NAFTA 2.0: Upgrading Economic Ties To Boost Competitiveness

Investors Business Daily ^ | Dec. 15, 2016 4:36 PM ET | REP. WILL HURD

[Toddsterpatriot]

18 years.

[1rudeboy]

I miss Arator and Willie Green, but it feels as though they never left. :)

[JonPreston]

Here you go Mr Cosmopolitan, bore yourself to death. Cute email addy, very fitting for an unrepentant internationalist

[1rudeboy]

Yeah, I’ll click on that on my cell phone . . . right after you give me a foot massage, you pansy.

[JonPreston]

right after you give me a foot massage, you pansy

And a Merry Christmas to you!

[1rudeboy]

I make a homo reference, and you get friendly all of a sudden. Creepy.

[central_va]

Naw, you'd be dumb enough to throw roadblocks in their way and keep those jobs on foreign shores. Good thinking, Bucko!

econowagon, Yo are so full of sh!t I'll bet you got brown eyes.

[econjack]

Been there, done that. A sociology prof and I used to go round and round. She’d get painted into a corner, throw up her hands, and yell: “That may be, but I don’t believe it!” and storm out of my office. It was like trying to debate a post.

[econjack]

Ah, yes. When you can’t carry on reasoned debate by offering a cogent answer, result to name calling and vulgarity.

[central_va]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3505565/posts

[servantboy777]

NAFTA has been a complete disaster for American workers. Ross Perot, another American businessman tried to warn Americans that if passed as negotiated, you'd begin hearing HUGE sucking sound of jobs leaving this country.

Fast forward...Donald Trump. Just like Ross Perot's run for POTUS, the media, democrats and republicans spent hundreds of millions of $$$ to bring him down. Unlike Trump, they succeeded.

Listened to Lou Dobbs the other day, “The rest of the world has been living off of our trade deficit”.

Yes! This is a fact. Not only this, but American “multinational corporations” saw the opportunity to take advantage of near slave labor in many countries in an effort to increase their bottom lines.

I truly hope Donald Trump is genuine. Hope he means what he sayz and helps bring about a second industrial revolution to America. It's time we put American workers FIRST!

[expat_panama]

...the world has been living off of our trade deficit...

An awful lot of folks have been saying that the trade deficit means we get poorer and foreigners get richer because our money leaves.

This is important, so I look into international transactions I don't see it.  It's true that Dobbs, Krugman, etc. are smart guys but when it comes to my own money I got to look at actual transfer totals from say, the bea.gov data site.   U.S. money stays in the U.S. because we use dollars and foreigners use foreign money.   As for policy, when ever the trade deficit grows or shrinks we always end up seeing U.S. payrolls growing and shrinking at the same time.

The most I've ever gotten from people on these threads is that the reason trade deficits make us poor is because Trump's a good guy good and I'm a bad guy. Fine, but imho that really can't explain where the money is.  Pse let me know if you've seen something I've missed.

[expat_panama]

...the world has been living off of our trade deficit...

An awful lot of folks have been saying that the trade deficit means we get poorer and foreigners get richer because our money leaves.

This is important, so I look into international transactions I don't see it.  It's true that Dobbs, Krugman, etc. are smart guys but when it comes to my own money I got to look at actual transfer totals from say, the bea.gov data site.   U.S. money stays in the U.S. because we use dollars and foreigners use foreign money.   As for policy, when ever the trade deficit grows or shrinks we always end up seeing U.S. payrolls growing and shrinking at the same time.

The most I've ever gotten from people on these threads is that the reason trade deficits make us poor is because Trump's a good guy good and I'm a bad guy. Fine, but imho that really can't explain where the money is.  Pse let me know if you've seen something I've missed.

[expat_panama]

...feels as though they never left...

It might be new usernames w/ the same old users.  No, wait.  It's got to be new users w/ the same old ideas transmitted by radar waves into them while they sleep.

[servantboy777]

>>An awful lot of folks have been saying that the trade deficit means we get poorer and foreigners get richer because our money leaves.<<

Trade deficits mean we import more than we export. Manufacturing sector lost millions of jobs over the last couple of decades in this country.

Go out and take a look. Our trade deficit per country. Take a look at Mexico and China. We are being sapped/trounced. In fact, we run a trade deficit with most of the top twenty trading partners. Why? Why is it we carry the deficits and the rest of the world prospers? Makes NO sense.

We need to renegotiate these trade deals and bring this back to a level playing field.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[expat_panama]

Trade deficits mean we import more than we export

That's true if we 're talking about exports and imports of goods and services.   Adding in exports of stuff like designs, patents, stocks, buildings then everything we buy always equals what we sell and there's never a deficit.    Some people say that if we buy more of one than the other then we go broke, but if I buy Chinese stocks in January with a thousand bux I borrowed, and then in Dec. I sell the stocks at $1,000 profit and buy gold, that's a trade deficit.  I'm richer.

Manufacturing sector lost millions of jobs over the last couple of decades

We sure can't blame the trade deficit for manufacturing jobs over the last ten years.

 

We had far more factory jobs back when the trade deficit was big, and when it shrunk the factories went idle.  Now that the trade deficit's getting big again our factories are getting back on line.

 

It seems hard to believe that importing goods could increase manufacturing employment but first we have to understand what is, and then after we can figure out why.

The bottom line here is we're just not seeing trade deficits making us poorer.