On 12/26/2011 3:44 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
....

You can find an endless list of excuses for this, and I've probably
heard them all in the 35+ years I've reported on manufacturing and
trade. In the end, they're doing something right that we're doing
wrong.

For some specific definition of "right". They operate under different
constraints and w/ much different arrangements of (primarily) government
intervention. It isn't, however, the US.

....

And all of those trade barriers preceeded the WTO by more than ten
years. Now, if you follow WTO rulings, you'll see that they're biased
toward the wealthy countries, including the US, on most items.
....

Well, that's not so much the case imo, particularly wrt to ag products
where the European restrictions are enormous and the subsidies go along
with them (in different forms than in US, but even more in terms of
actual value per unit production).

This is, however, the wrong forum to try to delve into the depths
required to get anywhere meaningful on the subject; as noted elsewhere,
none of this is nearly as simple as a few comments would try to imply
that there is some magic elixir somewhere.

Germany is certainly not entirely w/o difficulties of their own
economically.

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