"American" companies have fired millions upon millions of working Americans. Demolished entire segments of what was once the world's most magnificent manufacturing powerhouse - America. And sent those very exellent jobs, capabilities and knowhow to of all people:
Communists.
All those former Reagan Democrat auto workers. Pickup-driving. Deer hunting. NRA member union auto workers. Were fired.
They naturally, became bitter. Blamed those who sent their jobs overseas (arguably Republicans for the most part) - and the size of the Democrat party voter base increased with each factory closed.
In fact, every American job which is outsourced - becomes a new Democrat party voter.
Yet. On this board, countless times each day rants of abject hatred toward those darn union workers - who were once mostly Republicans, are hurled with abandon.
Certainly the unions themselves are pawns, owned and operated by the socialists and democrats. But the individual workers who once built cars, and manufactured things - were patriotic, flag waving Reagan democrats.
Well. They're all unemployed now, and they voted for Obama. The unions now increasingly are becoming a bunch of bureaucrats and service workers - a hugely democrat demographic. And the power of the democrat party grows by the day.
Yet. The GOP continues to advocate we *further* destroy our industry, and continue to fire every American possible.
Is this someone's idea of a winning message???
"you're fired, vote for us".
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AMERICA FIRST!
True free trade doesn’t need the ruling authority of the WTO and it doesn’t need NAFTA or any of the other alphabet treaties.
Other nations traded with us before and they’ll trade with us after.
Free trade is not fair. Fair trade promotes freedom.
Free trad creates jobs.
Protectionism creates recessions depressions and global war.
Reagan did not protect industries. Japan did not surpass America economically. People said thiscsqme stuff in the 1980s.
Those so-called trade treaties were not passed through congress without the voters imput. They were all railroaded through congress with the usual arm twisting and dark of night tactics. Many legislators did not even read the bills. Sound familiar? Isn’t that what has been happening these past six months?
This has been the way of doing business in Washington for a long time. We rubes just didn’t know it. We were fed a steady diet of flag waving and “conservative values”, “free enterprise”, family values etc. This is just the Republican mirror image of what happens on the Democrat side...”We feel your pain.”, “We’re for the little guy.”, compassion, etc. The Democrat voters are fools, we are fools. Politicians lie. Our challenge is to discern who is trustworthy and who is just blowing smoke.
Businesses move over seas to escape crushing taxes, union thugs and crippling regulations.
Clinton created the trade agreements with China that turned it into a World commerce giant.
I fail to see how me being able to buy Best Foods mayonnaise in Moscow hurts American workers. That's my idea of "globalism" that works. Or do you just not understand the terms you throw around?
Q. Why doesn’t GOP leadership reach out to Conservative Democrats rather then liberal moderates?
A. Because liberal moderates also believe in exporting American jobs, factories, and dollars.
So what definition of “free trade” are we using here?
One obvious perspective is the design of battleship !? It has these things called watertight compartments which prevent the entire ship from sinking if just one compartment is ruptured. The globalist have taken the bulkheads out and put all of is one ship. One ship where there is no legitimate gov. just appointed so called representatives. Duh.
You can also blame much of illegal immigration on NAFTA.
Mexican farmers couldn’t grow food as cheaply as American factory farms with their government subsidies, so the starving Mexican farmers came here to find work.
The problems with an economy that is not governed outside our Congress (unlike the current global economy model) is that you have politicians who make tariff decisions based upon their voters interest - not in the interest of the overall economy.
In the past that caused the lock on Congress by the Labor Unions who made 40k mile die cars and forced us all to buy them with market protections paid for by the Unions and protected by the Liberal Democrats. In reality these Unions Liberals did not care about the Union worker and the workers finally figured out they were much poorer for giving a lot of their pay check, self determination and their votes to corrupt Union bosses. That is when Reagan came along...
So your observation about the unworkability of the globalists' economy due to the crash is excellent yet it has a sorrid history in unmoveable far left corruption and control you and other Republicans need to think carefully about. In France, we see "the working people" holding bosses hostage because the Left has stoked a whole social and economic culture around dependence, jealously and hate for wealth and business ownership that it is disgusting and poverty reproducing. It is a country of peasants - the thing our forefathers fled. The greatest part of the idea of canceling out global trade treaties and moving to a National centered fair trade model is destroying the elite's dreams of global government rule and global control. I would love to see the Left's multiculturalism model die as since we are no longer "workers and citizens of the global marketplace" we no longer have a need to be their tribes. The global economy - wealth and production - controled outside the reach of democracies, is the linchpin of the scheme. You change one thing; you change everything. By the way, Rinos and Democrats won't allow this to happen and anyone who speaks about it is cursed more than even the most hated "right wing extremist" in the Nation. As you can see on this thread - no messing with globalism or you are a knuckle dragging "Nationalist"! Thinking outside the box would probably put you on a Homeland Security list, too!:)
And the Blue Collar Cat'lick folks who voted for Reagan still voted for socialists like Cuomo in local elections. Their children and grandchildren in the northeast went to college and/or elsewhere.
WTF should I care about a bunch of trade unionist SOCIALISTS who have been going away to the cemetaries and social security anyway? Why should we go after a (literally) DYING portion of the electorate who only voted GOP (on a national basis) because they hated blacks being bussed into their neighborhoods and being passed over for affirmative action.
BTW: Reagan pushed De La Madrid for Free Trade with Mexico, but the latter refused.
Social(ist) "conservatives" make me want to vomit.
Some older conservatives might remember Putnam.
He warned everyone in the Southern California area about NAFTA and GATT and all the other free trade schemes that would only benefit a few insider fat cats.
Think Putnam was wrong?
Look at the economic landscape today...Going down in flames over deep water.
Hey, I don’t feel like looking it up, and I remember you have in the past: do you remember if Clinton signed NAFTA? Or was it Bush 41?
I’m glad this thread happened when it did. We are about to release five volumes of Reagan’s diaries. We can only hope that the Big Government “conservatives” on this thread read just one.
bookmark to read all the point-counterpoint arguments.
Anyone want to recommend a good book on the subject?
Yes.
Before Naafta we had an auto industry, Now we don’t. Nuf said.