"In conclusion, our research suggests that the U.S. and other countries have moved ahead with trade policies and global economic integration based on faulty arguments and incomplete information.

This is absolutley correct. No two ways about it. I have been talking about this for weeks and months.

As pointed out, many people try to point out "the Chinese market" and use that as justification...

That is a false argument.

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Go to the original link for a chart about which regions of the US are shifting jobs to where...

Look under the "Extra Information" section.

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Its funny. During the 1970's these hitech workers did not care when the midwest was losing steel and auto jobs to overseas producers. Their response to the blue color workers were the world is changing and that is the price of progress. When nontech white color jobs were being eliminated, the hitech class of America responded by saying that is the price you pay when you did not chose the right major when you went to college. Now that corporate America eliminated the high paying blue color jobs, eliminated the white color middle manager jobs, and thru joint ventures trained a foreign hitech work force overseas, they are coming after the hitech jobs. Lesson to US workers (nontech blue collar to hitech white collar), if you do not defend one sector of the workforce, sooner or later they will come for your sector. By then it is too late, because everyone else will be too broke and poor to do anything about it.

That's okay, those jobs were beneath we Americans. /sarcasm>

The argument for free trade with PRC is that as some lower-level manufacturing jobs are moved to China, more higher-paying jobs will be created in the US because of increased export to China. However, the market-opening promises China made two years ago upon entering the WTO have not materialized because of a series of delaying obstacles starting with Clinton's infamous rejection of the proposal made by the Chinese reformist prime minister during his visit to US. Then the bombing of PRC embasy in Belgrade and the spy plane fiasco. The result is there is no free trade between US and PRC. The market there is still controlled.

They could have saved a lot of research dollars by just screening products at their local walmart. The conclusion I came to long ago is that these products could be supporting US workers instead of allowing our welfare state to support those same unemployed workers.

Follow the money/profit!

I face the very real prospect that my job may go to China. The good news is that it will STILL be my job, the not so good news is that I will have to move to China. So far, my feelings on the subject are mixed.

Makes Buchanan look good.

The real story behind this is not something that Clinton did. There is such a small market in China. Meaning people that are in the market to buy our stuff. There might be 1.3 billion people, but I have demostrated time and again that translating that to economic gains will be hard or impossible.

There are some obstacles as far as tapping the market over there, and yes they are closed in some instances. To overcome that all you have to do is manufacture in China. GM is not treated as a foreign company, but rather a local Chinese company. They are in a JV and have local status. In other words for companies who already have local status, WTO won't give them much benefit in regards to access to the Chinese consumer.

Another point is, that if you sold to nothing but China and took those numbers, you would be less than impressed. Especially once you translate those economy of scale transactions and profits to English and American $$$ it is not that big. In most cases corporate revenues in China only represent less than 1% of corporate sales. Profits are even less. There are only certain exceptions, namely those people who get big government projects like providing switches for the internet. Once you cut out the government transactions then the actual on the ground Chinese market is tiny in relation to what we are used to.

What WTO will do though is grease the wheels of our corporate profit machine and will boost exports from China to the world.

If you can open one manufacturing facility (as an American company) what do you do? In this case, they open shop in China. They have cheap and abundant labor, no labor laws, unions, etc. If government barriers to trade are dropped, then China has a relative advantage in what it cost to manufacture there. Profits will go through the roof for those US companies that manufacture there but export to the world.

Most of the benefit for WTO is already realized. It is definately already realized by China, with the exception that WTO agreements can make exporting from China to world markets easier and more transparent. That is the only real benefit our companies have have coming in regards to WTO. The idea that Chinese people are going to buy a whole lot of your stuff is not true. Government barriers or not, they still won't buy.

Depending on what you sell, those government market obstacles are not the real problem.

About 1/3 to 1/2 of the Chinese companies with no barriers at all are not profitable. Many of the ones that are profitable are involved in joint ventures with foreign companies and export.

Most people in China make about $50-100 usd per month. They have to pay rent, and buy food and all that too. Their disposable income is not that high. To make profits in China you have to do things totally different.

I demonstrated on another thread that no matter what you sell in China it has to be low cost and high volume. It is all about marketshare. The thing is, the Chinese have companies too. Competition is intense. Everyone is fighting over one scrap.

Profits for an average US corporation operating in China are about 1/2 to 1/3 of the US average. That is if they make a profit. Most don't, but it depends on the product.

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And one of the features of the study results that concerns Luce, she says, is that much of the production moving to China may not be for Chinese consumption. "The idea has been," she says, "that these would be goods available to Chinese consumers. But that seems not to be the case."

The profits vs cost vs consumer rights is the real issue.

The concept that there is a huge internal Chinese market there just waiting to by a $120 pair of shoes is not true. That "internal market" reason is the excuse most people use though.

"Here's the true argument: Why should I be forced to pay your price for something, when I can get it cheaper elsewhere? "

Well you might consider that what you don't pay for product you pay in taxes. It just might make more sense to pay a few bucks more for items made by workers here than keep paying increased taxes to support various safety nets, crime prevention and family disruption. It's pay it now or pay it later.

USA isn't an economic dictatorship, it's a political economy and everyone gets one vote. And as more and more people become unhappy with the economy, the tax load on corporations will become oppressive because they will be unable to compete with the tax-free stuff arriving from abroad. Corporations will keep moving and things will get worse until we collapse.

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Capital will always go where labour is cheap. Surely as a capitalist nation you should understand that?

And for each dollar of product we get from China, they'll want a dollar of product in return -- otherwise they'd be shipping us something for NOTHING IN RETURN.

I'm tired of the economic ignorance spouted on this supposedly free market forum. Go read some economics books. You protectionists have the ignorance of three year olds.

This is a bad article. Let me go through this point by point.

And this is after American layoffs passed the 1-million mark in July. But what concerns Stephanie Luce, Ph.D., about her research data is not just her figure of at least 34,900 jobs -- and maybe twice that -- moving from the States to China in a seven-month period

China apparently caused 35,000 to 70,000 layoffs out of 1 million and if this trend were to continue for the next 80 years, after 1000 months, 35 to 70 million american jobs would be in China. My point is 35 to 70 thousand lost jobs in 7 months is bad, but not horrific.

the U.S.-China Security Review Commission -- chaired by C. Richard D'Amato of the Maryland House of Delegates

The Maryland House of Delegate is probably more communist than the govt. of the PRC. I would not trust anything they said.

Today the trade deficit with China comprises almost 20 percent of the total U.S. trade deficit and is the largest trade deficit the U.S. has with any single nation."

China has about 20% of the people in the world. Who would you expect to have the largest deficit with ? Lichtenstein ? On a per capita basis, we have larger trade deficits with Canada, Mexico, Japan and the EU.

Finally, almost all of the article is text with speculation and conclusions drawn without supporting statistics. In almost every sentence is the word "may" or "probably more". If you look closely who these people are, if they were not supporting your point of view, you would be very dubious about anything they said. If they were saying something you disagreed with, you would probably call them liars.