Posted on 08/02/2003 9:28:54 AM PDT by Dr. Marten
Blaming China for US economic woes is a fool's game By TOM PLATE LONDON - The United States economy is recovering very slowly; everyone in Europe knows that. Tourism is down, and the terrorists can't be blamed for everything. From Europe, it appears the mood in the US is getting ugly. Culprits are being identified. On the US West Coast, cheerless California Governor Gray Davis is being blamed for everything from the budget shortfall to the energy crisis, and may be kicked out of office through a referendum. Perhaps he is a deserving target, but others are much less so. For example, on the East Coast, Senate members are finding fault with China for aggravating America's economic problems. Hearings are set to be held on the emerging giant's economic and monetary policies. The contentious issue is Beijing's long-held strategy of keeping its currency relatively cheap against others', so that other nations' exports on the world market are more expensive. The ploy increases sales as well as China's market share in various sectors. Japan, before it became another overpriced economic success like Germany and the US, used the same cunning practice. The result for China has been two decades of phenomenal economic growth - good for China but a problem for the US, which is now faced with a daunting trade imbalance. America's trade deficits with other nations, including China, partly explain why the US dollar is no longer so almighty. In the trendy shops of Rome and London, surprised US tourists are having to hand over more dollars for that blouse or tie this year than they did the last time they took a foreign holiday. Some American politicians will try to lay the blame for their weakening dollar not on US domestic economic performance - which has been lacklustre - but elsewhere, especially Beijing. This is the same 'blame others' syndrome of a decade ago, when the bitter West Coast recession in the US was all but blamed on Japan's trade surplus. Tokyo was then No. 1, just as Beijing is now. Worse yet, the congressional finger-pointing coincides with the release of a Pentagon report concluding that Beijing is engaged in a military build-up to reclaim Taiwan by force, if necessary. This is the usual Pentagon fear-mongering to beef up its budget. In Europe, observers tend to regard the ritual Asia-bashing as an occasional American psychosis. They note the rise of Asian tourism here and welcome it. Europeans generally regard China as the coming thing of the 21st century. It is to be negotiated with respectfully and professionally, identifying areas of mutual interest and overlapping aims. That China has a huge trade advantage over the West, especially the US, strikes people here more as evidence of Chinese skill - they produce many things that people around the world want to buy, not least because their costs are so low - than deceitfulness. Europeans also realise that China isn't rich enough yet to buy a lot of high-cost Western exports. In all fairness, the Chinese government adds to this problem by refusing to allow its currency to be traded openly on international exchanges. Among other things, Beijing worries - understandably - about predatory currency attacks from Western financial speculators, of the kind that hastened and deepened the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to 1999. This official practice of sheltering and pampering its currency with injections of economic Botox makes it difficult to lower the US trade deficit - unless US consumers want to start boycotting everything from choo-choo trains at Toys R' Us to Chinese noodles. That may be precisely the next step called for by some US politicians. But it's a fool's game and one that won't fool many Americans. They're still buying wonderful Japanese cars today, just as they did 10 years ago, despite the politicians' huffing and puffing. The Chinese will reflect on this as they increasingly become targets of congressional blame. Even so, China's undervalued yuan is a legitimate international issue, especially in the age of globalisation. As a recently admitted member of the World Trade Organisation, Beijing now has new responsibilities as well as rights. Persistent trade imbalances with countries that have sponge-like markets for Chinese goods are understandable from an economic point of view, but patently explosive from a political point of view. It is in China's national interest to reduce the proportions of the economic issue before the political issue in Washington explodes in an anti-China crusade. An alliance between anti-China politicians and budget-building Pentagon officials will not be good for international business or world stability.
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
This article is a classic case of building a strawman and then celebrating how easy it is to knock it over.
The hackneyed rhetoric style is very liberal. First make some obvious claim. Then spend a few paragraphs trying to stuff a provocative word into the conversation. In this case, it was the word "blame". So what one does is cram irrelevant issues like Gray Davis and some vague "the mood in the US" as expressed by Europeans who largely hate us. As if we care what their media-driven perceptions are. Then in the middle of the article throw a gratuitous insult into the "argument" by saying something as stupid as "the ritual Asia bashing as an occasional American psychosis". This fallacy is called "Poisoning the Well" and is often used when there is no substance in an argument.
