The other day, The Wall Street Journal provided a public service by lambasting Newt Gingrich for his absurd speech to the ethanol lobby in Des Moines last month (money line: “Obviously big urban newspapers want to kill it because it’s working, and you wonder, ‘What are their values?‘”). Today, Gingrich and fellow ethanol‐maven James Woolsey struck back in those very same pages. In doing so, Gingrich provided yet more evidence that he’s intellectually unfit for office.
“It is in this country’s long‐term best interest,” he said, “to stop the flow of $1 billion a day overseas.” Really? So money sent overseas is gone forever. News to me. The only thing you can buy with dollars earned from oil sales to the U.S. is to buy things denominated in dollars or to exchange them so that someone else can. And we sell a lot of stuff to foreigners that are denominated in dollars (treasury bills for one) and that money comes right back to the good old U.S. of A.
But put that aside. If Gingrich really believes this, then why not just ban all imports all together? Is that what the GOP is about these days — rank gooberism on trade?
And one other thing; the U.S. does not spend $1 billion a day on foreign oil. It spends about half that; $530 million a day (in 2009 anyway).