Did the U.S. government kill the American circuit board industry?
Bartlett: Yes. U.S. government policies have killed many American industries. There is a march to free trade, which is okay so long as the rest of the world is playing by the same rules. But our government, our professors and our geniuses like Robert Zoellick [former U.S. Trade Representative and now president of the World Bank] — he is the worst of them all — have been on a march to a free-trade utopia. They just killed us. Q: Are you surprised that the Obama administration has continued the same policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations? Bartlett: If there is anything we have learned in Illinois it is that Chicago politicians are all the same and Barack Obama is a Chicago politician. He kept saying there was going to be a new direction. That has gone by the wayside. What might educate him is a huge unemployment rate. I have watched as many of my friends went out of business even after they plowed all of their own money back in. They could not change the macroeconomics. Only on
