[tsowellfan]

Bring back American manufacturing

What's the brand name of the computer you used to post this article?

Was it an "American" made Compaq or a Chinese made Compak which a friends of mine saw in India (the second most populated country in the world)?

China no longer needs "our" industries. They have their own and are flooding the world with them, brands such as KFG, Mike shoes, King Burger, LL Been backpacks (flooding southeast asia), Sonie DVD players.

I suppose we could boycott China but do we still have the buying power to make the difference? "Our" jobs didn't just go to China. They went to India, Malaysia, Korea, Mexico and many other nations and I doubt we'll see them come back in our lifetime. We've seen our peak. We are in the midst of a self-inflicted freefall.

Nobody sent "our" jobs there. They were never ours to begin with. They are the jobs of the manufacturing companies that decided that America is no longer a business friendly nation.

[CowboyJay]

"I suppose we could boycott China but do we still have the buying power to make the difference?"

According to the Chinese I talk to on a regular basis, it would bring their growth to a grinding halt. 5% of their GDP is US exports, along with their largest source of foreign direct investment. And another couple percentage points are US-licensed products being sold in China and exported to other countries. It all adds up to somewhere between $1-$1.5 trillion a year. And it spends very nicely in the resource markets they've steadily been pushing us out of.

Of course they hold roughly $3 trillion is US paper between treasuries and dollars, so they could probably hit back pretty hard on that front. But the question is whether we want to passively sit back and let them slowly choke us out, or if we want to try to throw our weight around now while we still have a puncher's chance.

. It's hardly all self-inflicted damage. China spent huge amounts lobbying our crooked politicians. There were backroom deals made from 1970 on made by top level politicians on both sides with nothing like full disclosure to the US public. IMO they've reneged on their half of the "Free Trade" bargain that most of us have opposed vehemently from the get go.

[SeminoleCounty]

Put tariffs on the Communist Chinese, and the nonsense stops

Free Traders are the biggest statists, supporters of Communism, and overall economic sabotage of America. I always prefer tariffs over treason