Sen. Webb: Germany, Not China

From the Arlington (VA) Sun-News:

If the United States wants to claw its way back to economic self-determination, it should look not at China for the route forward, but at Germany.
Such was the prescription issued Dec. 10 by U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), speaking at the Arlington Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting.
Webb noted that Germany, while having a population just 8 percent of China’s, had a higher trade surplus, and is the world’s biggest exporter.
“They produce quality products that people want, they take care of their workforce – they are doing something right,” Webb said of the Germans, during a speech before about 320 Arlington business, political and civic leaders at the Sheraton National Hotel.
Webb’s politics long have been all but impossible to pigeon-hole …

Webb has written enough books explaining where he`s coming from, such as Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. In short, he`s a romantic but realistic Scots-Irish ethnocentric American patriot. In Webb`s view, his Scots-Irish kin aren`t, on the whole, the smartest or richest or most exclusive Americans; they`re just the most American Americans. So, what`s good for America is good for the Scots-Irish and what`s good for the Scots-Irish is good for America.
From that flows a number of positions that sound contradictory to everybody else in Washington, such as being for the military and against war (because his kin will do more of the dying than anybody else) and being for industry and for labor (because his kin want high wage factory jobs).