It's also important to downplay a serious problem, and that is China's refusal to allow the yuan to be traded on the currency markets. If the yuan had to compete like every other labor force is required to compete, the fear is that speculators would actually place a real value on the yuan rather than by fiat of the Chinese government. But, for this article writer, it is better to hide that arugment in a volley of bogus insults and cheap-shots at Americans.
What the F'ing idiot doesn't realize that any company and labor force that pays taxes is supplying something extra with each sold product. When a person buys American products and services, that person is also buying a military that has soldiers keeping the peace in over 100 different nations, spends $15Billion in Africa on AIDS, underwrites the bulk of the UN's operating expenses, feeds the world, maintains high levels of economic stability, comes up with innovative medicines and products and exports these to third world nations, and pays this moron's salary through tax payer subsidized university education.
If this bozo thinks that it is great for the world to have such unfair trade practices, and to celebrate the harm of a benevolant nation and the rise of a terror state, then we have a clear idea of what garbage is being taught to the next generation of business leaders at UCLA.
Now in Europe a whole lot of people could not understand why the US responded to September 11, 2001 with military force against those who had perpetrated this attrocity.
Europeans generally regard China as the coming thing of the 21st century. It is to be negotiated with respectfully and professionally, identifying areas of mutual interest and overlapping aims.
See above comments regarding China and european idiocy.
That China has a huge trade advantage over the West, especially the US, strikes people here more as evidence of Chinese skill - they produce many things that people around the world want to buy, not least because their costs are so low - than deceitfulness. Europeans also realise that China isn't rich enough yet to buy a lot of high-cost Western exports.Chinese government subsidies to their manufacturers and a 50% tariff on imported goods are while talking about Free Trade that is anything but Free Trade is merely evidence of duplicity not ingenuity.
In all fairness, the Chinese government adds to this problem by refusing to allow its currency to be traded openly on international exchanges.
One of the other egregious violations of so called Free Trade in the name of Free Trade.
Among other things, Beijing worries - understandably - about predatory currency attacks from Western financial speculators, of the kind that hastened and deepened the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to 1999.
Then they should abandon their predatory trade practices and let their currency float and allow the world to compete in their markets if they compete in teh World 's markets. however, even this does not address the past predation by China.
This official practice of sheltering and pampering its currency with injections of economic Botox makes it difficult to lower the US trade deficit - unless US consumers want to start boycotting everything from choo-choo trains at Toys R' Us to Chinese noodles.
Here again this Chinese apologist does not mention duties and imposts aka tariffs as a viable tool for teh USA. yes our Constitution mentions them and such as alexander Hamilton and Thomas jefferson mentioned them and to be honest gaining wquitable tariff treatment for American products in Europe was one of the motivating factors in calling the Constitutional Convention in the first place.
That may be precisely the next step called for by some US politicians.
But it's a fool's game and one that won't fool many Americans. They're still buying wonderful Japanese cars today, just as they did 10 years ago, despite the politicians' huffing and puffing.
But a number of Japanses auto manufacturers are now producing automobiles in Americaq as a result of the tariff policies used then. also we may point to Harley-Davidson as another tariff sucess story.
And every Chinese product purchased in the USA also aids the buildup of the Chinese military that has threatened nuclear destriuction of American cities.
Exactly. As I pointed out on another thread, we have to take a long, hard look at our own "capitalists" to appreciate the real source of America's economic decline. From George Soros to Prescott Bush, from Bill Gates to Jude Wanniski, from Andy Grove to Rupert Murdoch, there isn't a single corporate bigshot in the West who has qualms about helping propel China into superpower status.
If there is anything clearly exposed in political economy, it is the fate attending the working classes under the reign of Free Trade. All those laws developed in the classical works on political economy, are strictly true under the supposition only, that trade be delivered from all fetters, that competition be perfectly free, not only within a single country, but upon the whole face of the earth. These laws, which A. Smith, Say, and Ricardo have developed, the laws under which wealth is produced and distributed — these laws grow more true, more exact, then cease to be mere abstractions, in the same measure in which Free Trade is carried out. And the master of the science, when treating of any economical subject, tells us every moment that all their reasonings are founded upon the supposition that all fetters, yet existing, are to be removed from trade. They are quite right in following this method....
Thus it can justly be said, that the economists — Ricardo and others — know more about society as it will be, than about society as it is. They know more about the future than about the present. If you wish to read in the book of the future, open Smith, Say, Ricardo. There you will find described, as clearly as possible, the condition which awaits the working man under the reign of perfect Free Trade. Take, for instance, the authority of Ricardo, authority than which there is no better. What is the natural normal price of the labour of, economically speaking, a working man? Ricardo replies, “Wages reduced to their minimum — their lowest level.”...
