Posted on 02/20/2016 9:11:04 PM PST by VitacoreVision
Republican hawks are aflutter today over China's installation of anti-aircraft missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea.
But do these Republicans, good free-traders all, realize their own indispensable role in converting an indigent China into the mighty and menacing power that seeks to push us out of Asia?
Last year, China ran up the largest trade surplus in history, at our expense, $365 billion. We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us.
Using Census Bureau statistics, Terry Jeffrey of CNSNEWS.com documents how Beijing has, over decades, looted and carted off the greatest manufacturing base the world had ever seen.
In 1985, China's trade surplus with us was a paltry $6 million. By 1992, when some of us were being denounced as "protectionists" for raising the issue, the U.S. trade deficit with China had crossed the $10 billion mark.
In 2002, it crossed the $100 billion mark. In 2005, the $200 billion mark. In each of the last four years, Communist China has run an annual trade surplus at the expense of the United States in excess of $300 billion.
Total trade deficits with China in the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era? $4 trillion. Total U.S. trade deficit in 2015 -- $736 billion, 4 percent of our GDP.
To understand why Detroit look as it does, while the desolate Shanghai Richard Nixon visited in '72 is the great and gleaming metropolis of 2016, look to our trade deficits.
They also help explain America's 2 percent growth, her deindustrialization, her shrinking share of the world economy, and the stagnation of U.S. wages as manufacturing jobs are replaced by service jobs.
Those trade deficits also explain the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
Yet, with the exception of Trump, none of the GOP candidates seems willing to debate, defend or denounce the policies that eviscerated America -- and empowered the People's Republic.
Workers, however, know what our politicians refuse to discuss.
They are being sold out for the benefit of corporate elites who pay off those politicians with the big cash contributions that keep the parties flush.
Politicians who play ball with Wall Street and K Street know they will be taken care of, if they are defeated or when they retire from public office, so long as they have performed.
Free trade is not a zero-sum game. The losers are the workers whose jobs, factories and futures are shipped abroad, and the dead and dying towns left behind when the manufacturing plants shut down.
America is on a path of national decline because, while we have been looking out for what is best for the "global economy," our rivals have been looking out for what is best for their own nations.
Consider OPEC, which is reeling from the oil price collapse. Russia is colluding with Saudi Arabia and Iraq to cut production to firm up the market and prevent prices from falling further.
This is pure price fixing, but we all understand self-interest.
What might a U.S. national-interest-based trade policy look like?
Controlling the largest market on earth, we might impose on foreign producers a cover charge, an admissions fee, a tariff, to get into our market.
Example: Impose a 20 percent tariff on foreign cars entering the USA. This might raise the cost of a Lexus or Mercedes produced and assembled abroad from $50,000 to $60,000.
However, if Lexus or Mercedes buys or makes all their parts in the USA and assembles all their cars here, no tariff. Their cars could still sell for $50,000. This would be a powerful incentive to shift production here. As an added incentive, all tariff revenue could be used to reduce or eliminate corporate taxes in the USA.
Between the Civil War and World War I, under Republicans, the U.S. became the world's greatest industrial power and a wholly self-sufficient nation. How? We taxed foreign goods entering the United States, but did not tax the profits of U.S. companies or the incomes of U.S. workers.
The difference between economic patriots and globalists who inhabit corporate-funded think tanks and public policy institutes is that the latter think of what is best for their corporate benefactors and the global economy. The former put America and Americans first.
Academics revere Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Richard Cobden.
But none of them ever built a great nation. Patriots look to Alexander Hamilton and those post-Civil War Republicans who built the greatest national industrial powerhouse the world had ever seen.
Indeed, what great nation did free trade ever build?
As father of a united Germany, Chancellor Bismarck said, when he decided to build Germany on the American and not the British model, "I see that those countries which possess protection are prospering, and that those countries which possess free trade are decaying."
So it is true today. Unfortunately, it is America, now wedded to the fatal dogma of free trade, that is decaying.
>>>Donald Trump Is Right on Trade
And Pat Buchanan is wrong on trade, has been for a long time. One of the reasons his candidacy failed.
