Free Republic

The U.S. is betting that a rich PRC will be democratic. Beijing disagrees. Two bets are on the table. One has been placed by the Washington establishment, the other by the Chinese Communist Party. Analyzing China’s prospects in terms of fashionable globalist ideology, Washington is betting that a rich China will be a free one. The theory is that the only way China can continue to grow is by embracing Western democracy and capitalism. Moreover, the very process of China’s enrichment is supposedly undermining the Beijing government’s authoritarianism. More wealth means more freedom means more wealth. Here is how President...

TARRYTOWN, NY—Representative Duncan L. Hunter was presented the Hand Tools Institute American Manufacturing Champion award by representatives of the Hand Tools Institute (HTI), a trade association of American hand tool manufacturers. This award is intended to recognize legislators that demonstrate strong support for manufacturing. Representative Hunter is the first recipient of this award. Scott Meyer, president emeritus of HTI presented the award to Congressman Hunter in his offices in Washington, DC. During the presentation, Mr. Myer said, “The board of directors of the Hand Tools Institute voted unanimously to present this award to you, Congressman Hunter, in recognition of your...

What McCain Means by Patrick Buchanan January 25 , 2008 In 2004, the voters of Arizona, by 56 percent to 44 percent, enacted Proposition 200, requiring proof of citizenship before an individual may vote or receive state benefits. Forty-six percent of Hispanics voted for Prop. 200, giving the lie to those who say Hispanics support the illegal invasion of their country. Over 190,000 Arizonans petitioned to put Prop. 200 on the ballot. As it simply required proof of citizenship before receiving the benefits and privileges of citizenship, who could oppose it? Answer: the entire GOP congressional delegation, led by Sen....

The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45. The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century. Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800. Have gold, silver, oil, the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar all suddenly soared in value in just a few years? Nope. The dollar has...

Much has been written lately about the inevitable decline of the West into insignificance. Between the cultural decline (watch any episode of Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” or American Idol), population demographics (thanks to gay marriage, fault free divorce, and the like), it is felt that the West has had its day in the sun. The heir apparent for the West is still unclear. Is it to be Islam resurgent, mounting a late-inning comeback following their humiliating defeats since the Crusades? A new Caliphate, this time astride the decaying continent of Europe? Will it be China, home of over 1 billion people,...

Tuesday, December 26, 2006 Everybody knows that the loss of huge portions of their home U.S. market to imports has decimated U.S.-owned automakers Ford and GM (as well as Chrysler, which is no longer U.S.-owned, but shares many of Detroit’s biggest problems). What everybody doesn’t know is that literally dozens of U.S.-based manufacturing industries have suffered the same kinds of losses since the late 1990s. The clear bottom line, as revealed by the U.S. Business & Industry Council’s latest annual survey of domestic manufacturing’s competitiveness: The United States is a military superpower, but is steadily becoming an industrial also-ran. The...

IN TODAY'S GLOBAL MARKETPLACE, Chinese manufacturers can undercut competitors' prices by 30% to 50%, sometimes even more. China has captured more than 70% of the world's market for DVDs and toys; more than half for bikes, shoes, and phones; and more than a third for air conditioners, color TVs, computer monitors, luggage and microwave ovens. It also has dominant market positions in everything from furniture and washing machines to jeans and underwear.

China's biggest bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, raised $19 billion Friday in the world's biggest initial public offering, pricing its IPO at the top end of expectations, thanks to overwhelming demand. The stock sale, the first ever for shares to list in both Hong Kong and Shanghai, surpasses the previous record, a $18.4 billion IPO by Japanese mobile phone company NTT DoCoMo Inc. in 1998. The state-owned bank, called ICBC, priced its Hong Kong offering at 3.07 Hong Kong dollars a share, at the top end of the indicative price range of HK$2.56-HK$3.07 ($0.33-$0.39), Dow Jones Newswires reported,...

Suddenly, China dominates steel industry The Charleston Gazette (W.VA) 07/23/2006 By Author: Paul J. Nyden Today, China has the world's largest steel industry. In fact, the world's most populous nation now produces more steel than the next four largest producers combined: Japan, the United States, Russia and South Korea. Chinese mills make 31 percent of the world's steel. Between 2000 and 2005, Chinese steel production grew by 170 percent, from 126 million metric tons to 349 million metric tons. China's steel exports quadrupled between 1998 and 2005. Steel imports flooding into the United States doubled between 2000 and 2005. The...

