Sam Gejdenson: “if this was an ideological debate or an attempt at evolving a philosophy for the operation of the globe, we might want…”

“if this was an ideological debate or an attempt at evolving a philosophy for the operation of the globe, we might want to discuss, in a theoretical sense, how government got to this point and where government should go. But this is a very practical life lesson for survival we are involved in. The United States of America does very well in international trade. We have some very tough competitors. And, frankly, this is one of the few tools we have to prevent those international competitors from just rigging the system against American workers. We can talk about American companies, and sometimes there are differences in the interests of the company and the workers, but in this case the workers' and the companies' interests are joined. If we do not sell the product, that company loses but the workers are unemployed. When we look at large capital areas, for a while the French, the Japanese, and others were simply stealing markets as the American trade representatives and American financial institutions were asleep at the switch. What we had time and time again was the Americans making a better product at a better price, but the French came in with 1-percent financing, or the Germans came in with no-percent financing, or the Japanese gave a kicker to begin the program. Well, over the last decade we have started responding. As a result of that, we have brought back market share to this country, and that has indeed helped companies.…”