Posted on 02/19/2016 6:56:22 AM PST by Kaslin
Republican hawks are aflutter today over China's installation of anti-aircraft missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea.
But do these Republicans, good free-traders all, realize their own indispensable role in converting an indigent China into the mighty and menacing power that seeks to push us out of Asia?
Last year, China ran up the largest trade surplus in history, at our expense, $365 billion. We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us.
Using Census Bureau statistics, Terry Jeffrey of CNSNEWS.com documents how Beijing has, over decades, looted and carted off the greatest manufacturing base the world had ever seen.
In 1985, China's trade surplus with us was a paltry $6 million. By 1992, when some of us were being denounced as "protectionists" for raising the issue, the U.S. trade deficit with China had crossed the $10 billion mark.
In 2002, it crossed the $100 billion mark. In 2005, the $200 billion mark. In each of the last four years, Communist China has run an annual trade surplus at the expense of the United States in excess of $300 billion.
Total trade deficits with China in the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era? $4 trillion. Total U.S. trade deficit in 2015 -- $736 billion, 4 percent of our GDP.
To understand why Detroit look as it does, while the desolate Shanghai Richard Nixon visited in '72 is the great and gleaming metropolis of 2016, look to our trade deficits.
They also help explain America's 2 percent growth, her deindustrialization, her shrinking share of the world economy, and the stagnation of U.S. wages as manufacturing jobs are replaced by service jobs.
Those trade deficits also explain the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
Yet, with the exception of Trump, none of the GOP candidates seems willing to debate, defend or denounce the policies that eviscerated America -- and empowered the People's Republic.
Workers, however, know what our politicians refuse to discuss.
They are being sold out for the benefit of corporate elites who pay off those politicians with the big cash contributions that keep the parties flush.
Politicians who play ball with Wall Street and K Street know they will be taken care of, if they are defeated or when they retire from public office, so long as they have performed.
Free trade is not a zero-sum game. The losers are the workers whose jobs, factories and futures are shipped abroad, and the dead and dying towns left behind when the manufacturing plants shut down.
America is on a path of national decline because, while we have been looking out for what is best for the "global economy," our rivals have been looking out for what is best for their own nations.
Consider OPEC, which is reeling from the oil price collapse. Russia is colluding with Saudi Arabia and Iraq to cut production to firm up the market and prevent prices from falling further.
This is pure price fixing, but we all understand self-interest.
What might a U.S. national-interest-based trade policy look like?
Controlling the largest market on earth, we might impose on foreign producers a cover charge, an admissions fee, a tariff, to get into our market.
Example: Impose a 20 percent tariff on foreign cars entering the USA. This might raise the cost of a Lexus or Mercedes produced and assembled abroad from $50,000 to $60,000.
However, if Lexus or Mercedes buys or makes all their parts in the USA and assembles all their cars here, no tariff. Their cars could still sell for $50,000. This would be a powerful incentive to shift production here. As an added incentive, all tariff revenue could be used to reduce or eliminate corporate taxes in the USA.
Between the Civil War and World War I, under Republicans, the U.S. became the world's greatest industrial power and a wholly self-sufficient nation. How? We taxed foreign goods entering the United States, but did not tax the profits of U.S. companies or the incomes of U.S. workers.
The difference between economic patriots and globalists who inhabit corporate-funded think tanks and public policy institutes is that the latter think of what is best for their corporate benefactors and the global economy. The former put America and Americans first.
Academics revere Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Richard Cobden.
But none of them ever built a great nation. Patriots look to Alexander Hamilton and those post-Civil War Republicans who built the greatest national industrial powerhouse the world had ever seen.
Indeed, what great nation did free trade ever build?
As father of a united Germany, Chancellor Bismarck said, when he decided to build Germany on the American and not the British model, "I see that those countries which possess protection are prospering, and that those countries which possess free trade are decaying."
So it is true today. Unfortunately, it is America, now wedded to the fatal dogma of free trade, that is decaying.
