It's all about da Hamiltons...
Posted on 03/29/2006 7:08:48 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Dubai could have a silver lining. The government didn't think twice about the security of six major seaports in the United States. It thought that what was good for the transnationals, for globalization, was good for the country. People now realize that corporate America is blind to the nation's security and its economy. Only government can protect our manufacturers, our economic strength. The bubble of "free trade," and of "protectionism," has popped. The charades of the "trade war" and of "globalization" are over. As Henry Clay observed in 1832, "The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child, in its nurse's arms... It never has existed; it never will exist."
We started a "trade war" when Alexander Hamilton rebuffed Britain's proposal that the freed colony should trade what it produced best while Britain would trade what it produced best -- David Ricardo's "Doctrine of Comparative Advantage." In his famous "Report on Manufacturers," Hamilton told the Brits to bug off: We are not going to remain your colony, trading our rice, cotton, indigo for your finished goods. We will become a nation-state by building our own manufacture. The first bill to pass Congress on July 4, 1789, was for the seal of the United States. The second bill was a 50-percent tariff on numerous articles. The United States was built on managed trade or protectionism. Abraham Lincoln managed trade for steel for the intercontinental railroad; Franklin Roosevelt managed trade for agriculture; Dwight Eisenhower for oil; John Kennedy for textiles; Ronald Reagan for semiconductors.
By the time of Teddy Roosevelt, Edwin Morris in Theodore Rex writes: "This first year of the new century found her (U.S.) worth $25 billion dollars more than her nearest rival, Great Britain, with a gross national product more than twice that of Germany and Russia. The United States was already so rich in goods and services that she was more self-sustaining than any industrial power ... More than half the world's cotton, corn, copper, and oil flowed from the American cornucopia, and at least one third of all steel, iron, silver, and gold... the excellence of her manufactured products guaranteed her dominance of world markets." This industrial might -- personified by Rosie the Riveter -- was a principal force for victory in World War II. At the end of the War, the United States had the world's only manufacture and wisely launched the Marshall Plan to develop manufacture in Europe and the Pacific Rim. We called for "free trade" in an effort to open markets. But Japan and South Korea's markets remained closed. Even our winking at dumping violations and transshipments failed to budge Japan and South Korea. Now China follows suit.
In recent years, Congress strained to protect the nation's manufacture. It passed four textile bills, with Jimmy Carter vetoing one, Reagan vetoing two, and George H. W. Bush vetoing the fourth. Corporate America got the message: Our standard of living and domestic production were not to be protected -- head offshore. By the time of the Clinton administration, the nation was not only losing hard manufacture but service jobs. With this outsourcing, candidate Bill Clinton campaigned on protecting the workforce of America with the slogan "it's the economy, stupid." After his inauguration, Clinton, who had been lukewarm about NAFTA with Mexico during the campaign, surprised everyone with his zeal for it. NAFTA with Canada provided free trade because Canada and the United States have the same standard of living. But Mexico needed to develop a free market for free trade — one including labor rights, property rights, a respected judiciary — in other words, the common market approach. In Europe, before admitting Greece and Portugal to the Common Market, the Market countries taxed themselves some $5 billion over five years to develop in those countries the conditions for a free market. Instead, NAFTA with Mexico protected corporate rights to produce, in disregard for labor, the environment, and the government.
Clinton placed the white tent on the White House lawn for the Fortune 500 and twisted arms to change the vote in Congress, joining congressmen in golf, granting C-17 contracts, cultural centers, and so on. This had the Democratic Party abandoning labor for corporate America. With the Democratic Leadership Council tending to corporate America, the multinationals, now transnationals, had a free run of government. Textile quotas were terminated, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, and offshore profits were repatriated at a reduced rate. Industry's Man of the Year, Jack Welch, announced that General Electric would not contract with any U.S. subcontractor that had not moved to Mexico. "Squeeze the lemon" was his slogan. Clinton led the way to give "most favored nation status" to China and put China in the World Trade Organization. The WTO pact, a 25,000-page document undermining trade, dumping, and environmental laws, provided an appeal to an unelected tribunal appointed by the transnationals and their consultants. Senator Robert Dole from Kansas realized that this would leave U.S. production "in the hands of the philistines." He attempted to replace the appellate panel with a panel of three federal judges, but the transnationals turned him back. The final blow to the United States workforce came with the admission of China to the WTO. Outsourcing hemorrhaged. Seven hundred-fifty research and development centers sprouted up in China to take advantage of the inexpensive talent pool. Microsoft is doubling its basic lab researchers this year to 800 full-time scientists. Two-and-a-half trillion dollars has been added to the national debt in the last five years. And George W. Bush now estimates a federal budget deficit this year of $706 billion. Foreigners have been financing a majority of this debt. Now these dollars flow back in as foreigners gobble up the production of the United States. Eighty-six hundred American companies, at a cost of $1.3 trillion, have been lost to foreign control in the last 10 years.
