WHERE HE RINGS TRUE: FREE TRADE ISN'T ALWAYS FAIR

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On trade, as on other points, of course, Buchanan often appeals less to economic logic than to nationalistic nostalgia. Last week he apostrophized the faces on Mount Rushmore as those of fellow protectionists, and he was right. George Washington was a Buy American booster who boasted that he drank only U.S.-brewed ale, and Thomas Jefferson came over to that side as President. Both Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt assailed free trade. T.R.'s view: "Pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fiber."

Reviewing this background, historian Alfred E. Eckes Jr. has lately come up with one of the few intellectual arguments Buchanan has been able to cite. In a 1995 book, Opening America's Market, Eckes argues that the protectionist U.S. grew much faster than free-trade Britain between 1871 and 1913, and that the post-World War II competitive position of the American economy weakened greatly after the 1968-72 period, when a U.S.-led round of sharp tariff cuts went into effect. Some students, though, think Eckes is reading into the statistics a cause-and-effect relationship that isn't there.

Whatever the case in the past, protectionism in today's heavily interdependent global economy would be disastrous for the U.S. Foreign retaliation, and inability to earn dollars by selling to the U.S., would throttle the rise in U.S. exports, which has accounted for one-third of all American economic growth in the past three years. Rather than helping the low-wage people it is supposed to aid, protectionism would make the purchase of inexpensive imports that many rely on to stretch their meager earnings more difficult.

The U.S. footwear industry has almost been wiped out in the past decade; imports now account for about 90% of shoes sold here. But John Stollenwerk, owner of Allen-Edmonds, one of the few American shoe manufacturers left, says protectionism would not have saved others. Says he: "This isn't a shoemaking country. It's a high-tech one. There aren't a lot of Americans interested in sewing shoes together." Stollenwerk has survived by paying his 450 employees in Port Washington, Wisconsin, high wages of $12 to $15 an hour and turning out premium-quality shoes.

Free traders need an equally imaginative political strategy to ward off protectionism. Their policy has claimed some real victims, who can no longer be kept quiet by sermons about the greater good of the overall economy. Unfortunately, the sermonizers have been less than prolific with ideas about how to help the losers. The lead idea is retraining, but it would have to be conducted on a scale difficult to finance at a time of pinched federal budgets. The alternative, however, might be a protectionist spirit that keeps reviving, just as Frankenstein's monster kept coming back in movie sequel after sequel.

--Reported by Tom Curry/New York, James L. Graff/Chicago and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington

With reporting by TOM CURRY/NEW YORK, JAMES L. GRAFF/ CHICAGO AND J.F.O. MCALLISTER/WASHINGTON

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