by Steven Bonnell II

Created on: May 25, 2007

There was a similar issue with this a few decades ago. I can't recall the specifics, but it had to do with an oil crisis that the United States was facing just following a war. Japan was doing great in creating smaller, more fuel efficient cars, and, as a result, many Americans were turning to Japan for their car purchases and leaving American producers in the dust.

The government's response was to place a high tariff on overseas cars for a very limited period of time, giving current car manufacturers time to "catch up", so to speak.

Americans should be allowed to import whatever they desire from any other country they want. That's the beauty of the free market, you see. If the government tells Americans that they have to buy only domestic products, then domestic producers have a much smaller incentive to innovate because they aren't competing with large, international businesses. I can understand putting some sort of temporary tariff on imports if some other country discovered some very innovative way to create a certain medicine, but the tariff has to be temporary.

Competition is the key to innovation, and competition can't exist if you artificially weed out the competitors just because you can't compete.

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