Free trade? C'mon

Tooling and Production ^ | Jan 08 | Brian Sullivan

[null and void]

January 2008

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an executive view

Free trade? C'mon

 By 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."

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Most of manufacturing's problems, your problems, my problems, are as a result of bad trade laws.

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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.

[nicmarlo]

Duncan Hunter’s a good man, AuntB.

Good for this country goes beyond concerns about “good for me; good for my party”.

[RightWhale]

Congress must

Congress must this and Congress must that. Guess what. Somebody is pushing on a wet string if they are saying what Congress must. Some of us might be happy enough if Congress convened on 2 January and went home on 3 January.

[chasio649]

Our party fails to address this issue and it is going to be our downfall.

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yep

[null and void]

Some of us might be happy enough if Congress convened on 2 January and went home on 3 January.

*sigh* Yeah, but some of them have spent so much time in Washington, they don't know where home is...

[JasonC]

Vacuous non-reply of your posting career.

The article pretends that capitalists have willfully destroyed manufacturing in the US out of some unspecified greed. As though they could be perfectly profitable running manufacturing plant in the US, they'd just make slightly less obscene profits than if they buy product from abroad. If this is true, then any entrepeneur satisfied with less the maximally obscene profits can just make large ones reopening the plants the capitalists are supposedly greedy bastards for closing.

So go do it.

If instead those plants would not make profits at all, then you might find it hard to just go do it. But in that case, it is not greed on the part of capitalists that is responsible for plants shutting down, but actual competition and the real economic costs involved. And the article's charges are slanderous nonsense.

[FReepapalooza]

“We are watching the demise of the middle class.”

Balkanized, for now, yes, but pretty soon we are all going to be in the same boat; and I’m not referring to a luxury cruise boat.

[familyop]

That’s right. It’s not “free trade.” They’re manufacturing resources in communist nations for communist nations then selling the communist-made products to us. They’re working for the communists. With their ties to US universities, they’re training communist engineers in the USA for communist military equipment facilities overseas. They’re helping in several ways to build communist military forces against us.

Don’t support a communist sympathizer. Vote for Duncan Hunter.

[familyop]

"You are free to start 36000 factories tomorrow. Go do it. Nothing stopping you.

Oh, is it a little harder than that? Why?"

Because import and merchant lobbies work against domestic manufacturing, even using false environmentalist fronts.

[yorkie]

I wish we could vote for Duncan Hunter - but it doesn’t look like he is going to be on the ticket. Has anyone ever won the POTUS with a ‘write-in’?

[JasonC]

Lobbies? You need a lobby now? What are we all wards of the state now?

Do plants here make obscene profits, just profits, or no profits?

You gonna run your own at a loss, or do you just insist that others do so?

If you maintain they can be run here without loss, then shut up and run them.

If you maintain they can't, then don't run around accusing those closing them of being greedy sell outs.

[JasonC]

All the reduction in the size of the middle class in the past 15 years has come from people moving *above* it, into the "make more than $100,000 a year" range. The number below the $30,000 a year range is unchanged.

It is all nonsense, the country is not impoverished, we are richer than we have even been in history.

[familyop]

BTW, I’m not a union type. If the merchants and importers will allow the dollar to go down to adjust to foreign currencies, that will go a long way toward solving the problem. Otherwise, the way down will be hard and steep. Importers and merchants should reverse their opposition against domestic manufacturing and consider getting into it.

The dollar will go down anyway, as the Chinese, Indians and others will not accept slowdowns on their side and don’t depend on you as much as you want to believe.

Freight fuel (oil) will continue to go up. There’s no stopping that. Laid-off and temporary workers don’t drive the big fuel guzzlers, for the most part. The people you won’t lay off (preferred employees, managers, teachers, other government workers) do.

Allow the Fed. to drop the rate a 1/2 point to get some domestic production going. Over the coming couple of years, you will really need for that to have happened.

[familyop]

"I wish we could vote for Duncan Hunter - but it doesn’t look like he is going to be on the ticket. Has anyone ever won the POTUS with a ‘write-in’?"

No, but the strength of our nation has been run down for too many years by communist and Islamist sympathizers in political and business leadership. We need to do the write-ins in order to put both parties on notice. Our wayward leadership does not want a national atmosphere of general dislike for what they do. They want us to continue sucking up to their dishonest, communist-sympathizing, socialist/corporate puppets.

[Wiz]

It’s overdue to do something with the unfair trade and economic terrorism by China. Chicoms are stealing our jobs for this unfair trade.

[Pelham]

“My grandpa’s buggy whip factory went overseas as well so what.”

Actually your grandfather’s buggy whip company converted into making car parts as cars replaced horses. His grandson moved the car parts company overseas to take advantage of the labor arbitrage, as car parts are still in demand unlike buggy whips.

I sometimes wonder if apologists who use the example of buggy whip makers can’t recognize the difference and fool themselves, or do see the difference and simply hope to fool others.

[Pelham]

“So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

[Pelham]

Sounds like the wit and wisdom of someone 20 years old.

[NavVet]

Plenty of hazardous toys are made in America and recalled every year. That scare is overblown.

What China is doing with the money we pay them is a separate topic of discussion. However, as far as foreign countries subsidizing industry so that they can sell us cheap products. That’s usually not sustainable on their end, plus it takes away money from their treasury that they would be spending on Tanks and bombs, and forces them to spend it subsidizing the cost of our TV’s, Electronics etc. It’s a win win.

[NavVet]

Plenty of hazardous toys are made in America and recalled every year. That scare is overblown.

What China is doing with the money we pay them is a separate topic of discussion. However, as far as foreign countries subsidizing industry so that they can sell us cheap products. That’s usually not sustainable on their end, plus it takes away money from their treasury that they would be spending on Tanks and bombs, and forces them to spend it subsidizing the cost of our TV’s, Electronics etc. It’s a win win.

[roamer_1]

A bunch of FReepers will be by to rain all sorts of crap down around my head shortly

No worries... I'll hold the umbrella! :D