by Patrick J Buchanan – February 18, 2004

Last week was an instructive one for the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Gregory Mankiw was battered by leaders of both parties, hoisted by John Kerry, abandoned by his own president and forced to recant his beliefs.

What had Professor Mankiw done? He had used the “Economic Report of the President” to tutor us in free-trade theory.

In that report, Mankiw had equated the outsourcing of customer call-center jobs to India with buying manufactured goods from abroad, and pronounced both to be natural and good. “When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically.”