Posted on 01/06/2008 1:03:48 PM PST by null and void
January 2008
an executive viewFree trade? C'monBy Brian Sullivan We should rename "free trade." Because it isn't free and it isn't fair. Since it's trade that's regulated in favor of multinational special-interest groups, why don't we call it for what it is: rigged market trade?
Why are we so afraid to call a spade a spade? There are 36,000 fewer U.S. factories than there were eight years ago. One in five manufacturing jobs has been lost nationally in the last 10 years. If we don't stem the tide of multinationalism through trade law reform, then between 42 million and 56 million of the 140 million U.S. jobs could be moved off-shore within 20 years, including all 14 million current jobs in manufacturing. We'll be left without any manufacturing, which is at the core of our country's national security. Members of the Tooling, Manufacturing & Technologies Association (TMTA) wonder if things will change in time. They know that most of their woes emanate from disastrous trade laws written in Washington DC.
When the concept of free trade was thought up, did the corporate-controlled multinationalists anticipate that America would cease to be a land of broadly shared prosperity? What's happened to the concept of social morality? It's been thrown out the window.
Corporate greed feeds on itself and U.S. manufacturing suffers. In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, social anthropologist Jared Diamond, describes an American society in which "corporate elites cocoon themselves in gated communities guarded by private security, fly in corporate aircraft, depend on golden parachutes and private pensions, and send their children to prohibitively expensive private schools. Gradually these corporate elites lose their motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security, and public schools. Any society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if corporate elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their own actions."
I suppose there are some reading this who believe this article is leaning a little to the left. Actually, it's not. Increasingly, trade policy and the effects of multinationalism are not partisan issues. The signs of broadening resistance to globalization and a fraying of Republican orthodoxy on the economy have been reported on page-one in The Wall Street Journal. The morally shameful I-don't-care-about-you-because-I've-got-mine mentality exhibited by Congress and this administration is a national disgrace. Our representatives and legislators, collectively, have been responsible for trade policy that has resulted in a cave-in of the manufacturing industry.
At the end of the day, there's only one way there's going to be any relief for all of us in manufacturing, and that's through Washington, D.C. Most of manufacturing's problems, your problems, my problems, are as a result of bad trade laws. When the grassroots electorate becomes engaged in this fight, we'll change bad free-trade laws into good fair-trade laws that will reflect the interests of small manufacturers who've been absent from trade policy deliberations far too long. We need fair-trade reform, and we need it now. The first thing that should happen is to freeze all new trade agreements, especially by this current administration, until major pro-domestic producer and worker trade strategies are put in place. Congress must create a National Trade Commission. Congress must pass currency manipulation legislation. Congress must address the unfair advantage caused by the rebate of value-added taxes by passing a border equalization tax. Congress has to enact countervailing duty laws. Congress has to pass laws that standardize Rules of Origin. It has to pass laws that address infrastructure imbalances including regulatory standards and enforcement standards. In this general election cycle now, we have the real opportunity to make change. Politicians are up for election or re-election. The Tooling, Manufacturing & Technologies Association (TMTA) has aligned itself with other organizations such as the Organization for Competitive Markets and the Coalition for a Prosperous America, like-minded groups that are actually holding politicians' feet to the fire relative to trade reform issues.
In the last election cycle held two years ago, 15 politicians who were manufacturing-unfriendly and electorally vulnerable were targeted for defeat. The "kill rate" was 15 out of 15. Brian Sullivan is director of sales, marketing, and communications for the Tooling, Manufacturing & Technologies Association. His e-mail is brian@thetmta.com.
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The morally shameful I-don't-care-about-you-because-I've-got-mine mentality exhibited by Congress and this administration is a national disgrace.
Oh, is it a little harder than that? Why?
God how I despise people who won't take both sides of a deal they shove at others...
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
My grandpa’s buggy whip factory went overseas as well so what. We actually have more manufacturing in the U.S. now than 20 years ago, it is just that we are making different products. Cars instead of textiles etc.
At the end of the day, there's only one way there's going to be any relief for all of us in manufacturing, and that's through Washington, D.C.
Conscience free trade.
It looks like many Republican congressmen are retiring from congress and starting lobbying firms.
They passed free trade agreements. I guess they know the “ministers of the tribunals” and can pay them off. After all the triblunals meet behind closed doors. UnAmerican??????Yeah!!!!!!!!
That was important, and needed to be said.
Thank you for your thoughtful contribution to the discussion...
I admire your courage for posting this, knowing full well that you'll be ripped for your "evil, protectionist, anti-Capitalist drivel".
Face the facts. For some, money is king, and it (and the power it brings) trumps all else.
"At the end of the day, there's only one way there's going to be any relief for all of us in manufacturing, and that's through Washington, D.C."
I read that as Washington made the mess, Washington needs to clean it up, or at a bare minimum, get out of the way.
We agree on that. You don’t need a 10,000 page treaty to accomplish free trade. Just get the heck out of the way. Anyone who thinks NAFTA=Free trade should try to take a bottle of booze across the Canadian border.
Ain't that the truth!
Or as I tell my kids, 'getting rich is easy, provided all you care about is getting rich'...
I picked up “Collapse” a while back but for some reason the book remains unread so far. Perhaps I’ll start it this week. I rather enjoyed Diamond’s other work “Guns, Germs, and Steel.”
Thanks for the thread.
Congress can’t legislate against greed.
They’d all be out of business! (sarcasm)
Looks like rain here. (A bunch of FReepers will be by to rain all sorts of crap down around my head shortly)...
Exactly what it is. From Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum:
The majority of countries in the world (e.g., Mexico) have two classes: the rulers who are very, very rich and the rest of the people who are very, very poor. The United States is different; we built a prosperous society with a well-to-do middle class and the chance for anyone, based on merit and hard work, to better himself and live the American dream.Globalism is the enemy of the middle class. Globalism preaches that the world is flat; that nations should have no borders; that labor, capital, goods and services should flow freely between countries. Globalism's mantras are "free trade" and "abolish protectionism." Globalism forces American workers to compete against people who work in other countries for 30 cents an hour without benefits. Competing with such low wages means the end of the American middle class.
Americans relish competition, as our national fixation on sports contests proves every day. But global trade is not played on a level playing field our opponents don't play by the rules and the umpire (the World Trade Organization) is biased against us.
Middle-class Americans are waking up to how they have been squeezed out of prosperity by the politicians of both parties who were elected with the political donations and other goodies provided by corporations that reap the rewards of cheap labor through insourcing and outsourcing.
“We actually have more manufacturing in the U.S. now than 20 years ago, it is just that we are making different products. Cars instead of textiles etc.”
We’ve got quite a larger popultion too! What do you think of China out manufacturing the USA? Because that’s where we are.
Some of us are tired of subsidizing the ‘cheap’ imports and imported cheap labor due to these ‘free trade’ deals. As Friedman said, they are NOT free trade, they are MANAGED trade. How much do you think it costs the taxpayers for ALL those machines to check containers and ALL those government employees to screen them?
No more SUBSIDIZED free trade.
I'm quite willing to go toe-to-toe with any business competitor anywhere on Earth on a level playing field.
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