print logo

AMERICAN.COM

A Magazine of Ideas

A Foolish Inconsistency

By The American From the May/June 2007 Issue

Senator Dorgan’s views on agriculture and pharmaceuticals don’t add up.

Senator Dorgan
Byron Dorgan, North Dakota’s junior sen­ator, is a tireless opponent of free trade, as the title of his book, Take This Job and Ship It, implies. Consistency is not his strong suit. He cherishes U.S. agricultural subsi­dies but also continually whines that Canada subsidizes its own farmers, which means, he says, that Canadians are “underselling our farm­ers with unfair prices.”

But when it comes to low Canadian drug prices…. Well, that’s another matter entirely. He wants Canada’s price-controlled pharmaceuticals shipped here pronto. “The U.S. consumer,” he said in 2005, “ought to have access to the world trade market, with proper safety precautions, and use that approach to drive down prices and force a repricing here in the United States.”

How about the same policy for wheat, eh?

Subscribe Today!

Current Issue

Current Issue

Our Electric Future
Andy Grove outlines a bold new energy policy.
Zero Heroes
Hollywood no longer aspires to portray genuine heroism.
How Are We Doing?
The case against economic pessimism.