Posted on 09/25/2015 11:19:28 AM PDT by Steelfish
How can we have, and call it, a DEBATE FORUM if we don't allow anything other than YOUR PREAPPROVED OPINION ?
I may not agree with SEESHARP, but I want to hear what he thinks and why.
Union thugs don't benefit from the higher prices. The corporation that builds the item that is taxed does by being able to charge a higher price.
Isn’t it funny how government didn’t get bloated until we stopped taxing imports and started taxing income?
That's about as specific as Trump gets on anything. The question "How?" just never occurs to his supporters.
You are not getting it. See the altruistic corporation pass every cost reduction using narco state Mexican wetback labor on to the customer. For instance Ford will go thru all that trouble moving ENTIRE FACTORIES so you can pay 400 less for your new Taurus. /sarc
Funny isn't the word I would use, but your point well taken.
Well he did lead an army against a bunch of farmers who didn't want to pay the whiskey tax. The Constitution required taxes to be apportioned equally (or so they thought), but the whiskey tax fell exclusively on a particular group of farmers.
Reagan was protectionist against certain countries (Japan), and for certain industries (steel). I other areas, he was very much a free trader.
When Ronald Reagan's announced his candidacy for President of the United States on November 13th, 1979, he said the following:
"It may take the next 100 years, but we can dare to dream that at some future date a map of the world might show the North American continent as one in which the peoples and commerce of its three strong countries flow more freely across their present borders than they do today."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcTPwHY-LpY
The Reagan administration participated in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations in 1986 that lowered global tariffs and created the World Trade Organization.
The Reagan administration also negotiated the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1988.
Free Traitor™ are notorious axe grinders. Ridicule and derision are the only tool to work on these brain washed fools.
Unfortunately, that is no longer a 'model'.
It has been put In place and is being announced to the public as we speak.
Given the actual conditions and the actual provisions, for anybody to claim that NAFTA and GATT are "free trade" agreements is the height of propaganda. They are anything but.
Haven't we all learned by now that when something is named like that, it's usually the opposite: PATRIOT Act, Affordable Care Act, the list goes on and on.
NAFTA/GATT=Free Trade? That's a laugh.
At the time of their ramming through, the vast majority of this board's members were adamantly opposed to these so-called "Free Trade" agreements.
So, all you anarcho-libertarians can try peddling your "NAFTA=free trade" propaganda elsewhere.
And I'm a libertarian myself. I'm just aware enough to see these bloated, thousands-of-pages long pieces of legislation for exactly what they are: destructive of American sovereignty, American Labor, and, for that matter, the environment as well.
Trump as absolutely right about NAFTA.
Consider that the (Reagan) administration has done the following:
— Forced Japan to accept restraints on auto exports. The agreement set total Japanese auto exports at 1.68 million vehicles in 1981-82, 8 percent below 1980 exports. Two years later the level was permitted to rise to 1.85 million.(33) Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution found that the import limits have actually cost jobs in the U.S. auto industry by making it possible for the sheltered American automakers to raise prices and limit production. In 1984, Winston writes in Blind Intersection? Policy and the Automobile Industry, 32,000 jobs were lost, U.S. production fell by 300,000 units, and profits for U.S. firms increased $8.9 billion. The quotas have also made the Japanese firms potentially more formidable rivals because they have begun building assembly plants in the United States.(34) They also shifted production to larger cars, introducing to American firms competition they did not have before the quotas were created. In 1984, it was estimated that higher prices for domestic and imported cars cost consumers $2.2 billion a year.(35) At the height of the dollar’s exchange rate with the yen in 1984-85, the quotas were costing American consumers the equivalent of $11 billion a year.(36)
— Tightened up considerably the quotas on imported sugar. Imports fell from an annual average of 4.85 million tons in 1979-81 to an annual average of 2.86 million tons in 1982-86. Not only did this continued practice force Americans to spend more than other consumers for sugar, but it created hardships for Latin American countries and the Philippines, which depend on sugar exports for economic development. The quota program undermined President Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative and intensified the international debt crisis.(37)
— Negotiated to increase restrictiveness of the Multifiber Arrangement and extended restrictions to previously unrestricted textiles. The administration unilaterally changed the rule of origin in order to restrict textile and apparel imports further and imposed a special ceiling on textiles from the People’s Republic of China.(38) Finally, it pressured Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, the largest exporters of textiles and apparel to the United States, into highly restrictive bilateral agreements. All told, textile and apparel restrictions cost Americans more than $20 billion a year.(39) The Reagan administration has stated several times that textile and apparel imports should grow no faster than the domestic market.(40)
— Required 18 countries—including Brazil, Spain, South Korea, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Finland, and Australia, as well as the European Community—to accept “voluntary restraint agreements” to reduce steel imports, guaranteeing domestic producers a share of the American market. When 3 countries not included in the 18—Canada, Sweden, and Taiwan— increased steel exports to the United States, the administration demanded talks to check the increase. The administration also imposed tariffs and quotas on specialty steel. These policies, with their resulting shortages, have severely squeezed American steel-using firms, making them less competitive in world markets and eliminating more than 52,000 jobs.(41)
— Imposed a five-year duty, beginning at 45 percent, on Japanese motorcycles for the benefit of Harley Davidson, which admitted that superior Japanese management was the cause of its problems.(42)
— Raised tariffs on Canadian lumber and cedar shingles.
