Posted on 02/15/2006 10:42:45 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Our hollow prosperity
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Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
PATRICK BUCHANAN
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
Now that the U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth straight all-time record, a question arises.
What constitutes failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is free trade simply right no matter the results?
Last year, the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China, the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin America. The $50 billion deficit with Mexico was the largest since NAFTA passed and also the largest in history.
When NAFTA was up for a vote in 1993, the Clintonites and their GOP fellow-travelers said it would grow our trade surplus, raise Mexico's standard of living and reduce illegal immigration.
None of this happened. Indeed, the opposite occurred. Mexico's standard of living is lower than it was in 1993, the U.S. trade surplus has vanished, and America is being invaded. Mexico is now the primary source of narcotics entering the United States.
Again, when can we say a free-trade policy has failed?
The Bushites point proudly to 4.6 million jobs created since May 2003, a 4.7 percent unemployment rate and low inflation.
Unfortunately, conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts and analysts Charles McMillion and Ed Rubenstein have taken a close look at the figures and discovered that the foundation of the Bush prosperity rests on rotten timber.
The entire job increase since 2001 has been in the service sector – credit intermediation, health care, social assistance, waiters, waitresses, bartenders, etc. – and state and local government.
But, from January 2001 to January 2006, the United States lost 2.9 million manufacturing jobs, 17 percent of all we had. Over the past five years, we have suffered a net loss in goods-producing jobs.
"The decline in some manufacturing sectors has more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing than with a super-economy that is 'the envy of the world,'" writes Roberts.
Communications equipment lost 43 percent of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37 percent ... The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30 percent. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25 percent of its workforce.
How did this happen? Imports. The U.S. trade deficit in advanced technology jobs in 2005 hit an all-time high.
As for the "knowledge industry" jobs that were going to replace blue-collar jobs, it's not happening. The information sector lost 17 percent of all its jobs over the last five years.
In the same half-decade, the U.S. economy created only 70,000 net new jobs in architecture and engineering, while hundreds of thousands of American engineers remain unemployed.
If we go back to when Clinton left office, one finds that, in five years, the United States has created a net of only 1,054,000 private-sector jobs, while government added 1.1 million. But as many new private sector jobs are not full-time, McMillion reports, "the country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001."
This is an economic triumph?
Had the United States not created the 1.4 million new jobs it did in health care since January 2001, we would have nearly half a million fewer private-sector jobs than when Bush first took the oath.
Ed Rubenstein of ESR Research Economic Consultants looks at the wage and employment figures and discovers why, though the Bushites were touting historic progress, 55 percent of the American people in a January poll rated the Bush economy only "fair" or "poor."
Not only was 2005's growth of 2 million jobs a gain of only 1.5 percent, anemic compared to the average 3.5 percent at this stage of other recoveries, the big jobs gains are going to immigrants.
Non-Hispanic whites, over 70 percent of the labor force, saw only a 1 percent employment increase in 2005. Hispanics, half of whom are foreign born, saw a 4.7 percent increase. As Hispanics will work for less in hospitals and hospices, and as waiters and waitresses, they are getting the new jobs.
But are not wages rising? Nope. When inflation is factored in, the Economic Policy Institute reports, "real wages fell by 0.5 percent over the last 12 months after falling 0.7 percent the previous 12 months."
If one looks at labor force participation – what share of the 227 million potential workers in America have jobs – it has fallen since 2002 for whites, blacks and Hispanics alike. Non-Hispanic whites are down to 63.4 percent, but black Americans have fallen to 57.7 percent.
What is going on? Hispanic immigrants are crowding out black Americans in the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled job market. And millions of our better jobs are being lost to imports and outsourcing.
The affluent free-traders, whose wealth resides in stocks in global companies, are enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens and sacrificing the American worker on the altar of the Global Economy.
None dare call it economic treason.
Pat is still bitter because the "True Conservative" base was barely 2% in his run for the White House.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Neither is Pat Buchannan
Shhhh. Don't tell elhombrelibre, our assets are never coming back.
Oh really? Is that why the citizens of Texas can't afford to build their own highway system and have to ask the Spanish company Cintra to fund and run it? Is that why Arnold Schwarzenegger who hasn't spent one red cent filling some of the potholes on California freeways, is asking China to fund a "goods movement corridor" out of the LA basin? Is that why our water and utility systems are being sold off to foreign entities-- they say its because citizens and municipalities are broke and can't afford to keep them up. If we are making so much money, where is all the tax money they are collecting going?
Your post perfectly illustrates what I found so bizarre about the whole Buchananite vision for this country.
You cite a litany of government failures on the economic front as a justification for your plans to put the government in charge of the purchasing decisions of individual Americans.
The current system, as you note, is very imperfect. The answer is less government interference. Not more. Anybody who’s paying attention knows that.
You got me!
What trade surplus? Has the US even had a trade surplus since the 1960's?
This has nothing to do with NAFTA and everything to do with GATT and the Roosevelt era policy reducing tarriffs.
Paging Willie Green!
save
Maybe the Democrats should hire Buchanan. He sounds alot like Clinton did in 1992 when he blathered on about how this country was suffering through the worse economy in 50 years.
Yup, my portfolio is up 35%, my home value has doubled and my property value in Florida has increased 500%..thinks are looking pretty bad.
"What's the point. Until Hillary's in the White House, people here just won't care."
You're dead-on with this one. Enjoy your umbrella-drinks, boys. There will be a change in '08. The only question is whether it will come from within the GOP. If conservatives don't take the lead on this issue, Hillary will.
"None dare call it economic treason."
I do... Unless your main source of income is playing the markets (in which case you're pretty much a parasite anyways), you're not safe from globalism, either. Every wage earner in this country is under attack. Not to mention that it is a VERY bad idea to be giving the Chinese the means to global domination.
You are exactly right.
Pat is an idiot. when software is shipped out the country it is billed - often for tax purposes - at the cost of the media not the product. So a $100 export might be for 5 million. We export a chip plant to Isreal, does every bit of the intellectual captial get added to the install - NO!!
It's funny how SOCIALIST-LIKE these threads become...
Wage-earners...
more government control....
to quote Sen. Byrd: "Too much consumin' goin' on out there"....
It's great.
At least Pat got off of his Hate Israel kick. Not that his followers will see it that way, but then again, it isn't as if Pat will EVER win ANYTHING.....
Just a point, I've seen Buchanan trashed a lot on this thread, but haven't seen any significant refutations of his points. I'm no economist, so I don't know, but without reference to who wrote the column, are there flaws? What are they?
Oh, as a side note, and I've never gotten this one straight in my head. The constitution requires all treaties to be validated by a 2/3rds vote of Congress. Did Congress side-step this by calling it an agreement instead of a treaty? Or was it passed by a 2/3rds vote. If it wasn't, shouldn't NAFTA be challenged in Federal court? Calling a treaty an agreement doesn't change the nature of what it is, and I think that there is substantive legal support that changing the name of something without changing it's underlying nature does not change legal ramifications(Example, calling a chain letter an "investment opportunity" doesn't mean it's not a chain letter).
And if you noticed...they are very, very good at not buying our stuff. They now have $800 billion in currency reserves stockpiled...almost all dollars.
Pat agrees with Bush.
Bush SOTU "I will ask Congress for $350 million to support Palestinian political, economic, and security reforms. The goal of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace, is within reach -- and America will help them achieve that goal. (Applause.)"
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