're fleeing.
But there's a related story, and it says that uh people are fleeing New Orleans.
And the kind of interesting thing about it is that these people are uh fleeing uh Iraq and uh and New Orleans for many of the same reasons.
Uh for example, in New Orleans, uh many of the people are are leaving, uh they're saying uh high crime, a lack of leadership, uh lack of competency, and a lack of progress.
And that's what the people are saying in Iraq as well.
So uh we have a domestic counterpart to the Iraqi uh uh problem.
But that's not uh uh critically important to uh talk about uh today, but you might want to uh weigh in on that as well.
Let's go back to the phones and talk to Claude from King's Mountain, King's Mountain, uh North Carolina.
Welcome to the show, Claude.
Hello, Dr. Williams.
My question is, and maybe I'm just an idiot and I don't understand, but if we do not manufacture things such as military uniforms, the boots that the military wears, the ammunition that they use, well uh how can we protect ourselves?
Uh you keep talking about free trade manufacturing.
Well, we we'll buy them, but the low-end manufacturing does matter.
Well well, uh well, for example, uh uh let's say hypothetically we're at war with Iran and we do not have uh and let's say we're no longer producing boots.
Well, do you think Canadians would sell us boots?
Yeah, they would, but if you but that's not who supplies us the boots.
They don't make boots anymore.
They're made in third world countries.
Well, we buy we buy from them.
But Dr. Williams, if you were the Chinese and you wanted to physically take over the United States of America, you would never have to invade our borders.
You would go to the satellite countries that are supplying us everything and shut them down and then we do.
No, that's what and and more more more f look, look.
First of all, we have strategic supplies of many uh uh war uh, you know, uh uh things that we need to fight a war, and moreover, do you think that the next war that we uh next really important war that we'd fight would look anything like World War II?
I mean the we're in now would have been tailed and entailed all the military people on the ground that we've got there now.
Well if I wouldn't have thought so.
But but but look at it.
Well wait, wait a way, wait a minute.
See, if you had somebody like uh as the previous caller he was proposing that I run for president, if you had uh Walter Williams as president of the United States We'd be in trouble.
No, no, with as far as war is concerned, uh a war would be over in two days.
Okay.
I agree with you.
I mean, we uh no but we have uh look, we have eighteen Ohio class submarines.
Each Ohio class submarine carries twenty-four Trident missiles.
Each one of those trident missiles has eight independently targeted nuclear warheads.
Sure it does.
And if I were president of the United States, I wouldn't want to go to war at at a drop of a hat.
But if we had to go to war anyway, anywhere, it would be over in two days.
And so we would not have to worry about boots.
But that's still, but you still you're saying hypothetically, but we hypothetically didn't think there would be the type of war that we've got now.
Well wait, wait, wait a way, wait a minute.
That war, see you see, this is what Bona had to pick with uh many cr many uh critics of the war in Iraq.
The war in Iraq that is toppling the the Saddam Hussein regime was the most brilliantly fought war in humankind.
Now, there have all kinds of occupation problems because we did not handle the occupation correctly.
That is, we uh we made some mistakes, I think.
That is, we in World War II we did not make the kind of mistakes that is uh that we made now.
That is, we completely demoralized Germany and Japan and they had no will to resist.
You still haven't told me though how we can be strong if we don't manufacture.
Well, we can be strong by being rich.
And we are the richest nation on the face of the earth.
Who does not fight wars?
Uh well, rich means that you have all kinds of goods and services.
Right?
Yeah, we do.
We're very fortunate.
We're blessed.
But if we come down to I'm gonna say again, if I were the Chinese, I would never step foot on this land.
Never would they have to step foot on our shores.
Oh, c oh, come on, come on.
Okay, so what are they gonna do?
What are the Chinese gonna do?
They're gonna go all around the world and say, don't sell the United States any boots.
I don't have to go tell them not to.
They go and invade those areas.
Okay, they're not gonna let flow.
Okay, well, okay, so what will happen is boot prices will rise and people in in Italy and people in Spain or people in Portugal start making boots.
