In 1985, Roger [Milliken] had come to the White House to persuade me to convince the president to sign a bill to slow the flood of textiles into the country. No way, I told Mr. Milliken. I'm the biggest free-trader in the building, except for the fellow down the hall, who was Ronald Reagan. Roger went away disappointed. Reagan vetoed the bill. And I supervised the writing of the veto message.Within half a decade, however, some of us had seen the light and enlisted in Roger's crusade to preserve the manufacturing core of the country that he rightly saw as inextricably tied to the prosperity and the pre-eminence of the United States.
--Patrick J. Buchanan, Requiem For a Patriot, January 4, 2011.
If we want to bring manufacturing back to America we can only do it through regulatory and tax reform. (The core tea party tenets)
CHINA is on the RISE!
They don’t play by the rules set down...
They lowered their value of the Chinese currency so that their citizens can’t afford US products...
There are no rules of regulations on pollution control for food production or anything else - other than turning a profit...
Their military is increasing in size and war production...
We played with the devil on Bill Clinton’s urging...and we are paying the price...
The US doesn’t even have a show manufacture anymore - let alone a microwave, TV, or anything else that the typical consumer buys...soon the world will have a stamp on it, “Made in China”...
“The beneficiaries of free trade are many, and they don’t know who they are. It’s victims are few, and they know who they are.” Milton Friedman.
Bump.
Well, one aspect of Free Trade is that while “Fruit of the Loom” left Oklahoma and other parts of the south, underwear is still very affordable.
The purpose of 'Free Trade' has always been to destroy the American Middle-class.
I do believe the coming Populist wave is going to include a resurgence of the Ross Perot “No More Free Trade!” position.
These are the same people so, enamoured of ‘free trade’, who try to force Kyoto-like agreements on the US, while demanding NOTHING as rigorous of other countries... themselves THE greatest polluters!
In 2007-08 Willard was urging trade with China and insisting that China be given favorite nation status...
Well, it’s not like everybody woke up and suddenly decided to outsource Industry. Outsourced industry is a result of hostile business conditions that have systematically forced American Manufacturing to foreign (more importantly, less regulated and taxed) sources.
Chief among them are onerous EPA regulations, onerous Labor relations, high taxation and high cost of serviceable infrastructure. Mostly political reasons as higher government spending and associated costs just force higher and higher taxation.
Other reasons are now coming into play as our education system continues to dumb down the work force and make it even less competitive to foreign companies. This is egregious as it damages and erodes our future dominance or presence in global research.
We won’t educate our next generation properly and we’re too eager to educate foreign nationals that merely depart with the education and technology and contribute little to the U.S.
All this by design so that the rest of the world can catch up to western technological and living standards ostensibly for the greater global good — however only the U.S seems to be making this sacrifice (not that the sacrifice was a good idea anyway)
Then when you talk about and realize how IP, copyright and patent regulations are further crippling our competitiveness you start painting this picture that shows you how inept and inefficient liberal socialism is.
The left and the right continues to mortgage the future on all fronts of U.S Industry. They trade the more important competitiveness of tomorrow for the illusion of competitiveness of today just to maintain their constituency. Trading the future for today.
Now we should understand the saying: “A fish rots from the head down”.
Iow, *IT’S OUR FAULT*.
Laughable if not so darn sad on so many levels (as comments show).
” The tombstones of countless dead towns across America should read: Killed by Free Trade.”
Killed by unions and automation.
There is no such thing as “free trade” right now
bkmk