Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday urged Americans not to turn high anxiety about US job losses into support for projectionist trade measures, which could hurt rather than help the situation.
In prepared remarks to the House of Representatives Education Committee, the Fed chief waded into a burgeoning political argument with a strong call for an open trade environment that appeared to echo President George W. Bush's sentiments.
"As history clearly shows, our economy is best served by full and vigorous engagement in the global economy," Greenspan said a day after Bush inveighed against any effort to restrict access to US markets by saying it might hurt US exporters.
Greenspan noted "new projectionist measures" were being proposed, without specifying what he was referring to, and said they could be self-defeating.
"These alleged cures could make matters worse rather than better," he said. "They would do little to create jobs and if foreigners were to retaliate, we would surely lose jobs."
In the run-up to November's presidential elections, Democrats have sought to tag the Bush administration with the blame for a jobless recovery, saying that "outsourcing" of US jobs to cheap-labour countries like India and China could and should be slowed.
Senator John Kerry, who has the Democratic presidential nomination virtually locked up, sought union workers' support on Wednesday by saying Bush tax cuts helped the rich while doing nothing to protect middle-class jobs.
"Everywhere I've been in this campaign, I've met working Americans who are getting the short end of the stick," Kerry said before the AFL-CIO labour federation in Chicago. "Jobs on the run. Wages and salaries dead in the water."
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