re: #162 subsailor68

orders in the automotive and heavy industrial (think Caterpillar) sectors were off the charts.

On that note, did you catch the 60 Minutes piece on “Buy American” last night? The domestic steel guy was all for forcing stimulus infrastructure projects to use only American produced steel.

The Caterpillar guy, on the other hand, made a terrific point. Caterpillar uses (IIRC) 70% domestic steel in their equipment. But they sell all over the world.

What good would it do Caterpillar to support a Buy American program that resulted in a global trade war that tanked their sales.

Besides, we already tried Smoot-Hawley and it didn’t work.

Funny thing is, I kinda see both sides of the issue on this one - not that I _agree_ with both sides, but I used to live in a steel-mill town back when the “American steel crisis” was going on. It was big news in my neck of the woods, and a lot of jobs were on the line, so I understand why it’s preferable to buy American. But on the other hand, union overhead costs are so prohibitive that many companies literally can’t cut costs enough to keep up with world markets. I’m all for unions as a defense against aggressive management, but to repeat myself, there’s a lot of bad crazy in industrial America these days.