"Cruz and I have your back on this, My Master and beloved King."
Posted on 06/11/2015 7:53:32 AM PDT by xzins
Congress should not grant President Barack Obama authority to conclude another free trade agreement in Asia, because it would lower American wages and exacerbate income inequality.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would eliminate tariffs and lower other regulatory barriers to trade and investment among the United States, South Korea, Japan and nine other Pacific Rim nations.
In March 2012, President Obama inaugurated a free trade pact with South Korea and in many ways, it provides a template for what we may expect from a broader TPP.
Imports from South Korea are up 3.6 billion, U.S. exports are down marginally and the U.S. trade deficit with the Asian nation has swelled to 5 billion. That free trade deal alone has killed about 25,000 American jobs — mostly in high paying manufacturing activities — and added to downward pressures on wages and worsened income inequality.
Campaigning in 2008, candidate Obama promised to fix problems like those but he has been weak about confronting Chinese mercantilism, and the $350 billion bilateral trade deficit costs American workers at least 3 million jobs and greatly suppresses wages.
Over the years, China, South Korea and Japan have violated WTO and International Monetary Fund rules by purposefully undervaluing their currencies to subsidize exports and raise prices for otherwise competitive U.S. products in their markets.
Such currency manipulation would wipe out the benefits American businesses may expect from the TPP — just as it has done for bilateral deals struck with China, Japan and South Korea — by eliminating tariffs and reducing other barriers to trade.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Applying data from the World Bank, which calculates what national currencies should be worth in U.S. dollars to have comparable purchasing power, the yuan, won and yen currently appear to be at least 50, 25 and 15 percent undervalued, respectively. And those exchange rate practices compel other Asian trading nations to follow similar policies, lest they be shut out of markets by unfairly priced Chinese, Korean and Japanese goods—for example, India’s rupee is only about one-fourth its fair market value.
Most everything Obama does rapes America and Americans
That's been the primary impact of NAFTA and all the much ballyhooed major trade deals: lower or eliminate tariffs on exports to the US, lower barriers to investment in cheap labor nations, and thus increase incentives and decrease disincentives for US firms to relocate manufacturing facilities and jobs to cheap labor nations, and then export products back to the US tariff free, or almost tariff free.
And then we have higher trade deficits and fewer manufacturing jobs for Americans and more Americans signing up for the myriad of government poverty programs. Works every time and it will work again with TPP.
“In declining states the leadership intuitively chooses the most harmful course of action.” -F. Nietzsche
That undervaluation is actually raping/stealing from the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. What America is getting is imports at 50%, 25%, and 15% discounts while exporting inflationary pressures to those countries. It’s a good deal and trade without duress is always beneficial.
Blocking trade hurts people and diminishes wealth.
Great example and worth the minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PL9yH-7vec
And WTO was sold as having all manner of dispute resolution procedures that would help the US. The TPP salesmen are making the same claim for TPP. Guess the WTO salesmen were wrong about that so now we need another fix.
Worth repeating. Free traitors would have us believe that corporations only do this to benefit the US consumer. Meme: The corporation do not profit form this at all, they do it out of a sense of altruism. Doesn't effect their bottom line, it just makes thing more affordable to the US consumer. Yeah right.
Raise your hand if you thought it would be otherwise.
So when do we get a lecture on how great the H-1b visa program is and how it is better to pay income taxes than tariffs/sales (consumption based) taxes?
No, it protects their home markets from competition and allows them to make most of the profits to be made in their home nation and then make even more profits exporting to the US, plus they have the jobs that were lured away from the US with cheap labor and lax regulation.
Have you ever heard of marginal contribution?
Jeff Sessions was talking about the S Korea deal last night on Mark Levin. He said he got hyped about how great it was going to be and how much money the US would make so he finally voted for it because S Korea is an ally. He said its turned out to be a disappointment.
This TPP is just NAFTA on steroids. A bunch of foreign govts are paying Tom Dascle and Trent Lott to lobby the GOP in favor of this monstrosity and naturally most Republicans have the DNA of a Lemming so they are all jumping off the cliff together because the leadership says so.
I wonder if the GOP will be shocked when half the republican voters sit home next year?
Imagine a rich uncle who agrees to support your life long dream of manufacturing and selling widgets. He lends you the money, but you cannot turn a profit. He’s rich and indulges you, so he subsidizes your price to the market by 50%.
1. Who gains?
2. Who loses?
Brilliant quote. I’m stealing it. :-)
"Cruz and I have your back on this, My Master and beloved King."
You’re posting a lot of BS about what currency manipulation does and does not do. Currency manipulation is really just a backdoor way of lowering the price of exports from say, China, to the US, and increasing the price of imports from the US.
And it is very much to China’s advantage to do this. A simple explanation:
Any manufacturing process requires inputs of both fixed costs and variable costs, VCs being the cost of producing one more unit. FC are a significant cost, but at some point enough units can be produced and sold to recover all FC, and then the production costs of all units produced after that are mostly VC.
A company has reached that sweet spot and makes more profit per unit after all FC have been recovered. Thus, high volumes of exports help them reach that point sand they can lower prices and sell even more units of their products. And they are still protecting their home market and realizing most of the home profits by limiting competition.
This is much closer to what goes on with so called currency manipulation, or price manipulation. This is a cost accounting explanation that happens in reality, and not some crackpot econ theory that has little to do with reality.
If this bill was so good why did Congress have to pass another amendment regarding the Trade Agreement Causation for Trade Related Training of displaced workers. Not the exact title but that is the jist of the bill.
I hard that too, Jeff sessions stated the trade agreement stated the USA would get 18 Billion in sales to Korea, USA has 1 Billion from Korea and Korea has 15 billion to the USA.
Cheaper prices mean nothing if you don’t have a job. If you look at history, the US became the largest economy in history with very high tariffs. In fact that’s why there was no need for an income tax until 1915 or so.
How much money has your grocer spent on you? I know you’re always paying him, but what does he buy from you?
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