Free Republic

CNBC is currently running a pretty good expose on China, sweatshops and "freetrade".

The America Family Association has organized ten powerful economic graphs that put financial facts and figures into visual form. Sometimes you can quote economic statistics to people until you are blue in the face and it won’t do any good, but when those same people see charts and pictures suddenly it all sinks in. As you examine the economic charts below, pay special attention to what has been happening to the U.S. economy over the last 30 or 40 years.

To gaze upon the world of American corporations is to see a sunny place of terrific profits and princely bonuses. American businesses reported that third-quarter profits in 2010 rose at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion, the steepest annual surge since officials began tracking such matters 60 years ago. It was the seventh consecutive quarter in which corporate profits climbed. Staring at such balance sheets, you might almost forget that much of the nation lives under slate-gray fiscal skies, a place of 9.4 percent unemployment and record levels of foreclosures and indebtedness. And therein lies the enduring mystery of this...

'The mainstream base is not concerned with where Obama's birth certificate is'PALM BEACH, Fla. – Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh are two of America's best-known characters, but when it comes to articulating a truly conservative political message, Rush says he needs to take the Donald to school to get it right. "If Trump is serious about [running for president], I'm going to request a meeting," Limbaugh said today from his South Florida radio studio. "I'm gonna take him aside. I'm gonna say, 'Whoever is telling you about conservatism is misleading you a little bit.'" Trump has been making the rounds...

I thought readers should see this account sent to me from Tyler S of Tucson (and Brooklyn) of the counter protest. I wasn't there but it rings having attended so many of these lefftists hatefests, they are all diabolically the same: "Firstly, I wanted to tell you that I attended the 9/11 rally today, and thought that it was a wonderful event - your organization did a marvelous job orchestrating everything, and I could not imagine it could have gone more smoothly. I will also apologize in advance, as this might be a rather wordy letter, but hopefully worthy of...

05/31/2010 13:07 CHINA Foxconn suicides: capitalism and Marxism treat people like animals by Wei Jingsheng The great dissident analyzes the series of suicides in the Guangdong factory and points the finger at the Chinese social system, which transforms businessmen (even Western) into devils without morals, cancels labour rights, morality and democracy in the name of profit. The collusion of business and media in the West. /snip The theory of Karl Marx was really not so good, as it brought a century disaster to the human race. Yet, to the least, Karl Marx was a person with some sympathy. Should he...

"Thank you, Hu Jintao, and thank you, China," said Hugo Chavez, as he announced a $20 billion loan from Beijing, to be repaid in Venezuelan oil. The Chinese just threw Chavez a life preserver. For Venezuela is reeling from 25 percent inflation, government-induced blackouts to cope with energy shortages and an economy that shrank by 3.3 percent in 2009. Where did China get that $20 billion? From us. From consumers at Wal-Mart. That $20 billion is 1 percent of the $2 trillion in trade surpluses Beijing has run up with the United States over two decades. Beijing is using its...

China’s share of world markets increased during the recession. It will keep rising MANY people start the new year by resolving to change their old ways. Not China. On December 27th Zhong Shan, the country’s vice-minister of trade, declared that China will continue to increase its share of world exports. Figures due out on January 11th are expected to show that China’s exports in December were higher than a year ago, after 13 months of year-on-year declines. China’s exports fell by around 17% in 2009 as a whole, but other countries’ slumped by even more. As a result China overtook...

NEW YORK — Chrysler Group LLC is planning to build the Fiat 500 small car at a plant in Mexico, according to a report published Monday. The automaker could also build an engine for the 500 at a plant in Trenton, Michigan, and is weighing building another compact car similar to the 500 in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter. Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri declined to comment Monday.

They're not just like the Irish--or the Italians or the Poles, for that matter. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants after 1965 represents a unique assimilation challenge for the United States. Many optimistic observers have assumed--incorrectly, it turns out--that Hispanic immigrants will follow the same economic trajectory European immigrants did in the early part of the last century. Many of those Europeans came to America with no money and few skills, but their status steadily improved. Their children outperformed them, and their children's children were often indistinguishable from the "founding stock." The speed of economic assimilation varied somewhat by ethnic...

The Phoenicians were not the first ancient people to sponsor long-distance seaborne trade, but they and their Carthaginian children were the first to perfect it. They are the real pioneers of what we will call maritime capitalism. How did they do it? By taking advantage of a unique window of opportunity. During the Middle Bronze Age (traditionally dated to the first half of the second millennium BCE), first Babylon and then Egypt dominated the Middle East. As their power faded, no single power dominated. In this climate of peace and stability, trade took the place of war. Babylonia tried to...

