Enforcing a National Bias

The US government has, for the second time in a week, said that it is going to put government restrictions on the ability of US residents to buy goods from whomever they want:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The Bush administration will impose quotas on four more categories of Chinese textile imports because they threaten to disrupt the U.S. market, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

The action builds on quotas imposed last week on three major categories of Chinese textile imports.

On Wednesday, a federal interagency panel, the Committee for Implementation of Textile Agreements, chaired by the Commerce Department, determined that imports of men’s and boys’ cotton and man-made fiber shirts, man-made fiber trousers, man-made fiber knit shirts and blouses, and combed cotton yarn are threats to the U.S. market. Read the government statement.

Yes, I am being deliberately provacative, both with the way I phrased the opening sentence of this post and with the title (which obviously refers to the post above this one). But while provocative, both are accurate descriptions of this story.

Kash