I disagree with you, sir.
But I appreciate your time.
Okay, well, thank you very much for calling in.
Uh let's take uh call from um uh Chris in Olympia, Washington.
Welcome to the show, Chris.
Yeah, I want you to give uh my best to your lovely wife, and uh she's got one tough job to do.
You might give her a shovel or some mittens or something.
Well, I I did I did give her uh uh a shovel, but uh um I I think I should have uh prepared it for yesterday.
I should I should have given her some salt.
Well you need to you need to thank her.
My my question is uh relatively simple.
Um when we have uh I think current account measures the uh the trade deficit that we have with other uh countries.
In goods in goods and services.
Correct.
If we ha if we run a uh a long-term deficit with other countries, my my question is where does that money go and how does it get back to us?
Because there the way I envision it, there must be a pool of money that is that is constantly leaving the United States.
And I and I'm very curious how that affects our economy, and then also if it affects any kind of uh federal trade deficit we might have.
Well I'm sorry, uh f federal federal budget deficit.
Uh well they they're they're two different things, they're two different issues.
Uh that is when when we what let's say when I buy my Lexus, I give the jet uh uh uh twenty thousand dollars goes to the uh Toyota company.
Now the Toyota might not spend those uh those dollars in United States right away.
They might buy uh um uh twenty or thirty thousand dollars worth of uh goods from uh from England.
England might use those dollars uh to buy something from Canada.
But ultimately those dollars come back in the United States.
And and and many times those dollars come back not in goods and not in the purchase of goods and services from United States, but they come back in the form of investments in the United States.
That is, uh Toyota builds uh uh factories uh and other companies build factories in the United States, and so those dollars come back, uh come back in that form, and they and they don't have to necessarily come back in terms of uh uh purchasing goods and service from us.
Are are those measured, the the the the reinvestment back up to the United States?
Well, well there's so there's not really a deficit then.
No, there's in in any kind of economic uh uh uh sense of the term, there's no international trade deficit because most people when they talk about deficit, they're looking at the current account, they're ignoring the capital account.
And the cap and the capital account would be stocks, bonds, and other kinds of investments that foreigners would make in the United States.
Well, it doesn't make any sense then that to have a trade deficit if that money flows right back into the market.
It's always it's always balanced, and when we come back from the break, I'll tell you how it's balanced.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, uh Walter Williams sitting in.
Uh the last uh the last caller we talked about um uh goods account uh versus uh capital accounts.
Now, imagine here's a simple case.
Imagine I have a hundred dollars and I go to my grocer and I buy a hundred dollars worth of goods from him.
And and of course, he doesn't buy anything for me, and so uh you might think that there's a deficit.
Okay, well, what really happens is that when I buy a hundred dollars worth of goods from him, my goods account goes up, but my capital account goes down by a hundred dollars.
The same thing with the grocer.
Uh that is when he sells me a hundred dollars worth of goods, his goods account goes down, but his capital account goes up.
And so there's a perfect balance of trade.
And so uh, I mean, he just he doesn't use those dollars to you know put them in a cookie jar.
Uh he may took take the hundred dollars and buy from a wholesaler.
So his capital count goes down, but his goods account goes up.
And that's roughly the same with international trade.
Now, a previous caller, he was suggesting that we ought to be independent.
Well, yes, folks, we can be independent.
Let me give you an example.
That is, we don't have to do any international trade at all.
That is, we don't have to uh go and buy uh coffee beans uh from Brazil and cocoa from African countries.
We can produce them ourselves.
That is, for example, we could uh uh and so some people say, well, look, we don't have the climate and soil conditions to produce cocoa.
Well, we don't need the climate and soil condition.
I know our scientists uh could get together and we could simulate the cocoa growing conditions in Africa.
That is, uh cocoa trees, uh they might grow to about 40 feet.
We could use the superdome and uh and uh and and create the soil conditions that exist in Africa and create the the light conditions that exist in Africa and grow our own cocoa.