NAFTA with Mexico was supposed to create 200,000 U.S. jobs. Instead, we lost 400,000. NAFTA was supposed to limit immigration, but subsidized American agriculture put 2 million Mexican farmers out of business — farmers who later headed for the U.S. border. Even the Mexican industrial worker makes less today than before NAFTA. The U.S. trade deficit last year was $725.8 billion. The United States lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs in the last five years. The growth of the U.S. labor force has also slowed. Had it continued at its normal rate, unemployment today would be 6.8 percent, instead of 4.8 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that our workforce is so depleted that with two-and-a-half times the population, today we work less manufacturing hours than we worked when Japan hit Pearl Harbor. The Defense Department had to wait for Japan to furnish flat-panel displays so that we could attack Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm. Our defenses are down. The middle class disappears. Democracy weakens. The country is going out of business.
To open Jones Manufacturing in the United States, Mr. Jones must provide a minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, clean air, clean water, a safe working place, safe machinery, plant-closing notice, parental leave, and labor rights; he must also comply with equal pay, age discrimination, disability, and anti-trust laws. Our standard of living is a cost of doing business. Today, Jones can go to China, which provides the factory and labor force for 58 cents an hour and none of the cost of doing business in the United States. If Jones's competition outsources to China, and Jones continues to work his own people, Jones Manufacture will go bankrupt. Our problem is that the United States will go bankrupt unless we move to protect Jones Manufacture -- to protect our economy. In trade, we have a comparative disadvantage.
The security of the United States is like a three-legged stool. The first leg, values, is solid. The world knows of the American stance for freedom and human rights. The second, military, is unquestioned. The United States is the world's superpower. But the third leg — economic -- has been fractured since the Cold War. We intentionally gave up our production and market to defeat communism. Instead of repairing the fracture at "the fall of the wall," we responded to the call of "free trade." In the beginning, we were told that free trade was the way to open markets -- without tariffs or barriers, the United States would open markets for its vast production, increasing jobs. But when jobs and manufacturing were lost, we were told: "Don't fret, the United States is moving from hard manufacture to a service economy." Filthy smokestacks were for other countries. When service jobs hemorrhaged to India, the transnationals then cried "free trade" for high technology and higher paying jobs. Then, with a deficit in the balance of hi-tech trade with China, the scavengers of our economic strength shout: "Globalization -- the world is flat!" "One can produce anything, anywhere. Globalization costs jobs but the consumer is rewarded with lower prices. The United States must compete with education. We need engineers." But there are no jobs for the educated, or for engineers. China graduates 350,000 engineers a year, and American industry is outsourcing engineering jobs as fast as it can to India. George W. Bush has just returned from India pledging U.S. nuclear power that will accelerate outsourcing to India. Moreover, the Thailand doctor performs the same operation at one-eighth the cost of the American doctor. And high-tech jobs in this country are being filled with H1-B Visas.
Ordinarily, business would be hounding politicians to protect the economy, to protect their production, to protect the workforce that it depends on. But today, business doesn't depend on the workforce in the United States. To protect U.S. production in China and India, the Big Banks, the Business Round Table, the Conference Board, the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Retail Association, the U.S. Federation of Independent Business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce all shout, "Free trade, globalization!" Free trade is a fraud! Globalization is a fraud! With anything produced anywhere, with the satellite transferring money and technology, with Internet monitoring of global production, a country couldn't "erect a wall" or start a "trade war" if it tried. The Big Bank crowd, the Business Roundtable, and the rest, are a "fifth column" in today's "trade war," while the president and Congress are AWOL.
The government will have to protect the economy. Unfortunately, both the Republican and Democratic parties in Congress are in a race for campaign contributions. The "fifth column" has the money. The money party, Republican, leads the cheer for "free trade!" and "globalization!" The working man's party, Democrat, stands quietly by, begging. Legislation goes wanting.
First, we need to stop financing the elimination of jobs. Tax benefits for offshore production must end. Royalty deductions allowed for offshore activities must be eliminated, and offshore tax havens must be closed down. Next, we need an assistant attorney general to enforce our trade laws and agreements. Currently, enforcement is left to the injured party. It takes corporate America years to jump the legal hurdles. At the end, the president, under his authority for the nation's security, cancels the court order against the trade violation. Rather than waste time and money, corporate America moves offshore. Trade policy is set by a dozen departments and agencies. Policy should be reconstituted in a Department of Trade and Commerce with the secretary acting as a czar. Then trade treaties can be negotiated for the good of the U.S. economy, instead of for the good of the transnational. The department's International Trade Administration, finding a dumping violation, should also determine the penalty. The International Trade Commission should be eliminated. Custom agents charged with drug enforcement and homeland security are hard-pressed to stop trade transshipments. We need 1,000 more Customs agents. We need more funding for research in physical and mathematical sciences and engineering; more funding for the Manufactures Extension Partnership Act and the Advanced Technology Program. The list of materials critical to our national defense should be enforced. H1-B Visas should be repealed, and the United States should give notice of withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.
