Posted on 03/16/2008 12:47:42 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The US administration on Wednesday threatened to submit a contentious free trade agreement with Colombia to Congress without the consent of the Democratic leadership in a move that would open up a new front in the fight over US trade policy.
Susan Schwab, US trade representative, told reporters that in the absence of an agreement with House Democrats, the White House would ask Congress to consider the Colombia free trade agreement “immediately or very shortly after” the Easter recess, which ends on March 30.
“We can’t let delay translate into inaction,” Ms Schwab said. The administration’s decision represents a break with the common practice in Washington of the White House and congressional leaders agreeing on the timing for the consideration of free trade agreements.
As such, it marks a high-risk, high-return strategy that will force the Democratic-led congress to take a position on a difficult issue in an election year.
While free trade agreements are unpopular in the US, with senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both criticising them on the campaign trail, the Bush administration has been highlighting the security components of the Colombia deal, portraying it as a way of bolstering President Alvaro Uribe against Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Cool. Deficit spend, keep those money printers rolling, and outsource those jobs. Party like it’s 1929.
I thought you were in favor of “fair” trade?
Another day, another free trade pact promoted with empty promises.
Nah, fair trade keeps too many Americans employed.
Name one.
Non-answer. I’ll take that to mean that you and the other protectionists would rather keep the status quo—Colombian products enter the U.S. duty free, and our get tariffed out the wazoo.
NAFTA, for one.
Another non-answer. You guys are really on a roll!
The horse is out of the barn anyway. The midwest has already been screwed by free trade, and those jobs aren’t coming back. The result is some people made a lot of money and a lot of workers lost their jobs. And because of that, people are going to start voting for socialists, who will then take away the money made by those people who profited from it. It’s sad that people think voting for socialists will bring the jobs back.
That’s why I always thought that we should tariff their goods at the same rate they tariff ours...so we stop selling out the greenback.
Which is somewhat ironic, seeing that the socialists are the ones opposed to this deal. The Democrats, Big Labor, etc. As for the protectionists, they’re practically Demcrats anyway.
And pushing the children of people who were once Reagan democrats further and further into the leftist camp...I guess that's something the First Simpleton has never considered or regards as of no consequence.
Don't know about mysterio but my solution the problem you have mentioned here isn't to outsource our bread and butter to other countries, such as colombia, but to tax their a** as much as they tax ours. Fair trade is a farce and has brought nothing but devastation to this country, anyone who can't see that is blind, including you. Sure, you can post some phony figures that show how great Nafta and other idiotic programs are but most of the statistics are false, very similar to the phony data used to prove "global warming".
Our economy and the steady drop in real wages is the real proof. Not only that, people such as me who have lived many, many years know that the percentage of wages to prices was much better in the 50s, for instance.
You can scream and call names and do other idiotic BS but it doesn't change the facts. Nafta and other similar programs have knocked the crap out of the average person's wage to price ratio. Both people in a marriage, or just a couple living together if you will, have to work now, before the 1970s. this was not true, one person worked and the average person bought cars and houses with no problem.
This is not true now, regardless of how you want to spin it, the proof is in the pudding as they say.Free trade sucks.
And if you are in favor of raising tariffs on Colombian goods, then you are in fact arguing that the government knows how to spend your money better than yourself. There can be no other explanation why you so freely are willing to hand it over.
Which is still not as sad as people who think they can screw over their fellow citizens without any blowback. Several years ago some WSJ scribbler opined that we were living in a second Gilded Age, contentedly purring about the great wealth and lucre a few had amassed just as in the first Gilded Age yet completely ignoring the deep social problems and violence the era gave birth to.
How are you being “screwed over?”
Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. (Smoot-Hawley was signed in 1930).
This thread is interesting in that there are a number of conservatives arguing for bigger government, higher taxes, and reliving the glory days of the 1950's when the top tax bracket was 90% (or was it higher, I don't remember).
Remember this alleged rumor?
They deny that the US military has ties but wasn’t the actual rumor regarding his own personal family compound or property? Didn’t his niece go down there when she was having all her drug problems, etc?
I vaguely remember what the circumstances were. Would like to know what is really factual.
Bares repeating.
Colombia's legal exports to the US are mostly oil, leather goods and flowers. Colombia's imports from the US are mostly manufactured goods, computer/communications equipment and medical equipment.
I know some people would like to fight global warming by raising the price of oil but other than the flower growers and leather smiths, how exactly does the current system benefit American workers?
Therefore, the only response is to clamor that the government step-in and protect us.
Help me follow your reasoning. We should not reduce Colombian tariffs on our manufacturing exports, because the lefties have floated a rumor Bush has bought a ranch in Paraguay?
They've no conception of what this article even means and are not prepared to engage in a rational conversation about it.
I'm just waiting for the first moronic comment that it is somehow "unconstitutional" for the President to go ahead without the permission of the protectionist neo-Leninists in the House.
Exactly.
Idiotic hyper-capitalism and "free trade" is what ushers in socialism.
