We're going to risk so much (YES WE CAN!! have a global depression if we really continue to work at it…: "There is little doubt that if the Buy American provisions of the Economic Stimulus Package were to become law, this would amount to an economic declaration of war on the rest of the world.... Retaliation from the EU countries and the rest of the world would follow swiftly. ") for how many jobs?
Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey J. Schott: Buy American: Bad for Jobs, Worse for Reputation
The "Buy-America" provisions in the House bill are relatively limited, and so is the number of jobs directly at stake:
Table 1 (on page 4) walks through our calculation of the positive impact on steel industry jobs of the House provisions requiring American iron and steel. We estimate that the additional US steel production fostered by the Buy American provisions will amount to around 0.5 million metric tons. This in turn translates into a gain in steel industry employment equal to roughly 1,000 jobs. To repeat a point made earlier: The job impact is small because steel is very capital intensive. In the giant US economy, with a labor force of roughly 140 million people, 1,000 jobs more or less is a very small number.
The provisions in the Senate Bill cover more goods: