Hightower Lowdown

Recently, William Safire, the old Nixon speechwriter who's now a pundit for The New York Times, wrote a touching, hypothetical story about a low-income mother whose 12-year-old boy had said to her: "Momma, I need new shoes because the old ones with the holes hurt my feet, and the other kids in school are laughing at me." But, Safire tells us sadly, his fictional momma had to say to her boy that she "couldn't afford no $50 on new shoes made in America." .

But glory be! Safire's morality tale ends happily, when momma found a store that was "having a clearance of shoes made in China or Indo-someplace. I bought him a pair of fine leather shoes for $24. You shoulda seen my boy's face light up." In case you missed it, Safire pounds the moral home: "Free trade is helping that lady make ends meet because her hard-earned dollar now has more buying power. If those fast-talking protectionists had their way, the high cost of living would deny her boy those shoes." Gosh, Bill, thanks for that little lecture, but let's move from fiction to real life. Fact is that Nike doesn't lower the price on its shoes just because it pays workers in Indo-someplace a dollar a day, instead of the $10 an hour it used to pay U.S. workers. No, Nike simply pockets their savings. Also, if "Momma" hadn't had her middle-class job offshored by the likes of Nike, she wouldn't be poor—and then she could afford those $50 shoes made in America.