Pat understands that the Capital Stock of America is being slowly bled away to China, through (Adam) Smithsonian Free Trade practiced by us, while China adopts our historical mercantilism.
Absolutely false ... you are wrong again ..
No he is completely right.
China is a gigantic closed society which does not freely allow imports, does not allow foreign ownership of factories, and runs a MASSIVE trade surplus with us.
Trump is about the only person saying one single word.
[Yet, with the exception of Trump, none of the GOP candidates seems willing to debate, defend or denounce the policies that eviscerated America — and empowered the People’s Republic.]
Follow the money. Tells ya what their priorities are.
The Chinese REQUIRE that we give them our technology in exchange for their production of cheap stuff for us. They CLEARLY have done well there.
The other problem is that we’ve exported so much capability that we can’t do jack anymore ourselves. I SERIOUSLY DOUBT that we can even build military hardware ourselves...if we dig enough, look at the electronic components in fighter jets, or the machinery used to make munitions - any guesses as to what country (or countries) will turn up - probably lots of other countries, which is NOT GOOD.
If China wanted to stick with building household products, I wouldn’t care much - but we’re now CRIPPLED without them.
How is China’s economy doing now?
China is doing quite well actually.
Awesomely actually.
America however is losing everything.
No, it’s not doing awesome.
Unless currency devaluation, cooking the books, turmoil in Chinese stock markets and the government suspending trading twice last month are indications of the Chinese economy doing “awesome.”
China is doing awesomely.
America needs (very badly) to bring back American manufacturing.
Did McLaughlin have to fire little Morty Zuckerman NY Daily from McLaughlin Group so Pat Buchanan could argue against an actual liberal not uniparty Morty Jebby Hillary?
Obviously, our views of an awesome economy are quite different.
“Last year, China ran up the largest trade surplus in history, at our expense, $365 billion. We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us.”
Translation: China gave us $482 billion worth of goods in exchange for $116 billion of worth of goods AND $365 billion dollars worth of unsecured IOUs (treasuries mostly) that are backed by the Fed’s printing press.
Milton Friedman (and any reasonable person) would say that that’s a hell of a deal for us!
Who wouldn’t exchange fiat money, that you can print ad infinitum, for real goods? Oh, and those dollars that China gets from us, eventually have to be spent here. (What they do is they buy treasuries, real estate, businesses, etc. at inflated prices, like Japan did in the 90s.)
China is taking all the risk in this deal and Trump doesn’t get it.
Here’s a “debate” between Trump and Friedman on trade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DhagKyvDck
Excellent post and link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DhagKyvDck
I’d add this one:
“Milton Friedman debates a protectionist”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qqG6OurHaM
It may be very unfortunate that some conservatives are unfamiliar with Milton Friedman, Free to Chose, and conservative economic principles.
Certainly Donald Trump is.
thanks again...
Sure, that's one way to look at it, but it does not represent the full picture.
In addition to the money going to China, the jobs and economic growth went there too.
Essentially all the revenue was a transfer of Capital Stock, which could have been used as investment here...new factories and other forms of production.
If you think those IOUs have no meaning or importance, absent a US default, you are mistaken.
And, there ARE those who believe the US should declare all treasuries held outside the US as null chits. Hell, eventually we HAVE to default as we won't be able to pay the interest.
But that's the MAD doctrine.
>>>”like Japan did in the 90s”
How many remember that Japan in the 90s was getting the same treatment by the protectionists that China is today?
I believe so-called “free trade” is simply a way of allowing foreigners to take jobs and opportunities away from Americans (especially the young and minorities) without making them first sneak across the border to do it. It’s a way to letting the Chinese enjoy illegal alien benefits without leaving home.
Free markets are freedom in the economic sphere - a major sphere of individual freedom.
The opposite end of the spectrum is centralized government control: government deciding you are choosing wrong.
The result of protectionism is less freedom and higher prices, at the least.
Economically, you are relying on government - politics - to make economic decisions. Taxing citizens to give to favored industries and politicians buying votes on who to favor and who to punish.
bttt
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