Finally, competition in world trade today is not for profit, but market share. The closed markets of Japan, South Korea, and China enable exports at cost with the necessary profit being made up in the closed domestic market. A Lexus selling for $33,000 in the United States sells for $47,000 in Japan. Corporate America's rush to produce for profit in China is a losing game for the nation. Countries winning market share will come to control the market, which is happening now with automotive production in the United States. This production capacity furnished the tanks and planes for WWII. Akio Morita, founder of Sony Corporation, admonished Third World countries to develop a manufacturing capacity to become a nation-state. He then cautioned: "That world power that loses its manufacturing capacity will cease to be a world power."
The United States must stop so-called free trade agreements merely to protect offshore production -- and start trading, opening up closed markets, and rebuilding the country.
"The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence requires us to establish at home, with the patriotic determination of every good citizen to use no foreign article which can be made within ourselves without regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse into foreign dependency."
--Thomas Jefferson to Jean Baptiste Say, 1815.
ping
If Alexander Hamilton were alive today he would be furious with us, and his name would be vilified in the MSM and the Democratic party.
...and sad to say most of the Republican party as well.
I'm glad someone is finally saying it.
The hell we do!! The only good thing that can be said about Hamilton...well there isn't anything good that can be said about Hamilton. Perhaps one of the most worthless individuals in our nation's history.
Isolationist, anti freedom, economic ignorance, trade war alert.
Bingo! We have a winner!
Bless your heart, I ALMOST wrote that! LOL!
In this case, trade wars and isolationism.
Thanks and bump for later
If Hamilton were alive today, he would replace Karl Rove as the most manipulative, devious, diabolical, evil genius in politics. Hamilton was in sooth what the libs think Rove is in myth.
OK, I'll bite .... Why?
Has Fritz been following the news or reading his talking points since his retirement?
-PJ
If Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were alive today they'd be leading us into battle in CWII...
As has been noted, Jefferson was all about heavy tariffs. Seems pretty plain to me.
Thats what I say about abe.
Yet when you point this out, the adolescent Free Traitors whine and squawk about:
bttt
Yes but consider he was the political 'grandson' of Hamilton. Hamilton's worthless ideas were passed down to Clay (the 'American System') and we all know who Clay's lackey was. Of course you have a point. It can't be said that Hamilton's actions or ideas directly brought about the deaths of 600,000+ people either
Oh,so? So are you a Jeffersonian whose Norman-Rockwell ideal of the American farmer and America agriculture was utterly demolished by Hamilton, both in theory and actuality? That wealth did not solely derive from "the land" -- as most 18th century,pre-Industrial Age intellectuals firmly believed-- but from the labor of those who worked the land. Labor that might be channeled not away from farming but into industrial as well.
This was the core of Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures". He believed that the United States could only secure it's safety, prosperity and genuine independence by broadening its economic base to include industry as well as agriculture and commence (banking, trading companies, etc.)
Alexander Hamilton saw into the future, and the future was not Jeffersonian. Something Jefferson and his followers could not, would not, and, apparently still have trouble forgiving him.
It never has existed. So let's raise tariffs, because Willie thinks higher prices are better!!
"But the third leg — economic -- has been fractured since the Cold War."
This can be given any name that one chooses. Our sovereignty began falling when our country's, Civil War, occurred. Simply because that made it, A-Okay, for our own people to destroy one another by whatever means the individual chose. And this continues today...
The idea that massive tarriffs can be imposed is childish nonsense. If the United States did impose such a policy, the European Union and Asian countries would retaliate with punitive tarriffs on American goods and services, thus constricting trade. A loss of economic activity this represents would lead to a recession or depression, in which thousands of Americans would find themselves out of work.
There is a coterie of people who believe that somehow that the market can be defied, that government will is stronger than the will of the individual, in particular in economic decisions. They live wrapped up in a soft focus fantasy in which "them damn foreigners aren't taking our jobs". The actual result would be:
1. The aforementioned reduction in economic activity and resulting unemployment.
2. Government being bribed and influenced by manfuacturers to protect their interests. This is already prevalent with the American sugar industry.
3. Less consumer choice and higher consumer prices.
But as this is unlikely to be tried out under present circumstances, the soft focus fantasy remains.
Regards, Ivan
I had a Hamilton's Invaders helmet as a kid. Had I known, I could have been a rich man today simply by keeping all the toys of my youth.
"If Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were alive today they'd be leading us into battle in CWII..."