China raking it in China's trade surplus hit a monthly high in May. The surplus is on pace to surpass last year's record. May exports jumped 25.1% from a year earlier to $73.11 billion, picking up from a 23.9% increase in April, according to customs figures issued yesterday. Imports rose a more modest 21.7%. The trade surplus, the excess of exports over imports, surged to $13 billion for the month, 44% higher than in May of last year. Low-tech, labor-intensive goods like footwear and toys haven’t been great performers this year, but China’s booming electronics sector and its growing prowess...

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (MarketWatch) -- Big as it is, our trade deficit is not necessarily a bad thing. Trying to force it down, however, could be. It's been about a quarter of a century since we sold more goods to foreigners than we bought from them. In the intervening months and years, our trade deficit has grown markedly. Fourteen years ago, it took an entire year for our monthly trade deficit to total $70 billion. Now we run up this much red ink in just one month. Not surprisingly, our current account deficit, the shortfall on all trade and investment income...

DETROIT--Since mid-October, General Motors has announced plans to cease production at 12 North American manufacturing facilities and eliminate 30,000 jobs by 2008; trim $1 billion in net material costs in 2006; and, in cooperation with the United Automobile Workers, reduce GM's retiree health-care liabilities by $15 billion, or about 25%, for an annualized expense reduction of $3 billion. The reason for these dramatic actions is no secret: GM has lost a lot of money in 2005, due to rapidly increasing health-care and raw-material costs, lower sales volumes and a weaker sales mix--essentially, we've sold fewer high-profit SUVs and more lower-profit...

China has "eclipsed" the US as a consumer nation China has overtaken the US in the consumption of basic agricultural and industrial goods, a new survey says. China, with its 1.3bn population and booming economy, is now the world's biggest consumer of grain, meat, coal and steel. China is well ahead of the US in the consumption of goods such as television sets, refrigerators and mobile phones. The Washington-based Earth Policy Institute said China was now an emerging economic superpower. However, per capita consumption in China - the world's most populous country - remains far below that of the US....

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Two hundred years ago today, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton squared off in a sunrise duel on a wooded ledge in Weehawken, N.J., above the Hudson River. Burr was vice president when he leveled his fatal shot at Hamilton, the former Treasury secretary, who died the next day in what is now the West Village of Manhattan. New Yorkers turned out en masse for Hamilton's funeral, while Burr (rightly or wrongly) was branded an assassin and fled south in anticipation of indictments in New York and New Jersey. To the horror of Hamilton's admirers, the vice president, now...

No-one wants to talk about Japan these days. The conventional wisdom is that the bloom went off Japan’s economic rose around 1990 and that the utter superiority of neoliberal capitalism was vindicated by the strong performance of the American economy during the 1990s. Furthermore, everyone is now convinced that China – whose economy is 1/8 the size of Japan’s – is the rising economic power and therefore the appropriate object of attention. But Japan is, despite everything, still one of the master keys to understanding the future of the world economy, because Japan is the clearest case study of why...

Adam Smith’s Laissez-Fire Package: What Grampaw ForgotSept 27, 2003 The last article I wrote dealing with Adam Smith received an objection from a person by the nickname of “Restorer” which took me to task: [Source] The piece doesn't ever really say that Smithian economics works despite, or rather because of, the fact that its practicioners are mercantilistic in philosophy as far as their own practices go. Restorer has a good point, one explored thoroughly by Walter Wriston, chairman of what used to be Citibank back in the 1980s. According to Wriston, the market will work despite big government because Smith’s...

[278](971){192}     Alexander HamiltonREPORT ON MANUFACTURESDECEMBER 5, 1791[Page numbers from Selected Writings…](Page numbers from Annals of Congress) {Page numbers from Works of Hamilton}  Scanned January, 2001 from primary sources.Contact kleind@union.edu with question, comments, corrections.     Communicated to the House of Representatives, December 5, 1791  [To the Speaker of the House of Representatives:]     The Secretary of the Treasury in obedience to the order of the House of Representatives, of the 15th day of January 1790, has applied his attention, at as early a period as his other duties would permit, to the subject of Manufactures; and particularly to the means of promoting such...