He may be light on the facts but Lou Dobb’s boisterous isolationism does draw an audience like a faith healer at a Munchausen’s convention. Dobbs is encouraging his viewers to express their dissatisfaction with the U.S. Chamber’s position on certain protectionist provisions in the stimulus bill, and they are doing it with gusto. Most of the comments are from folks understandably frustrated at the state of the economy, aren’t we all. Everyone shares the goal of economic recovery, but history has shown that isolationism is not the way.

To be clear, we believe that "Made-in-USA" goods and services are the best in the world, which is why the United States is the world’s top exporter. In fact, we think American products are so great that we don’t just want Americans to buy them—we want the 95% of the world’s consumers who live outside the United States to buy them, too. The way to do that is by knocking down trade barriers overseas—not by imposing isolationist mandates.

One comment noted that we lost "71,000 jobs in one day just recently" and that fact alone should be reason enough to include "Buy American" provisions in the stimulus bill. But as the employers who create jobs make clear in this letter to President Obama, and this letter to the Senate, to achieve maximum benefit for the economy and our workers: "The United States must lead the world out of protectionism, not into it." This means engaging with --selling to and buying from-- our trading partners around the world, not turning our backs on them.