Posted on 08/01/2003 2:05:33 PM PDT by Jeff Head
TODAY'S FREE TRADE IS NOT ABOUT THE FREE MARKET
We are in a very real battle in this nation and it is a battle for our heart and soul. It is spread out on many, many fronts...education, foreign policy, work ethic (individually and societally), immigration, the economy, moral values...and the list goes on.
Let's focus on the economy and one significant part of it...a major, growing part of it. Free Trade and foreign outsourcing.
I was going to entitle this article..."I used to make something"...or..."We used to make something in this country". But, I thought better of it and realized that such a statment was really focusing on the tail end of the issue as opposed to the root.
So, instead, I am simply calling it, "Today's Free Trade is not about the Free Market."
And it is so, today's Free Trade is NOT about the free market. Instead, in a very similar manner to other key issues in this battle for the heart and soul of America, what is happening is that a very craftily wordsmithed message of "Free Trade" has been put forth that people have bought into, thinking "How could anyone be against free trade? Why, isn't that all-American?".
Like with abortion, "How could anyone be against a woman's right to choose? Isn't that all American?".
In both cases, the craftily worded title has nothing remotely to do with what is actually going on.
The free market is the system our founders based our commerce on, where the intrinsic, underlying moral values of the people involved in the free market governed the equitable, free exchange of goods and services for other goods and services or currency. Sort of like John Adams said regarding the Constitution...
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798It is that underlying moral foundation coupled woth our liberty that made the Free Market in America the envy of the world, just like those same issues made our governmental form the envy of the world.
Well, as far as I am conerned, Adam's words could be tailored to this topic like so, ie... The Free Market was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the economy of any other.
This is a basic truth. Like our government, our free market was not supposed to be very regulated or burdened with miriad rules. The people and the companies were to use their own moral foundation to govern themselves. But, when the moral foundation is removed, you do not have what was intended for the Constitution, and you do not have a true free market.
When we use our foreign policy and economic policy to set up shop and trade with countries, societies, organizations or to implement policies that exploit their people's mercilessly, who keep them down without a hope for true liberty or freedom, who trample the moral values our own system was based upon...and when we do it knowingly, without compuction for those very underlying values, then we do not create a free market...no, that free trade has nothing whatsoever to do with, and is in no way similar to the FREE MARKET, rather, it serves to corrupt it.
Such notions, such actions are in fact wordsmithing for popularizing and putting forth a policy to drain the United States manufacturing, technological, agricultural, energy and other critical industries in order to weaken us...plain and simple...and it is working.
Based on my own travels on behalf of US firms and then later consulting for them...that is what is really happening here in my own opinion, and until we refocus as a people on that underlying moral foundation and the absolute need for it...we will continue to lose ground.
By the way, those same principles that are working at the societal level, have equal application at the personal level too...in fact, in the end it is the sum of their working at the personal level that creates the issue at the societal level.
Jeff Head
Engineering Consultant and,
Author of The Dragon's Fury Series
How current conditions could lead to World War
August 1, 2003
Emmett, Idaho
I notice you can't really say "No" to this question. Or at least, you haven't yet.
This is basically India's current play book for "dealing" with an offshoring backlash.
You don't know many people. It doesn't matter what is going on with a handful of well-off elites, what matters is what is happening to a large percentage of the people, the number of people who have worked all their lives successfully who are now losing jobs or working for $6 an hour instead of $15 an hour.
"Would you drop a nuclear bomb on China today (meaning, right now, August 1st, 2003) if you had the chance?" is a complex question?
Percentage-wise, this number is very, very small, historically. If you are looking for a government that guarantees you a job, maybe you should move to Cuba.
I'll answer your question: No...I would drop lots of them.
I agree.
In a cyclical economic downturn during a world war, it should be much, much worse (and throughout history has been).
It's not as small as you seem to think, and it's the type of lay offs that are alarming. Factory lay offs have always been fairly common, temporary or seasonal. When our government is trying to shut down our means of production, we're headed in the wrong direction ---you can't easily rebuild some of this after they've destroyed it.
Philosophically, I have been a "free trader" all along, figuring that things would work themselves out over time like the "Japanese Car Scare" of the 70's. Thanks to the Japanese, Detroit got off it's collective butt and started making some quality cars for a decent price. We'd still be driving 4000# chrome-plated behemoths that lasted for 80,000 miles were it not for the Japanese. That's the way I figured this Chinese thing would go.
So I was willing to wait for...say...ten years for the Americans, Chinese and Mexicans to go through the same readjustment: Earn lots of money selling stuff to America so they could start buying the things that we made. Right now, it seems that is never going to happen. The things that America produces are slapped with prohibitively-expensive tariffs just about everywhere (50% tariff on beef in Japan?)
Now I am getting scared.
American can't "bring up" the rest of the world economically - the cost is just too much, even if that were the goal.
I am starting to see that the goal is to "bring down" America, rather than to "bring up" the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, our current president seems to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
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