Posted on 08/17/2016 7:09:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
If I was president the country of manufacture would have to be displayed in 6 inch letters just above the sticker.
- Ronald Reagan 1986
“If President Reagan has a devotion to free trade, it surely must be blind, because he has been off the mark most of the time. Only short memories and a refusal to believe one’s own eyes would account for the view that President Reagan is a free trader. Calling oneself a free trader is not the same thing as being a free trader. Nor does a free- trade position mean that the president, but not Congress, should have the power to impose trade sanctions. Instead, a president deserves the title of free trader only if his efforts demonstrate an attempt to remove trade barriers at home and prevent the imposition of new ones. “
Words are not deeds. Unfortunately, a look at the record leads to the question: With free traders like this, who needs protectionists?
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.
Oh. Now I see. You are soooo much smarter that the “little people” who realize that things can be more fair with many fewer bureaucrats and regulations without empowering you globalist wannabes to their own dterimrnt. Go read N
Oh. Now I see. You are soooo much smarter that the “little people” who realize that things can be more fair with many fewer bureaucrats and regulations without empowering you globalist wannabes to their own detrimeny.
Fewer jobs and less production!!! Excellent.
We have real FREE TRADE between the States.
We DO NOT have Free Trade with China and Mexico.
It’s rigged!
Would a completely de industrialized USA be a good thing?
No.
All of these Free Traders that post here have TDS and are going to vote for Hillary because they know with her TPP will go through.
Complete de industrialization is where we are heading and you are its biggest cheerleader.
It would also tend to make things cheaper.
The opposite of what you want.
Well said, Bernie Sanders.
And please, pleeeeease call me a "Free Traitor™"! You know you want to.
So how much does complying with regs bump up the retail price? 1%, 10%?
Too bad, I want less. And lower taxes.
So how much does complying with regs bump up the retail price?
Too much. It also reduces production, employment and competition.
Prove it. I have looked many times and found very little information on the cost of compliance with EPA regulations. Hard facts; I can find little. My guess for manufacturing is less then 1%. But to bean counters 1% is cause to do radical things like move a factory to Mars if need be.
>Prove it. I have looked many times and found very little information on the cost of compliance with EPA regulations. Hard facts; I can find little. My guess for manufacturing is less then 1%. But to bean counters 1% is cause to do radical things like move a factory to Mars if need be.
Entire chemical related industries no longer exist in America because of EPA regs.
That doesn't really answer the question. Did they offshore to save money on EPA compliance to save 10%, 20% or was more like 1%? I've seen bean counters make really stupid decision to save tiny amounts of money.
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