This morning at the Progressive Policy Institute there will be a panel by the above title, featuring a paper — also by the same title — by the PPI’s Ed Gresser. According to the promotional flyer, here is the thrust of Gresser’s thesis:

“‘Populist’ worries blend empathy for American workers and their
families with broader fears that trade with China and other low-income
rivals is ‘deindustrializing’ America as factories either close or move
to low-wage havens. A new paper by PPI’s Ed Gresser, entitled, ‘Lou Dobbs
is Wrong: America’s Manufacturing Revival,’ argues that the empathy is
justified, but the fear is mainly myth. America’s factories are in far
better shape, he says, than most realize. Low-wage competition or not,
the U.S. share of world manufacturing is stable, exports are soaring,
and factories produce more than ever before.”

Our own economist, Chi Nguyen, will be attending and will give us a full report. We’ll fill you in as soon as we get the details, but it sounds like they’re on the right track.

Here’s a link to a great piece by the above title by our friend and fellow blogger Pejman Yousefzadeh over on RedState.com about our buddy Lou Dobbs. Says Pejman, “Lou Dobbs needs some competition in the realm of ideas. And the rest of us would benefit from seeing his ideas challenged and beaten back.”

Hey, Pej, we’d like to think we’re the competition. But then, we don’t have a satellite.Yet.

Only got about 100 e-mails on this today and no, we didn’t miss it — thanks.

Here’s “An Open Letter to Lou Dobbs” from Don Boudreaux, Chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason University, posted over at the Cafe Hayek blog and reprinted in the Christian Science Monitor. Says Boudreaux:

“Every night on CNN…You thunder that imports destroy American jobs, reduce wages, and make the economy perilously ‘unbalanced.’ But you are mistaken.”

He goes on to enumerate some stunning and persuasive statistics on Dobbs’ oft-lamented middle class, proving that things ain’t all that bad. On trade, there’s this:

“[Adam] Smith correctly understood that with free trade, the economy becomes larger than any one nation – a fact that brings more human creativity, more savings, more capital, more specialization, more opportunity, more competition, and a higher standard of living to all those who can freely trade.”

Yeah, we knew that. All in all, a good read. We’d recommend it. Looks like George Mason trumps a Harvard grad on basic economics.

It’s come to this.

Here’s a very funny tongue-in-cheek piece from Newsweek’s Andy Borowitz on our favorite demagogue, Lou, wagging a finger at Santa, warning him not to cross the border on Christmas Eve. “To our knowledge, Santa Claus is a resident of the North Pole and therefore is doing business in the United States as an undocumented worker,” says Borowitz-as-Dobbs.

He goes on: “Dobbs also pressed Congress to open a “Full investigation’ into the country of origin of the gift items in Santa Claus’ sack. ‘We have reason to believe that Santa’s sack is full of cheap gift items manufactured in China, only adding to America’s already burgeoning trade deficit,’ the CNN anchor said.”

Click here to read the full article. Thanks to Steve Peterson of Obiter Dicta for sending along.

Bah humbug!

As you may know, our buddy Lou Dobbs drifted down to sunny Tampa last week for one of his infamous whip-’em-up town hall meetings. And so local commentator, pundit — and blogger — Eric Deggans who writes “The Feed” for TampaBay.com decided to get a phone interview with Lou.

Unfortunately for Deggans, it turned out poorly. Seems he had the temerity to ask Lou a few tough questions about the Ken Auletta profile we noted here a week or so ago. (A profile, incidentally which seems to have “borrowed” our transcript of the Tom Friedman on Lou Dobbs comment — without attribution. Tsk!). In any event, Deggans asked Lou about that article and apparently Dobbs took great umbrage and began insulting Deggans.

In response to comments on Deggans’ blog, he reports that Lou said things to him like, “I thought you were a better journalist than that.” or “Ask me a question that makes some sense.” Or “That’s just dishonest…you’re absolutely being dishonest.” Funny, these are all the questions that rational minds have had for Lou since he went from being a business reporter to populist jihadist.

Could it be that Lou can dish it out but can’t take it? Gosh, we hope not. That would be terrible for his ratings.

Interesting. Seems like the tides of opinion-making have turned against Lou Dobbs.

The past month or so has seen numerous articles and columns that take on the populist pronouncements of the CNN personality, pieces in newspapers and magazines that span the political spectrum. (See Shopfloor.org covererage here.)

The latest to weigh in is Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, in an article that focuses on the political context of Dobbs’ fulminating (as opposed to the media-criticism angle): The Apocalyptic Centrism of Lou Dobbs.

There are various ways to tap into public disgust with partisan politics as usual. One is with a tonal centrism. That is what is offered by Barack Obama, a liberal who presents himself with a tone of sweet reason. Then there is a technocratic centrism: the bland, policy-oriented politics of the sort former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner would have offered Democrats had he run for president. Finally, there’s an apocalyptic centrism, spiced up with paranoia and economic ignorance, and warning of the end of America as we know it. Think Ross Perot.

Dobbs is in the Perot tradition. He has taken Dennis Kucinich, Pat Buchanan, and a dash of John Bolton, thrown them into a blender and come up with a worldview that is nationalist and populist, while giving both of those things a bad name.

Boy, that’s a lot of dissing in a couple of paragraphs.

Lowry goes on to refute Dobbs’ usual erroneus facts and dark pronouncements. Lowry’s article also prompts some on-point e-mail commentary in The Corner here and here.

