Buy American = Be Brazilian

I love these stories (in the bad way). It appears that the large Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, wants to buy a bunch of oil tankers. It was all but certain that that order would go to a Brazilian shipyard who would in turn buy the steel (lots and lots of steel) from Brazilian steel mills. But to keep their fellow Brazilians honest or to cover their butts or something, Petrobras took bids from all over the world. All the Brazilian steelmakers had to do was not be total pigs. But they weren't, they came in 60% higher than the nearest bid. Now they are accusing Petrobras of being disloyal to the nation by getting the international bids and exposing their rapacity. Clearly, loyalty means sticking the Brazilian nation with several billion dollars of needless overpayments to build out its infrastructure. This is just the mentality down there, they don't need to have a special "Buy Brazilian" provision in any legislation. This is the type of banana republic economics we'd be miring ourselves in if this crack cocaine-stupid "Buy American" blather makes it through the Great Sausage Factory intact.

UPDATE: The WSJ gives the President some mild kudos for injecting some semblance of sanity into the debate. Why is it that we give our leadership credit for avoiding insanely stupid ideas? Shouldn't our leadership at least be of a certain quality that truly awful ideas are non-starters to begin with? (Ah, there I go again exhibiting my irrepressible optimism/political naivete again.) And note how little Obama had to do to garner such praise (as well as the mealy-mouth liberal language) - "we don't want to send a message..." that we would do something so destructive. Messages. Hints. Semaphore. Code. Flying Methaphors. What stunning clarity, directness, and resolve our Great Leader possesses. How about something like this Mr. Obama: "Protectionism is dangerous and destructive and the United States of America will not resort to it, and I, as President, will not let it happen."