So, let's stop reducing this problem to black and white, right and wrong, to demonize the "foreigners" with whom we are, like it or not, in an economically co-dependent relationship. In this industry there are both American owned firms in China and Chinese firms doing business in America.
The Steelworkers deserve support in their fight for economic fairness and new laws to help them organize. They deserve respect for their advocacy of an environmentally sustainable economy.
Their 'save our tires' tactic, however, is a throw back, a step in the wrong direction and likely to hurt all sides in our economic relationships. We need each other to achieve economic stability.
Instead of gaining jobs for Americans, this measure could lose them. 500 US businesses could be hurt if this "remedy" goes through. Also, bear in mind, those US tire plants that were closed down before the Chinese imports from China began.
We need to ask: whom does protectionism really protect? When things are so bad, why make them worse?
American journalist Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. He has reported from China and writes on financial issues and social justice. He is a graduate of Cornell's labor school, The London School of Economics and a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. He is making a film on the financial crisis as a crime story.
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