No grand conclusion being drawn here, other than to observe that perhaps Dobbs has simply gained enough prominence that his anti-capitalist schtick is earning the scrutiny it always warranted. (And, ahem, was provided early and often here from the Blogger-in-Chief.)

Two more articles about Lou to report, sent to us of late by some of his, uh, non-fans. The first is by Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal, who says:

“Old admirers [of Lou] are aghast. It’s as if whatever made Linda Blair’s head spin around in ‘The Exorcist’ had invaded the body of Lou Dobbs and left him with the brain of Dennis Kucinich. No public figure has moved so far left so fast since the transfiguration of Arianna Huffington.”

The piece is subtitled, “The good thing about his demagoguery: It can’t be taken seriously,” and notes as we have in this space many times that Lou — a Harvard-trained economist — is an entertainer, in it for the ratings. Bully for him.

The other piece is from Barron’s, and is written by Gene Epstein. He points out some statistical legerdemain in Lou’s book, twisting some numbers to draw a conclusion more in line with his dogma. Says Epstein, “It’s time to call Dobbs’ economic demagogy what it is.”

We had nodded off apparently when Lou called us out on his show on Wednesday night. Thanks to the folks over at the Business and Media Institute for calling our attention to it.

Lou said that an “NAM spokesman” (we’re not sure who yet) “Admits American manufacturers have a lot of problems. Then seemingly says, Don’t worry.” Not sure we’ve ever said that. We’ve said we should worry plenty about the self-imposed costs we are putting on ourselves, giving us a 33% cost disadvantage with our competitors. Then Lou went on to rant, “NAM wouldn’t mind if foreign manufacturers owned 98 percent of the American market, so long as it is expanding. That’s precisely the kind of mindless, faith-based free trade nonsense that’s landed the country in the mess we’re in.”

Good God, get a grip, man!

What we’ve said — from the data (anybody care about the data?) — is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that about 42,000 jobs (out of a workforce of about 150 million) have been “offshored.” By comparison, we know from the Organization for International Investment that over 5 million jobs have been created by so-called “foreign” companies doing business in the US.

Furthermore, 70 percent of U.S. “multinational” company production is right here in the U.S. Only 27 percent takes place overseas — for foreign consumption- – and only 3 percent is produced overseas for shipment back to the U.S. Kinda blows a hole in the xenophobic view that it’s all gone to China to be manufactured and shipped back here, doesn’t it?

In any event, we’re always glad when Lou brings a little more attention to our great organization. We’ve long since given up on any hope that he’d be limited by the facts. But we are happy to be — especially when they’re so heavily weighted on our side, as here.

Kitty Pilgrim, sitting on for Lou Dobbs, had a pretty gloomy piece on manufacturing last night. In fairness, they did correctly note that they invited our Chairman on the program and correctly noted that he couldn’t do it because of a scheduling conflict (hard to get CEO’s on very short notice, as everyone knows), but the piece was factually wrong in several respects. There were a few lefty commentators on there, however, who made points with which we would agree. Among them:

Alan Tonelson of the US Business and Industry Council, credible to Lou and few others, is chronically wrong in his “trade is bad” comments throughout. Kitty Pilgrim closed the segment by saying, “The value of the dollar has fallen sharply against other currencies this week, particularly against the euro and the yen… The major reason for the trade deficit is the commitment of successive administrations to so-called free trade policies. Those policies have allowed imports from cheap, overseas labor markets to flood into the country.” This is not correct.

The truth is that the weaker dollar actually makes US goods cheaper overseas, so US-manufactured products are cheaper for folks to buy in Europe and Asia. Them’s just the facts, so the Dobbsians have it exactly backwards. Trade agreements open markets to our goods and the lower dollar makes them cheaper to buy. Hard for some to get their brains around apparently, but it’s true.

We’ll say it again: If Lou Dobbs really wants to talk about what’s bedeviling US manufacturers, he need look no further than the 33% cost disadvantage vs. our competitors in areas like legal costs, tax burdens, energy and regulatory costs. We hope Lou will dedicate a show or two to those topics if he really wants to get to the root of the problem.

Good piece by wise man Bob Samuelson in today’s WaPo by the above title, rightfully fretting about the new growing hostile climate toward free trade. Says Samuelson:

“Just last week Democratic congressional leaders signaled that they may oppose new trade agreements with Colombia and Peru. Who, if anyone, would benefit is unclear. As The Post reported, the agreements’ darkened prospects have already led to layoffs in Colombia. In the United States, manufacturers believe the agreements would expand their exports. Peru’s tariffs average about 10 percent, Colombia’s about 11 percent, says Frank Vargo of the National Association of Manufacturers. Most of these would go to zero under the agreements.”

We’ve made this point here repeatedly: Trade agreement lower barriers to entry of US-made goods. That’s good for US manufacturers. It’s a multilateral world out there. As Samuelson points out. If we don’t negotiate trade agreements with these countries, other countries will. “If we take ourselves out of the trade negotiation game,” says one trade expert, “U.S. exporters will be the losers.” Those “US exporters” are our members, American manufacturers large and small.

In conclusion, Samuelson says, “The next Congress must decide whether it embraces the symbolism or the reality of trade. If it chooses symbolism, it will perversely harm many of the workers it’s trying to help.”

Lou Dobbs, are you listening….?