More Obamanomics

I appreciate the New York Times for this:

As he campaigns against what he describes as unfair foreign trade deals, Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, often singles out Japan and especially South Korea for criticism. Both countries, he complains, have erected “all kinds of restrictions and barriers” to shut out American products, including beef and automobiles.

“You can’t get beef into Japan and Korea, even though, obviously, we have the highest safety standards of anybody, but they don’t want to have that competition from U.S. producers,” Mr. Obama said last month in a speech to farmers in South Dakota. Last week, near Detroit, he asserted that “if South Korea is selling hundreds of thousands of cars to the United States and we can only sell less than 5,000 in South Korea, something is wrong.”

Because a lot of people are wondering about his centrist economic choices lately (while some who are actually closer to the campaign can tell us why we shouldn't worry).

One example that particularly stands out is this interview for CNBC (being a capitalist country, you'll just have put up with the 15 second commercial):

But the beef with our beef is a different story. Our food supply is notoriously unsafe - actually - and has been unsafe since the free-spending Republicans have cut back on the FDA food-inspection budget.

Latest example, tomatoes.

The beef with our cars on the other hand might be a little different. Either they really are holding up the line in Japan and South Korea, or these people know what a lot of people in this country also know. We just don't make high quality (read: reliable) vehicles.

Toyota isn't one of the "big three" for nothing.

Maybe a little more food safety and labor involvement in improving the production process is the real solution to those two problems.

And a little more of that famous Obama "telling it like it is" honesty would certainly be helpful in both regards.