Is it "conservative" to send American jobs and technology to communist China?

("free trade" vanity)

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Once again, this week we see America declining again.

Our space program - once the finest in history, is dissolving, as our capability for manned space flights is brought to an end.

Now - our (second-best) fighter jet the F-35 is being criticized as too costly - after our finest one was already scuttled.

Our economy is shrinking. Our jobs are heading overseas, and our money is all flowing one direction - out of our country.

Funding the growth of everyone but the USA.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Yet ... conservatives;

Conservatives. Who with laser beam clarity recognized the geopolitical threat of the Soviet Union from the very start, and opposed the threat it posed to America with vigor;

Seem *oblivious* to Communist China.

It's really as if, conservatives wish with every fiber of our being if simply pretend what is happening is not happening, it will not be so.

When did this sort of willful cluelessness start?

When did conservatives become willfully naive?

Is not singing Kumbayah and imagining bad things aren't happening the province of the left?

What please, will it take to wake us up?

[Jason Kauppinen]

Is it conservative to believe that you’re entitled to the business of your neighbour?

[C. Edmund Wright]

What’s conservative is what’s based in liberty. What’s liberal is big government statism. What is driving money and/or jobs overseas’s is our big government reducing the liberty of anyone trying to create jobs; see Boeing and the National Labor Relations Board.

If we roll back taxes and regulations and forced unionization and frivolous law suits and other artificial liberal things that make American unattractive to business, then money and business would flood back in because without the liberalism, America is the best place on the planet to run a business.

It’s the liberalism that makes it otherwise.

[theDentist]

What makes you think Conservatives are responsible for this?

Last I saw it was this President who was making it even more difficult to operate and manufacture here, thus more attractive to have the manufacturing (and support) sent overseas.

Last I saw, a liberal President decided to make one of NASA's main objective scientific research to discover scientific achievements of Muslims, yet to cancel the programs for building replacements of the shuttle.

Last I saw it was this President who was spending us into greater and greater debt, and then selling it to China.

Last I saw it was this President who was pushing for the F-35 and other advanced fighters and bombers to be scuttled.

Last I saw it was this President who cut the guts out of our drilling for oil despite a court order to allow it to resume.

Last I saw it was this President who was pushing the EPA to declare some little lizard (i think) an endangered species in Texas oil lands, which would bring that to a halt.

Last I saw it was this President who... well , you fill in the blanks.

We conservatives aren't perfect, and we do need to hold our politicos feet to the fire. yes, some of those examples were helped along by RINOs, but I don't think Conservatism is to blame.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

“What’s conservative is what’s based in liberty. “

-

Actually that is libertarianism.

I happen to be a small-l libertarian, which makes it even more puzzling to me, why so many otherwise brilliant, flag-waving SOBs on our side see nothing whatsoever wrong-headed with making the largest communist nation in world history - strong and powerful by sending them our once world leading industrial base.

Seems a bit like the medieval practice of “bleeding”.

Killing the patient, with the erstwhile treatment itself.

“Free trade” is national suicide. Whatever you may or may not think about unions - destroying America herself in a boneheaded tactic to damage unions, is just plain stupid.

[dalereed]

if I am going to build something for sale I’ll do it where I can generate the most profit!

The only reason to build anything is for profit.

Never once durring my over 50 years in construction did I ever build anything because someone needed or wanted it, only because I was going to make a profit on it.

Other than profit you can go live under a bush or do your business there as far as I’m concerned!!!

Politics has nothing to do with it.

[geologist]

The plan, was/is created to step by step, break the power of the leading nation in this world.

It is Executed, with intent.

Answering to no one, working inside a arena with the media that hides the overt and the covert actions until well past engaging.

The part about borrowing billions to give away to other nations, and it is happening weekly if not daily, still: is absolutely mind boggling. Where is the outrage??? are we still on our blackberry, and IPhone, and Ipad and other entertaining outlets going to our death, and not noticing it?

No nation can withstand such malignant programs within their leadership and government.

God help America, God help us all. Without Thee we can do nothing.

[Jason Kauppinen]

“national suicide”

Someone other than the property owner should have a say on who they sell factory equipment to?

[VeniVidiVici]

Whatever you may or may not think about unions - destroying America herself in a boneheaded tactic to damage unions, is just plain stupid.

Ah. The real reason for the vanity.

In simplest terms businesses move overseas because they cannot make close to the same profit here, if any at all, than they can over there. Killing unions, reducing taxes and stabilizing the business environment are things that could be done to entice businesses to stay in the US.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Our problem is not China - or OPEC - or anyone else. Our problems are self inflicted. If we got government and liberalism out of the way the entrepreneurial and energy engines of this great economy would swamp anything that China or OPEC is trying to do. Their societies are not based in freedom and only we can stop us, they can’t. And our trade policies are NEVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER EVER going to make their societies free.