At least those of us without half our brain lost listening to the doomers/gloomers of the RNC/GOPe on radio and tv.
Bernie Sanders is wrong on trade.
Tariffs don't raise the price of American goods?
“Post war Germany was made possible by the Marshall Plan and American tax dollars ...”
... in combination with the “economic liberalism” (in the free market sense of that term) of Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard. The Japanese approach was very different, and combined industrial cartels with high tariffs.
Tariffs are not, out of hand, bad for consumers. And you don't have to figure out how much of the stove is built in the US. If the stove is built in the US there is no tariff on the stove, any imported parts are subject to a tariff when they enter the country. It's pretty simple. If that makes the stove too expensive compared to models built entirely in the US with US made components, too bad.
Keep the faith and your crossed fingers!:)
In other words, you didn’t read the thread or you didn’t understand it....
Trump’s the only one talking about trade because he’s the only one who knows any damned thing about the subject! The rest just mouth the ideologically correct lines about the need for Free Trade, and the wonderful benefits of the global economy.
bkmk
History - it's not just for books anymore.
Just as with Ann Coulter, you can add PB to clown posse lining up behind Trump. Jimmy Carter leads that crap pack.
Economic nationalism is one of those concepts American heartily approve of - in theory. When it is their own money at the cash register, “Made in the USA” suddenly becomes far less important.
In 1888, the German Emperor, Wilhelm I, died leaving the throne to his son, Friedrich III. The new monarch was already suffering from an incurable throat cancer and died after reigning for only 99 days. He was succeeded by his son, Wilhelm II, who opposed Bismarck's careful foreign policy, preferring vigorous and rapid expansion to enlarge Germany's "place in the sun".[84]
He understands it just fine. What part of that reply don’t you agree with? You want to increase prices at the expense of consumers. Since when is it conservative to increase taxes and government control of the economy, while forcing higher prices on those who can’t afford it?
I truly understand the misguided logic behind all these tariff threads. Pretty simple, if we place tariffs on imports, we can create high paying jobs here in America. Our standard of living will increase because we are paid more. The increase in our wages will more than pay for the increase in the price of goods.
It’s a variation of the “lets all get wealthy by increasing the minimum wage” argument.
Absolutely we should increase taxes on foreign businesses. And decrease them - especially the income tax - on U.S. businesses and people.
And yeah, we do want to vote to protect American industry from unfair competition from foreign countries - why be suckers?
And as for your contorted interpretation of Marx, that's hilarious. So the U.S. having customs is "marxism"?
Who knew: the U.S. were founded as a Marxist state....learn something new every day.
Like, some people are idiots spouting slogans.
Tariffs create incentives for American companies to KEEP American goods to be manufactured out of the country. This creates JOBS for the American people.
The cost of the goods doesn’t change because if the companies OUTSIDE the US have to pay the tariff fee, they are just as well off to build the product here.
The increase you speak of is NOT on a company that manufactures the goods in the US, only on those who left.
Not even close.............
Like most so-called free traders, you missed it. What do plan for all those welfare recipients once you end the programs? We have the lowest workforce participation rate now for several decades. There are nowhere near enough jobs to move the unemployed and welfare recipients to productive jobs.
This nation would be far better off financially producing most of its own goods and services and having a true, high employment rate, and several hundred billion annually less spent on poverty programs.
Oh, is that a fact?
The standard VAT rate for importing items into Germany is 19%, with certain products, for example books, newspapers and magazines, attracting VAT at the reduced rate of 7%. VAT is calculated on the value of the goods, plus the international shipping costs and insurance, plus any import duty due.
Quote:
“Tariffs are no different. Higher prices are not in the interest of the consumer.”
But unemployment, welfare, drug addiction, decaying infrastructure, dying towns, urban warzones, and low paying service jobs are?
Take a world tour. Just see the Space Age airports in China, Singapore, the Arab States, even the EU, then come home to America. You will think you landed by mistake in Soviet Russia circa 1989.
America is dying. It’s time for people to wake up before it’s too late.
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