Posted on 11/13/2012 2:00:40 PM PST by DannyTN
Romney promised that he would act on China's currency manipulation "on his first day." So Republicans can pretend Romney won, and actually act on China's currency manipulation! If they would actually do what they promised to do we could get a lot a lot of "job creation" going on. Or will they continue to obstruct?
China continues to manipulate its currency. It has been getting better but not fast enough. This manipulation keeps the prices of things made in China lower than they should be -- even before taking into account all of the other trade cheating China has been doing. And that means that jobs, factories, industries and big chunks of our economy continue to move to China. Look at what happened with Sensata the day before the election.
For various non-trade reasons -- Obama needs China's help with Korea, etc. -- the President has resisted declaring China to be a currency manipulator. Action by Congress to push this forward strengthens the President's hand in getting something done on this, and in the end could just get it done outside of the administration. So to accomplish this there is a bill to act on China's currency manipulation.
The "China Currency Bill" has passed the Senate but is stalled in the House by Republican leadership. Speaker Boehner is keeping the bill from coming up for a vote. It could come to the floor and pass if just a few of the 60+ Republican cosponsors would actually cosponsor the bill be signing a "discharge petition" to bring it up for a vote.
The people want this. Polls overwhelmingly showed that the public "gets it" about China and trade and what is happening to all the jobs and factories and industries. This polling was why Romney campaigned for this. And this was a democracy election -- the people made it very clear what they want to happen.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio recently pushed to have this bill revived and voted on in the House, and now the voters have given their stamp of approval by reelecting Brown. Across the board the public has made it clear that it is time to act. Republicans should pretend it is Romney's "first day" and act on Chinese currency manipulation -- like he promised they would do.
The election is over, it is time for action, not more obstruction.
Who cares about China’s currency manipulation? I don’t. If they want to make their goods cheaper for us then I am OK with that.
Us going after China for currency manipulation is like Obama criticizing Romney for socializing healthcare.
Isn’t China’s currency manipulation just to mirror ours. When we deflate....they deflate?
Right about now, Boehner is trying to figure out how to give Obama everything he wants.....you know, like amnesty, and everything else.
I’m all for cheap goods, until it puts American’s out of work.
Free trade with low wage countries has devastated our industries. It’s time to wise up.
Cheap goods aren’t necessarily cheap when you add the cost of carrying unemployed Americans and all the associated lost tax revenues. In fact, they can be quite expensive.
That's something that wasn't addressed in the debates except for that brief moment when the rat moderator raised the question about wage differentials that no one answered.
Free trade with low wage countries is unwise when you're at 25% unemployment.
Not going to happen. The Republicans in CONgress are going to roll over and play dead at the feet of King Obama and his minions in CONGress.
Repubs are running scared.
I mean, hey, the socialist-communists should feel pretty good by being in an "active" partnership with their Asian Komrades!
People (i.e. FDR) used the same arguments you are giving now in the 1930’s and that is why in America the depression is called the Great Depression instead of simply the depression.
Google “Blue eagle” and research protectionism and the economy of the 1930s. I think that the policies you endorse would hurt Americans and raise unemployment. I firmly believe that it is useful to learn from history.
Depends on how we do it. If we target China alone, most of the jobs will simply shift to another low wage country. But if we target a class of goods that China makes and raise the import tariff high enough, they will indeed shift back here.
If we don't raise the tariffs high enough, the jobs won't shift back, but the Chinese profit will be reduced and U.S. Gov't revenues will increase. That alone would be a positive.
Also, China's Yuan is pegged to the dollar...
To fix the situation, we should be advocating market-based interest rates. Our lack of capital and production should be blamed on Fed policy and not Chinese mercantilism.
Economic reality indicates that prices need to decline which includes allowing wages to fall. It's about competitiveness and real economic growth.
Interest rates will never come up due to our unsustainable debt. So, economic policies against China will just distract us from the real problems.
Raising my taxes is a “positive.” That’s all I needed to hear. God Bless our federal government! Raise my taxes high enough and quickly enough to bring these jobs back!
FDR didn't take office until 1933, the Great Depression began in 1929. What's more the Smoot Hawley tariff didn't go into effect until Jun - 1930 long after the Great Depression was well under way.
Going into the Great Depression, imports were 4% of GNP, and exports were 5% of GNP. There is no way international trade caused the Great depression, a drop in GNP of 40%. The trade numbers are simply not big enough. (There was an international banking scare that did affect the U.S. market and helped generate the Great Depression, but that's an entirely different issue than Tariffs and trade.)
Now imports are 16% of GNP. And unemployment is 25%.
If you really want to avoid tax increases, you should be focused on getting America's economy going again instead of trying to balance the budget while leaving the structural issues with the economy that caused this mess in place.
Besides, I think there is a good argument that China will pay more of those taxes than you will.
It depends on whether the Chinese can raise prices to us and not see the jobs shift back to us. If they can’t raise prices, they’ll pay the tariff and simply have less profit.
Which is okay by me, because the Chinese government was going to take 90% of the profit and buy U.S. Debt with it, or worse U.S. firms that they can dismantle and ship to China. So U.S. Gov’t revenues go up, Communist Chinese gov’t revenues go down.
We've been in a trade war. And we have refused to fight back and now have 25% unemployment to show for it.
Currency manipulation is not the real issue. It's the whole idea that trade with low wage countries is always a good idea, regardless of how high your own country's unemployment is.
"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.