Free Trade

Brown vs. Boudreaux: Coming Soon to C-SPAN Pay-Per-View?

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Here's Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) ranting against free trade from the floor of the U.S. Senate:

"[I] would love to go anywhere in the United States and have a public debate to show the public and show the American people how much this [international trade] has undermined our sovereignty, our wealth, our manufacturing base."

I guess we'll soon see if Brown's challenge is real or mere rhetorical flourish. Reason contributor and George Mason University Economic Chair Don Boudreaux has taken Brown up on his challenge.

Obligatory egg-it-on Facebook group here.

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Radley Balko is a journalist at The Washington Post.

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  1. Jason Izen

    Don Boudreaux is the shit.

  2. DG

    This would be like watching the ’85 Bears vs. the ’08 Lions.

    1. sage

      Because no one will care?

  3. Sherrod Brown belongs in a picket line somewhere beating the shit out of some poor bastard for going to work that day. Fuck him.

    1. Union Cheerleader

      Hey, they deserve it!

  4. Trespassers W

    Hmm… rhetorical flourishes and misdirection vs. an array of facts and theory.

    Could turn out to be like one of them creationist/biologist debates.

    1. Fiscal Meth

      Even better. Don might actually change some minds since understaning how capitalism works isn’t punishable by an eternity of hellfire.

      1. Gaia

        Sez who?

  5. Fatty Bolger

    Undermining our wealth? That’s rich coming from one of the of the idiots who thought it would be a good idea to pay people to have their car engines glassed.

  6. “[I] would love to go anywhere in the United States and have a public debate to show the public and show the American people how much this [international trade] has undermined our sovereignty, our wealth, our manufacturing base.”

    Spoken just like good ol’ Pat Buchanan, and just as equally wrong.

    For some reason, anti-free trade zealots do not apply their principles to trade between the States, even though the effects should be the “same:”

    – A shift of money from one state to the other;
    – Comparative advantage raising its ugly head every time Texas or Oklahoma obtains jobs shipped from California . . . or Michigan.

  7. Corey S.

    Russ Feingold has always a been a chief proponent of this nonsense as well. I did my best (still poor) Boudreaux impression on his blog, and it miraculously hasn’t been deleted.

    http://blog.russfeingold.org/?p=845

  8. emerson

    Am I the only one who thinks the letters to the editor Boudreaux routinely writes should be assembled into a book?

  9. Thanks

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