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.
Maybe so. John Cornyn, the Texas Senator who just one in a landslide, has already proposed a version of it. Hopefully he'll have some success getting that through.
You shouldn't have to. And unions are pure evil. Their individual members might not all be, but what they form as a collective are purely evil. Period.
That's precisely what a tariff is intended to accomplish. It's the enforcement mechanism.
Yes, WE do; the Chinese do not. How there possibly be "free trade" between the US and China?
...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.
You missed my point. That's 2.6 million people potentially voting against Bush. I hope he doesn't brush them off as glibly as you do.
They already do! And the unions they give all their money to, more importantly, bankroll the opposition to conservativism in America. Am I supposed to be crying that these people and the evil they bankroll are out of jobs? Look, I hope they get jobs somewhere else in non-union sectors as soon as possible.
Lol, so will this Texas Senator propose a change to our Social Security Administration so Americans can get the same deal? Lol, this guy is rich. I think he's been smoking loco weed.
Now is there any doubt in the world as to which political party this man most often supports in elections?
Why would a Texas Senator propose something seeing as the overwhelming majority of his support came from white Texans and Texas is on the border with Mexico?
But, he is the rarity.
Why would Pat Buchanan ever be happy? His entire reason for being is to rant, yell, and be angry. Oh, and to hate our current President with a passion.
Doesn't sound like he's much of one.
That doesn't really answer the question, does it?
Let's admit, the President won on a razor thin margin, and any of those states swinging could change the outcome. I think it is easier to lose one of those states, than to capture a New York or California.
The President's appeal as an honest straight shooter and as the anti-Clinton won many of those. Now that many of those people are unemployed, they may not be so willing to vote for him.
I know, the President looks pretty unbeatable now, but so did his father.
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