Chrysler Chief Talks to Businessmen : Iacocca Calls Free Trade a Myth That Hurts U.S.
The United States soaks up half the world’s manufactured goods by following the “myth” of free trade while other countries shut it out of their markets, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca said Tuesday.
He told 2,500 Canadian and U.S. businessmen gathered for Quebec’s Rendez-vous 87 winter carnival that free trade is a myth but no country can afford real protectionism. He suggested “a sensible middle position” based on self-interest and fairness.
“What the world needs now is more trading, pure trading, and less competing. Free trade is a nice lofty ideal, but it’s a myth, (and) no country in the world today can afford to just slam the door,” Iacocca said to the $100-a-plate luncheon crowd. Executives gave him a standing ovation.
His topic is considered urgent in Canada, which wants a free trade pact with Washington to defend itself from growing U.S. protectionism.
Iacocca made clear at a news conference that he opposes a free trade agreement unless Canada’s $17-billion trade surplus with the United States is narrowed.
He accused the Reagan administration of starting with no trade policy, other than a promise of economic growth, then driving the U.S. dollar so high that American exporters could not compete.
The result is an accumulated U.S. trade deficit of $629 billion, 3 million lost jobs and a doubling of the national debt to $2 trillion since Reagan took office in 1981, he said.
Administration officials “light candles to free trade every night,” Iacocca said, but the reality is that the United States is the world’s biggest market while other countries keep out American goods.
“The United States has become the world’s giant shopping mall,” taking 39% of Japan’s exports, 76% of Canada’s and 90% of Mexico’s, he said.
The Chrysler chairman said someone mailed him a Chinese bootleg copy of his own bestselling autobiography and asked him to sign it.
Japan has built a $60-billion annual surplus with the United States, including $26 billion in cars alone, by barring American products that range from meat-filled ravioli to walnuts, chocolates and baseball bats, Iacocca said.