No, they'd be arrested under the Patriot Act, go before a double secret tribunal, be convicted of terrorism and get shipped to Gitmo or the Fed supermax in Colorado. You would never hear from them again.
Even good guys are wrong sometimes.
Never tie your allegiance to a person, they will ALWAYS disappoint you. Better to stick to concepts and ideas.
Freedom = good. Isolationism at gunpoint = bad. How's that for a concept?
Are things LOOKING SO BLEAK that you have to find articles written by ERNEST HOLLINGS?
LOL
Willie you're pathetic.
You speak of "the Founders" as if they were a monolithic, impassive, unalterable, Solomon -like block of men. Men who neither grew nor shrank in moral statue; men who never reconsidered as they grew older, wiser, more foolish, more certain, or more desperate; men who were never peevish,never raised their voices,men who never stormed out in anger; men who passionately believe they were part of Destiny, and men who secretly wondered what the h--- was happening and what should they do next; men who were fed up; men who were frustrated; men who were afraid; men who were tired -- oh, so very tired. Men, in truth, just as human as you or me.
I need a laugh, explain why higher prices are better for America.
Stop making a fool of yourself.
Hey, with Dubya going down to Mexico to lend moral support to the neomarxist immigration reform protestors, even ol' Fritz is starting to look more like a conservative.
I am perpetually amused by the notion that, because I want my Heineken to be imported with a minimum amount of fuss, I also am in favor of hordes of Mexicans swimming the Rio Grande.
We definitely need Alexander Hamilton but not for the mistaken reasons given here. Hamilton did believe in Free Trade as an optimal goal but understood that the new government needed a revenue source which was the prime reason for the tariff. It was essentially a Revenue Tariff not a Protectionist Tariff. Of course, all tariffs will have some degree of protection but that was not its essential reason for being.
Hamilton also realized that the American economy had been malformed by British trade policy which did not allow the creation of competing industries to that of Britain. Hence there was a role to be played by the federal government in reshaping that economy so that it could become more independent and modern.
Hamilton was a multi-faceted genius whose like has never been seen since but he would have been the last person to claim that a modernized America could use protectionism as a rational trade policy. Tariffs and trade restriction was only justifiable as a means of jump starting the National economy onto a new path, building up defense industries and as a means of funding the government.
The strength of the American economy is its ability to adapt and its flexibility. Trade restrictions reduce that flexibility and by running contrary to the international division of labor make the world economy less efficient.
Hamilton was a student of Adam Smith but was pragmatic to the core and did not believe the Invisible Hand would lead to the greatest immediate good. Economic problems could not be divorced from circumstances of time, place and condition.
Alexander Hamilton was the greatest Patriot and Statesman of his generation with the only exception being Washington. George admired the man beyond all others and no one in our history is as responsible for the establishment of our government and economic development. He fought at Washington's side as his chief aide for almost five years. He sacrificed the fortune he would have earned as the nation's top lawyer to secure the Blessings of Liberty for the United States.
He first called for the creation of a new Constitution, took part in its creation as a member of its two most important committees. Did more than any other writer to lead the nation to Revolution, through the Revolution (continuing to turn out political tracts for newspapers even while on Washington's staff). From the period of 1775 to 1804 Hamilton was the most widely reader political writer first defending the rights of Americans, advocating independence, supporting the Union and explaining the needs of the new nation and how they were to be met.
He put his life on the line repeatedly for his country and served it with a distinction no other can top. He also did more to ratify the Constitution than any other man writing 2/3s of the greatest political philosophy yet created in the Western Hemisphere, the Federalist. Any question about the Constitution must begin with those writings.
None of the charletans, hypocritics and political opportunists who slandered him can even reach his shoe buckle the diffence in their status is so great. But even the ArchHypocrit, Jefferson, had to admit that Hamilton was a "Colossus" and a "host within himself" which must be confronted on every issue facing the nation.
Hamilton, Washington and Lincoln are the three greatest political leaders this nation has ever had and are the principle reasons we inhabit the greatest nation the earth has ever seen. And Washington's program was Hamilton's program created from his genius.
The Jefferson LIE Machine managed to whip up class warfare hysteria against him and have sullied his reputation for the last two centuries. Hamilton is the reason the democRAT party was formed around the economic ignorance of the Jeffersonians and the willingness to flatter the mob without regard for the truth. Such ignorance and falsehood are still the principle props of Jefferson's party.
Thank God for giving us Alexander Hamilton.
Look at the ignorance already spewed forth on this thread.
He was a superb American and dedicated to the welfare of all Americans. Mr. Hamilton was also a superb patriot.
Hamilton would be the last person to support those. Or to agree with the collection of nonsense which passes as thought for Hollings.
Hamilton was 100% American patriot and as such enraged the pygmies arrayed against him.
You mean, much the same as it is here?????
Can't recall how many times I've been called names by supposedly conservatives here....
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