Either you must disavow the whole of political economy as it exists at present, or you must allow that under the freedom of trade the whole severity of the laws of political economy will be applied to the working classes. Is that to say that we are against Free Trade? No, we are for Free Trade, because by Free Trade all economical laws, with their most astounding contradictions, will act upon a larger scale, upon a greater extent of territory, upon the territory of the whole earth; and because from the uniting of all these contradictions into a single group, where they stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emancipation of the proletarians....
~Frederick Engels, The Free Trade Congress at Brussels, October 9, 1847
European 'leaders' have inflicted massive death and destruction on the entire planet with their affection for totalitarianism of one stripe or another. Who cares what the bastards think!
I.e., they have already surrendered.
Over a week ago you argued..."There's nothing inherently superior about any particular culture."
I am wondering if you still feel that way, since the changing business culture seems to be the raison du jour for our current economic decline.
I respect your thoughts stated in other columns so what do you make of this ad hoc theory: The number of "good guys" used to greatly outnumber the "bad guys" in business, so we could absorb the latter's abuses in a laissez faire economy. But with more and more large businesses accumulating MBA that are stamped out a dime a dozen in today's love affair with university attendance, the natural business accumen, that often considered personal morality and social responsibility, has been replaced by a business religion that worships the spreadsheet.
A culture that alienates the community and focuses purely on stock price is great for retirement and pension funds, but it does so by borrowing on an infrastructure that was formed under more expensive circumstances. When the cultural infrastructure (morality,civility,patriotism,work-ethic,education,loyalty, etc.) crumbles through neglect and business rewards robots and chattel and penalizes flesh and blood, we are teaching a whole new generation the culture of the new MBAs.
This is buttressed by the philosophy of gross materialism and selfishness that people slump into a sofa and allow to permeate their skulls for hours each day. So now you have disenfranchised people who have a peculiarly high sense of entitlement and felt needs who are frustrated by the MBA's with a peculiarly high sense of entitlement and felt needs, who find solace in their stock portfolios and performance bonuses purchased by laying off their neighbor and outsourcing to enemy nations.
Eventually the disenfranchised amount in number so high that politicians consider their common predicament as a new constituency group, and thus campaign on promises that are similar to those employed in Old Europe. Soon, five weeks compulsory paid vacation, full medical coverage, retirement at 75% salary, free day care, etc. are imposed on the MBA business men who are now prohibited from exporting gigs. What has just happened is that normal moral human decency has been killed and replaced by a governmental code of conduct. Instead of a Henry Ford paying his employees above market wages on the moral and ethical pretext that poor people can't buy Model 'T's, we get labor unions that force it through labor strikes and slowdowns. When this confrontational situation reaches a high point, the businessmen consider the rule of ethics and moralty an anachronism to a dead era and a no longer existant culture. Now when then gigs are overseas, it is a time for another retallitory strike by the labor class as now they demand government use the powers of the police state to do what the unions no longer can do. The next response by the businessman is retirement to Gault's Gulch, where Gault's Gulch may very well be the wholesale relocation of the business to another hemisphere.
It's happening to Europe, it shall surely happen here.
OPEN ASSIGNMENT
MISSION TO SAVE AMERICAN JOBS
President Bush:
Mr. President your mission, if you will accept it, is to locate good jobs for Americans. On your watch, 3+ million jobs have disappeared. You are to find where they went, recover them, and prevent this from happening again.
You have until November 2004 to complete this mission.
If you choose not to accept this mission, or are incapable of performing, don't run in the GOP Primary so another Republican can accept this important mission for America.
American Citizen Voter
Same old, same old with this national socialist crowd.
And it should. If you had a partner who kept a gun aimed at your head (or dozens of ICBMs in this case), and threatened to kill your children (in cities like LA from aforementioned ICBMs) and spent the money this "partnership" made to give your enemies and tools to rob and kill you (nukes to N Korea) and was calculating how to attack you (takeover Panama canal) and was subverting those in your household (supporting leftist causes) and spoke poorly of you whenever the opportunity arose (any given UN meeting) then shot up your property and called you a spy (that little EC-3 incident) - that person would not stay my partner, but more like a mortal enemy.
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