A U.S. federal probe has found that about a third of American Apparel's factory workers in the Los Angeles area had supplied suspect or invalid records and were not authorized to work in the United States. The findings, from a January 2008 federal investigation, may deal a blow to the corporation's image as a proponent of immigration reform. But the company said on Tuesday the potential loss of those 1,800 workers would have no significant impact on its results. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency found that some 1,600 current employees at American Apparel's Los Angeles factories appeared to...

Anyone worried that, once in charge, Democrats wouldn't be vigilant in protecting our southern border can relax. The grave threat of Mexican long-haul truckers has been shut down. With any luck, Mexicans will never have the temerity to attempt to deliver commercial goods into the United States again. At least such is the fervid hope of the Teamsters, the fiercest adversary the Mexicans have faced since President James K. Polk sent Winfield Scott south in the Mexican-American War. The union can't abide Mexican trucks because they represent competition, and so they must be blocked - legal obligations, economic rationality and...

Trade: The new administration watered down a protectionist "Buy American" provision in the Senate stimulus bill and hoped all sides would go away happy. But they won't, as the European Union envoy to the U.S. explains.As if the $900 billion stimulus package wasn't controversial enough, provisions requiring purchase of U.S.-made iron and steel for government contracts that were slipped into the House version, and of all manufactured goods in the Senate's, have annoyed more people than expected — across the world. Last week, leaders from Canada, Brazil, China, the U.K., India, Mexico, Germany and the Czech Republic, among others, spoke...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a set of thinly veiled warnings to China on Saturday, cautioning that it could risk its share of further gains in Asia’s economic prosperity if it bullied its neighbors over natural resources in contested areas like the South China Sea. Three years ago at the same lectern here, Mr. Gates’s predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, bluntly criticized China’s swift military buildup. Last year Mr. Gates struck a more conciliatory tone, saying Beijing and Washington had a chance to “build trust over time.” Mr. Gates seemed to take a third approach in his remarks to a...

I rarely write a column that receives more criticism from my conservative readers than from my liberal ones. And it is even rarer when the column in question approaches a topic from what is supposed to be a “conservative” perspective, as it usually does. Yet this is precisely what happened recently when I wrote a column titled “Memo to the Democrats: We Need Free Trade with China.” It targeted the leading anti-trade voices in the Democratic Party, particularly Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and continued by explaining why free trade with China does indeed benefit the United States, at least...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Thousands of children in southwest China have been sold into slavery like "cabbages", to work as labourers in more prosperous areas such as the booming southern province of Guangdong, a newspaper said on Tuesday. China announced a nationwide crackdown on slavery and child labor last year after reports that hundreds of poor farmers, children and mentally disabled were forced to work in kilns and mines in Shanxi province and neighboring Henan. "The bustling child labor market (in Sichuan province) was set up by the local chief foreman and his gang of 18 minor foremen, who each manage...

For those of you in the Baylor University area, tonight is your chance to ask Juan Hernandez about his radical, open-borders agenda and his role in the McCain campaign. The event is free and open to the public. Bring your video camera: Dr. Juan Hernandez, author of The New American Pioneers, will speak at 6 p.m. Thursday in Kayser Auditorium on Mexican immigration. His lecture will be based on his notes, “Why are We Afraid of Mexican Immigrants?”Hernandez, a member of former Mexican President Vicente Fox’s cabinet, will be the final speaker for The Academy for Leader Development and Civic...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been widening its investigation into the hundreds of adverse reactions _ including difficulty breathing, nausea and falling blood pressure _ linked to U.S. health care company Baxter International's heparin injections. Heparin is derived from pig intestines, and China is the world's leading supplier. U.S. and Chinese officials have been investigating heparin samples but have reached no conclusions, Wu Zhen, the deputy commissioner of China's State Food and Drug Administration, said Sunday. The U.S. FDA found a contaminant in 20 of 28 samples of raw heparin from Baxter's main supplier, Scientific Protein Laboratories of...

A Chinese company with ties to Beijing's military and past links to Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger, Pentagon officials say. Huawei Technologies will merge with the Massachusetts-based 3Com network-equipment manufacturer in a deal announced last week. Huawei has been linked to the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, which involved millions of dollars in payoffs to Saddam's regime during a time of U.N. sanctions. The announced merger follows a July computer attack on the Pentagon that U.S. intelligence officials say involved Chinese military hackers. The hackers were detected breaking...