— Forced the Japanese into an agreement to control the price of computer memory-chip exports and increase Japanese purchases of American-made chips. When the agreement was allegedly broken, the administration imposed a 100 percent tariff on $300 million worth of electronics goods. This episode teaches a classic lesson in how protectionism comes back to haunt a country’s producers. The quotas established as a result of the agreement have created a severe shortage of memory chips and higher prices for American computer makers, putting them at a disadvantage with foreign competitors. Only two American firms are still making these chips, accounting for a small percentage of the world market.(43)
— Removed Third World countries from the duty-free import program for developing nations on several occasions.
— Pressed Japan to force its automakers to buy more American-made parts.(44)
— Demanded that Taiwan, West Germany, Japan, and Switzerland restrain their exports of machine tools, with some market shares rolled back to 1981 levels. Other countries were warned not to increase their shares of the U.S. market.
— Accused the Japanese of dumping roller bearings, because the price did not rise to cover a fall in the value of the yen. The U.S. Customs Service was ordered to collect duties equal to the so-called dumping margins.(45)
— Accused the Japanese of dumping forklift trucks and color picture tubes.(46)
— Failed to ask Congress to end the ban on the export of Alaskan oil and of timber cut from federal lands, a measure that could substantially increase U.S. exports to Japan.
— Redefined “dumping” in order “to make it easier to bring charges of unfair trade practices against certain competitors.”(47)
— Beefed up the Export-Import Bank, an institution dedicated to promoting the exports of a handful of large companies at the expense of everyone else.(48)
— Extended quotas on imported clothespins.
Your SeaSharp is about as clear as mud.
Mexico has a lower unemployment rate than the USA.
Yeh they ship all the losers here and we ship the jobs to them. :-)
One of the few pro-Nafta arguments I recall that made me inclined to support it twenty years ago was that it would build up the Mexican economy and thus, curtail the huge flow of illegals across the Rio Grande. What a joke that turned out to be.
So tear the damned thing to shreds as far as I’m concerned. And screw corporate-America, they can go burn in hell too, as they’ve fueled our corrupt crony government and helped fund the depraved faggot agenda. I’d like to see the whole Wall Street donor class squeezed until their eyeballs pop out.
I understand your sentiment - free trade is good for everyone and I think most FReepers agree.
You are also correct about government subsidies and currency games being bad.
What you have apparently missed is that NAFTA has been perverted - it’s not about free trade - it’s about corporate profits and exporting jobs to accomplish this. Government, big business, and even the Marxists among us have used it for anything but free trade!
It’s a perfect example of why we no longer practice true capitalism. What we have is crony-capitalism that benefits the market, politicians, and CEO’s. When “big business” is bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars that our children and grandchildren will have to pay we can’t call it capitalism. Both political parties are to blame.
NAFTA is a great idea on paper because free trade benefits everyone. NAFTA in reality (just like TARP) mostly benefited the big boys on Wall Street. Any gains you or I may have made in our investments were erased permanently by the hidden tax of inflation as the Fed created more dollars.
I believe most “Republicans” are now supporting a lie because we support capitalism. We don’t really have that when the government picks the winners and losers and bails them out and pumps the markets. The big money owns our politicians and government. It’s crapitalism - not capitalism.
Protectionism, is the conservative pro American position.
Pick your side.
Corporate America is run by Ivy League liberals.
And what's their per-capita income?
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