But the guys who became millionaires off of "free trade" live in gated communities so what do they care. A trashed and socialist America is of no concern to them
When the economy turns to shit the masses look for shelter from the storm and that shelter is government. As is Hillary and Barrack pie in the sky socialist promises and rhetoric
There is a good reason for building up a US military presence there - to keep an eye on the Hamas types around Foz and Ciudad Del Este but who in their right mind would want to live there?
It's flat, hot, run by crooks, populated by some of the more poorly educated people on the planet (even by California public school standards and I am trying to be polite here), infested with rats, cockroaches, mosquitoes and muslims. Illegal immigrants from there flock to slums in Argentina.
It has no culture, lousy soccer teams and there's neither a Gucci store nor a Walmart in the whole country. Despite a great deal of post war German immigration the beer is lousy - if you ever have to go there pick up enough Brahma in Brazil to hold you over.
I could go on but of all the countries in the world I've been to Paraguay is about second from the bottom on my personal "fun places to live" list. (The DR being on the bottom but at least THEY have good looking women.)
This is one of those things cooked up by the black helicopter crowd.
"actual rumor" So you're spreading that rumor without any proof? That's beneath FR standards.
I thought you were out on a limb with your comment about "Marxists," wideawake, but the above comment placed you back in range.
Looks like the freerepublic is coming up with a new definition of the work "conservative". I just came from this thread where some clown was complaining about Bush spending too much on defense.
Maybe we need to spray for Obama trolls...
I was on one of the TTC threads today, and someone was complaining that the government was loaning money to a private consortium to build it, instead of building it itself (and presumably funding it 100% with our tax money).
I took a new look at this Bush 41 deal and could not agree more.
Watch it; it was that kind of cr@p that got Willie Green banned.
I just think it's interesting that free-trade threads tend to bring out the conspiracy theories.
All of Marx's thought is based on two underlying principles: that Ricardo's labor theory of value is valid, and that government intervention is necessary to insure that value is maintained.
That's the excellent lesson to be drawn from Marxism: that seemingly innocent stupid mistakes lead to many, many people being killed.
And, of course, all the free trade opponents on this thread are arguing for a labor theory of value and for government intervention in prices to maintain it.
The founding fathers neither subscribed to the labor theory of value nor did they imagine government intervention in the economy was necessary to maintain that flawed assumption.
So, by definition, they cannot have been Marxists.
I live in Ohio, please let me know what jobs Ohio has lost to a free trade deal with Columbia?
Right now Ohio gains more from Free Trade than we lose. The jobs lost in Ohio were lost for 3 reasons. 1. High personal taxes. 2. High corporate taxes. 3. Rust belt industry that disappeared many years ago because they couldn't compete.
I didn't say the USA was protectionist: I accurately characterized the leftist majority in the House as protectionist.
Luckily, the Senate and the President do not need to kowtow to their socialist nonsense in negotiating trade agreements.
-I thought you were out on a limb with your comment about "Marxists," wideawake, but the above comment placed you back in range.
While Free Trade can be a good thing. Even Hayek recognized that it was unhealthy and self-destructive for a society to have capitalism without restraints, usually imposed by prevailing social norms. Without them and basing the rightness of an action primarily on it's value in the market, we'll soon be like China: harvesting human organs and dumping whatever crap we can get away with onto unsuspecting consumers.
Who are you calling a marxist clown you jackass? As far as knowing how economics work I know what is not working in this country and it is so-called fair trade. You, rudeboy and the rest of the idiots who embrace this are fools. All you have to offer, all of you, is name calling. No facts, just rhetoric and false statistics. The only marxists I see on this thread and others are you and the other one worlders who have sold out our country.
“Capitalism without restraints” is anarchy, and I have never seen anyone argue in favor of it on this website.
Seriously, some sort of explanation is necessary.
If I were you I wouldn’t use the word protectionist to describe any one in the United States. Not when our 700 billion dollar trade deficit is contributing mightily to today’s dollar meltdown. And do me a favor for today. Don’t reply and tell me trade deficits have no relation to where the US dollar is. Spare me that toddster style bullshit today and this week and this year
dittos
Free trade is great as a theory and great in practice most of the time
But when a nation runs 700 billion dollar trade deficits then these "free trade" policies need to be examined and adjusted...... In our favor. With tariffs and other measures. Those measures are a lot cheaper than the Bear Sterns & Wall Street bailouts the Federal Reserve is concocting these days
And the international markets are voting on our trade policies right this second. They are voting on the US Dollar. Few foreigners showed up last week at our 10 year bond acutions.
And yet, there are advocates of protectionism in the United States. Including many posters on this forum.
And do me a favor for today. Don’t reply and tell me trade deficits have no relation to where the US dollar is.
They have some relationship, of course, but there are far more important factors that determine the dollar's value than trade imbalances. Our trade imbalance is less than 5% of our GDP. I know you want us to believe that it is 100% of our GDP, but it isn't.
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