China and OPEC and every other country is going to act in their best interests. Duh. The problem is, liberalism is not in our best interests and China is merely taking advantage of it.

[FrankR]

Good question.

First of all, there are many thousands of Americans who would love to sit on an assembly line and put together electronic, household, or other devices...for a paycheck.

The problem is, U N I O N S. They invade the workplaces and demand an exhorbitant salary for the workers. The factory owner either lays people off to afford it, or, moves to a "right to work" state to avoid the union demands.
Something has got to give.

[LastNorwegian]

Remove the unions and nothing changes... Many industries moving abroad were not heavily unionized. As long as living and other expenses are lower abroad western jobs will be moved abroad.

Even with taxes being the same it would still be cheaper to make things in the 3rd world. Saying that the West should have open borders and compete with the 3rd world for jobs is like suggesting Alaska can compete with Florida for beach tourism.

And that’s before we look at the various trade hindrances China and other nations employ to protect their industries. There is no such thing as a level playing field.

[CowboyJay]

Hate to pick nits, but what’s ‘conservative’ is what’s in the Constitution. The power to raise tariffs is in there.

I believe the poster hit the nail on the head. Too many on our side of the aisle willing to pull the entire works down around us trying to get back at the unions. The unions, meanwhile have only become more powerful by burrowing into the public sector.

Classic case of cutting off our nose to spite our face. We’ll need an economy to rebuild at some point.

[353FMG]

Blueprint for the destruction of this country.

What is so totally assinine is that we continue our immigration policy while sending jobs overseas. What do we need immigrants for?

[PGR88]

China is not the Soviet Union.

Also, if China didn’t exist, then many of the jobs “being shipped out” to China would simply go elsewhere anyway.

[LA Conservative]

“The power to raise tariffs is in there”.
This statement, while true, doesn’t exactly apply to this circumstance. The reason tariffs are in the Constitution is a matter of Federal preemption, so that there is a coherent national trade policy. Previously the colonies had their own trade policies with each other, as well as the rest of the world.

Protectionism is a generally political knee jerk reaction to protecting industries with organized labor or well-connected business owners, practiced by both parties. It unfortunately intensified and elongated the Great Depression. (Even with this the idiots reelected FDR, which leaves me gloomy about the Demagogue in Chief getting reelected)

What is Conservative is to lower federal corporate tax rates, fair treatment for income earned overseas, right to work status, and reasonable, not restrictive, environmental and industrial regulation. Lastly, China has artificially made their country more profitable in which to do business as a result of keeping their currency low, which makes exports from China profitable.

[SoConPubbie]

What is driving money and/or jobs overseas’s is our big government reducing the liberty of anyone trying to create jobs; see Boeing and the National Labor Relations Board.

Illegal Immigration isn't helping either.

[chuckee]

Not every “free trade” agreement to come down the pike is in our national interest. particularly when it results in an overwhelming imbalance of trade i.e. China. We need to review every free trade agreement on the books as it relates to our national interest starting with the mother of all free trade agreements with China. We should keep the agreements that are beneficial or in the very least neutral to our interests and deep six the ones that are detrimental, back to China again. There is something to be said for the old way of doing things through bilateral trade agreements where the other side of the agreement danced to our tune because of our economic mass.

[SaraJohnson]

Globalism only works for the multinational elite - those “citizens of the world.” The rest of us are out on a limb of their whim.

The third world slave labor will be abused for only so long before they stop being slaves and chop their heads off.

[CowboyJay]

"It unfortunately intensified and elongated the Great Depression."

Debatable. More likely Keynesian intervention preventing asset revaluation, and starving the private sector of capital. But even if so, during that time the US was a net exporter. No parallels with today's economy.

We absolutely need deregulation and tax reform. No argument there. But China can still incentivize to the point that their finished goods can be sold below US cost of production. So I think it's a bit naive to posit that US deindustrialization will not proceed barring some form of protectionism. Tariffs are clearly constitutional, and most of the jobs and businesses being moved overseas are NOT unionized.

Currency valuation is a red herring as it pertains balance-of-trade. If the Chinese revalue the RMB, their production costs go DOWN. It will also give them more purchasing power for them in resource markets, which means more PPI inflation from our perspective. In other words, it will drive US production costs UP at the same time. It's a wash, and a distraction from the real issues which are predatory Chinese trade practices, the US regulatory/tax environment, and what is increasingly an anti-US trade policy being put into practice by our own government.