We could do the same thing with coffee.
But ladies and gentlemen, what do you think that says about the price of cocoa and coffee?
If you said that we'd be paying much higher prices, go to the head of the class.
You're absolutely right.
So why do we trade with Brazil and Africa for cocoa and coffee?
The answer is uh very simple.
It's because it's cheaper to do so.
Now that applies to almost anything that is is cheaper to do so.
Now, people who are asking for us to be independent, independent of other countries, they're asking us to be poor.
Because the poorest people in the world are very independent.
They don't depend on on and they don't depend on others to the extent that we do.
Just kind of think of that.
Think about it.
In in your day-to-day life, how many things do you use that you produce yourself?
They're very little.
I mean, do you produce your eyeglasses?
Do you produce your radio?
Do you produce your TV?
Do you produce your car?
No.
You depend on others.
Now, if you want to find some independent people, go to Borneo or go to Dafour.
Those people, they're they're producing their own water, they're producing their own houses, the little shacks that they live in, they might be producing their own food.
They're relatively independent of others, but they're much poorer.
And anyone asking us to be independent of others, they're really asking us to be poor.
And keep that in mind.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Dr. Williams.
How are you?
Um I want to set this up a little bit.
I have a friend that uh works internationally, and he's complaining that the economy is terrible because his dollar doesn't go as far overseas as it used to.
Uh my question is, what's the relationship of a weak or a strong dollar to the economy?
Well, look, um we we have what people call a weak dollar, and we have the uh our economy is the envy of the world.
That is, we're we have uh a rapid economic growth, we have higher standards of living, even though we have a weak dollar.
There are periods where uh in countries where their currency is quote unquote strong, and those people uh it can be uh it can be a very, very weak economy.
And so the uh the value of the dollar, at least in the free trade uh uh market, the value is d uh is the uh of the dollars determined by uh international trade markets.
I wouldn't worry about it.
Let's go to uh Peter in Orange County, New York.
Hi, Dr. Williams, who are you?
Okay.
I have I think you're missing a boat on just one thing.
You know when you made the analogy about the boat, uh one bullet on one side, one bullet in the other side?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, as a thirty-foot wave is gonna knock your boat over and kill you anyway.
And that 30-foot wave is China.
Oh, kind of now, in regards, they've been spending so much of the money that they've been receiving from us in all of Western Europe on updating the military to the the latest state of the art.
And the latest example of that they were able to shoot down a satellite.
Now, my question is this I I'm a big believer in international trade, but why do you want to trade with someone who wants to destroy you?
Why would you want to do that?
Because they have something that we want and we enjoy.
Yes, but at the at the same time, you're arming these people, and that the their philosophy is to do you under.
Why would you want why would you want to keep you know importing and and sending them money and so they could spend even more on uh high-tech uh technology for the military?
Well, I do that.
Uh well look, I think that I think that people's concerns about China, I think they're uh and the strength of China that I think they're uh they're they're they're uncalled for.
I think that China can't it doesn't have the even the inkling of being able to take us on militarily, and I don't see it in the foreseeable future.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back.
Um by the way, uh that last caller was talking about uh trading with uh China, trading with the enemy, uh or trade and it could be trading with anybody.
Now let's look at the question.
Why is it that any country can sell anything in the United States?
Why is it?
It's because the American consumer wishes to buy it.
That is, if they did not buy it, then the countries uh couldn't sell it.
Now, the people who are talking about uh doing something about it, well, what they're really saying is that we're going to thwart the desire, we want to thwart the desire of American consumers to spend their money as they please, and we want to use the force of government to use uh uh use this brutal force to stop Americans from exercising uh their their choice.
Now, d do you want that?
I I I surely do not want that.
That is, I want to live in a country where I can buy wish what I want.
Now, you say, well, if Americans uh Americans don't have any choice.
Well, yes, they do have choice.
They can just not buy those things.
So um as as my colleague Milton Friedman said, people who are against uh free trade, they're really against freedom.
And I think that we all should be concerned about any threats to our freedom.
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