Lol, the famous, "Made in China" tape incident.
Posted on 08/04/2003 5:44:18 AM PDT by Cacophonous
If you wish to understand why U.S. manufacturing is in a death spiral, read last week's editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
When the GOP House voted 270 to 156 for President Bush's free-trade deal with Chile, the Journal leapt with joy. "All in all, a good show, and an optimistic portent for the ... global trade pacts to come."
Now consider what we got in this deal and what we gave up.
Chile's GDP of $70 billion is not even 1 percent of ours. Her per-capita GDP of $4,400 is one-eighth of ours. We have thus gained access to a tiny Latin market, while Chilean manufacturers just gained privileged access to the $10 trillion U.S. market, where consumers have a per-capita GDP of around $37,000.
We just swapped Seabiscuit for a rabbit, and the Wall Street Journal is popping the champagne corks.
Moreover, to give the president his victory, Republicans had to put party interests on the shelf. For Democrats have lately begun to notice that under President Bush, one in every seven U.S. manufacturing jobs has vanished. U.S. manufacturing jobs have been disappearing at the rate of 75,000 a month for 34 months. U.S. workers in manufacturing are now fewer in number than in the 1950s and the smallest share of the labor force since the early 1800s.
Why? Simple. As we import the products of foreign factories in record volume, we close our own factories and ship our jobs, our technology and our future abroad. In May, the U.S. trade deficit in goods was running at the astronomical rate of $562 billion a year. Because of that deficit, since Bush took office, the dollar has lost one-fourth of its value against the euro.
And who has been the big winner from the trade deals the Wall Street Journal has been celebrating since NAFTA converted our trade surplus with Mexico into a $40 billion trade deficit?
No question about it. Beijing. Last year, China ran a $103 billion trade surplus with the United States. This year, her trade surplus is running at $120 billion, and China has surpassed America as the world's premier recipient of foreign investment.
Her trade surplus with America now accounts for 100 percent of China's economic growth. Thus, it is unfair to say the president has not created any jobs. He has created millions of jobs in China, as he has presided over the loss of 2.6 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. A triumph of free trade.
In the United States, however, the president has presided over the loss of 2.6 million manufacturing jobs. But to the editors of the Journal, it does not matter who produces what, where.
And what wonderful things have the Chinese been up to with the $360 billion in foreign reserves, including an immense hoard of U.S. Treasury bonds and T-bills that they have piled up from their trade surpluses with America in the Bush-Clinton-Bush era?
According to a Pentagon report this week, China last year deployed and targeted 100 new missiles on Taiwan for a total of 450 and has begun a crash program to build longer-range missiles to strike and paralyze U.S. bases on Okinawa, Guam and South Korea.
China's buildup now includes home production of the Russian Su-27 and Su-30 fighter-bomber, eight new Kilo submarines with anti-ship cruise missiles and Sovremeny destroyers with supersonic Sunburn missiles, originally designed by Moscow to sink aircraft carriers. These missiles are being purchased with the Nimitz, the Truman, the Kennedy, the Lincoln and the Ronald Reagan in mind.
In its editorial, the Journal reassured nervous Nellie globalists that the "number of genuine GOP protectionists of the Pat Buchanan stripe could fit into a phone booth."
"Protectionist" is, of course, a dirty word among neocons and New World Order acolytes. Yet, it was not always so. In the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, T.R. and Cal Coolidge that dominated U.S. politics for seven decades and converted America into the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen with the highest wages and standard of living on earth, Republicans proudly called themselves protectionist in every party platform.
They believed, as did Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Clay and Jackson, that trade laws should be crafted with the vital strategic interests of the republic always in mind, not the whimsical desires of fickle consumers. They believed trade laws should be written to prosper America first, and protect the industrial base of the nation and the independence and sovereignty of the republic.
The Wall Street Journal, however, has a different agenda.
Open borders, boundless immigration from every country and continent on earth, global free trade, moral interventionism – and Woodrow Wilson Bush is following its lead. Let's see how it all pans out.
Kind of like we did with Japan, then Mexico, now China, etc... Yet still our economy is rolling along just fine. Just tell me when to panic, Pat.
Perhaps Emperor Bush has no clothes.
Just think... you get to enjoy him as your President till 2008. Excellent.
Lol, the famous, "Made in China" tape incident.
To suggest, as Pat does, that our industrial explosion in the half-century after the Civil War was primarily due to tariff protection is ridiculous. Our rise into the world's superpower was based on freedom; that's why we grew, and that's why millions came over the ocean to this great country.
Equally ridiculous, then, must be the suggestion that Smoot-Hawley caused the Stock Market Crash and Depression. Especially as Smoot-Hawley was enacted after the crash.
So were we less free after Kennedy ushered in the "free trade" era? Is that why we went from a creditor nation to a debtor nation?
What you are saying is that freedom is the price we pay for cheaper goods. Bad trade, in my book.
Those photo-ops are all stupid to begin with. Less union jobs are a wonderful thing in my mind.
Ummm... No.
Let's see... a cyclical economic downturn costs a couple million jobs for ultra-left Democrat unionists who bankroll the DNC and their pro-abortion, anti-Christian platforms, and George W. Bush is supposed to be sad about this? Only Pat Buchanan and his good friends at the AFL-CIO headquarters could be sad about this.
,said Ralph Nader.
Yes they are, especially when Bush has to resort to carrying around a canvas banner that depicts boxes that have "Made In The USA" on them. They can throw up to make things "look good".
Pay no attention to the man in front of the curtain!
Meanwhile Bush, Ashcroft and Ridge are adopting the hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil about the Mexican invasion.
The attacks on 9-11-01 upset George and Vincente Fox's talks about "amnesty" for the millions of illegals invading our country.
Perhaps "amnesty" will come in the second term you're forecasting, eh, vato?
The crash of '29 was exactly like the crash of '87, a natural reaction to a huge runup in share prices. There is no law that says a market crash has to be followed by a depression. If we had acted in '29 as we did in '87, there would have been a regular recession instead of a depression. But no - we passed Smoot-Hawley and crimped off world trade, guaranteeing that the economy would collapse.
A far better approach would be to require that foreign markets open up to us in return for access to our markets. It's not free trade unless it goes both ways.
We live in a free market capitalist system where people lose jobs in cyclical economic downturns. It happens. That's life. You come up with a better system, and I'm all ears. But in the meantime, this is the best system man has ever known. And actually, Bush has bent over backwards to these AFL-CIO and Pat Buchanan cretans to try to prop up their jobs at everyone else's expense (especially the very poor). But even this can't save their dying industry. I can't speak for Bush (I'm sure he cares), but if ultra leftist unions lose their jobs, well, I can't think of a more deserving group.
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