Posted on 02/11/2011 7:50:25 PM PST by FromLori
Perot is famous (among other things) for his statement during the 1992 presidential campaign that if NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was not a two way street would create a “giant sucking sound” of jobs going south to the cheap labor markets of Mexico.
Both of Perot’s opponents (George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton) argued that NAFTA would create jobs in the U.S. because of business expansion.
However, the goods balance of trade for the U.S. with Mexico has been negative and steadily growing over the years. In 2010 it amounted to $61.6 billion, which was 9.5% of the total goods trade deficit last year.
So Perot has been vindicated in his opinion; expanded free trade has not been accompanied by an increase in jobs in the U.S. relative to the vast numbers of jobs created in the rest of the world as NAFTA became just a stepping stone on the pathway to global commerce.
Just how much the giant vacuum has been collecting has been calculated at GEI Analysis. The results are shown in the following two graphs.
The first shows manufacturing jobs lost each year starting with 1992 that are equivalent to the U.S. goods trade deficits over the past 19 years. The second shows the cumulative job loss, amounting to almost 29 million jobs by the end of 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The second graph illustrates the problem with the reasoning, though. It shows that we’ve lost more than 28 million jobs. But the total unemployed in the US is only 12.5 million. These kinds of statistics can be misleading.
Well, not just Clinton:
Bill Clinton and his NAFTA Baby Co-Conspirators
"...The Republicans in the House really came through for Clinton by providing 132 Yeas to counter 156 Democratic nays..."
Our unemployed is much larger then 12.5 million they just don’t count the people who dropped off the roles.
Not at all misleading. New jobs were created in some industries and some new industries started up during those years.
The 28 million is simply jobs lost as industries moved from the US to cheap labor nations. That 12.5 million unemployed figure is the net of many pluses and minuses in the total job picture.
Even if you double it, though, you still don’t get to 28.7 million. They are talking about the job losses that are attributed to this. They don’t take into account the jobs that have been created in other areas.
Imports create jobs here as well as there. We make things here that we could not make but for the stuff that we import from there. We have sales jobs here that exist because of imports. Without oil imports from Mexico and elsewhere, there would be no auto industry in the US, and a much lower standard of living. But for auto parts that we import from overseas, we would probably not be able to make the autos we make here. Same with just about everything we make.
We import things, yes, but we also export things. That’s what trade is all about. We’ve got something they want, they’ve got something we want. If we trade, we are both better off.
Having said that, I would agree that our trade policy is poorly managed by Washington. That’s par for the course. It’s government. But I don’t think you can make a blanket statement that we are worse off because of international trade.
Economists will tell you that the two things that have really contributed to the growth of the US economy since WWII are the growth of technology, and the growth of international trade, not necessarily in that order. But for those two things, we would probably have had no economic growth at all since WWII.
It's the 12.5 million figure that is misleading. Real unemployment is about 20%, when measured as it was in the previous Great Depression. 20% of 140 million is about 28 million.
The 12.5 million is the number of unemployed still getting benefits or otherwise involved in the Unemployment system on a weekly basis.
Sadly, the “Giant sucking sound” is the really the sound of our tax, regulation, and hostile business climate causing business to rush past our borders to places where it is wanted.
Gee.
Ya think?
That’s precisely why it IS misleading.
Of course, as this article states, we now have a $62 billion trade deficit with Mexico after years of the giant sucking sound.
Any fool knew what would happen when they removed tariffs and made cheap Mexican labor (about 10% of US labor cost at the time) available to US firms. Mexico sent out brochures advertising their cheap labor in those days. The lies told to help pass that disaster were, well, they were typical of how all the so-called free trade agreements were misrepresented to the public, and still are.
Perot may have been nutty at times, but it’s been obvious for years that he was exactly right about the giant sucking sound. And yet, somehow when Gore compared NAFTA to the Louisiana Purchase in a TV debate with Perot, this sounded more serious and thoughtful than Perot’s description.
It is not misleading. It is an independently calculated number that covers 28 years, and it has nothing to do with the calculation of current unemployment.
I have run a medium sized U.S.manufacturing company for 20 years
and the jobs killer are listed in order:
1. Litigation.
Nothing like having your prototypes drawings and manufacturing
trade secrets stolen and sent to China while you are sued
for antitrust under the Sherman Act by the perpetrators
while the Lawyers milk you for millions.
Even better when you find out you were immune under
Noerr-Pennington doctrine
but the lawyers kept it going just to use your business
for an ATM.
Nothing like juggling 4 discrimination suits while the
state asks you for mountains of paperwork for a year
and a half. And of course the same old determination,
-Never Mind-.
Nothing like having a vendor destroy $35,000 worth of
your parts and sue you for the $2,000 bill.
Nothing like having a vendor not be able to ship your
order, cancel it have them acknowledge the cancellation
buy the parts elsewhere and have the vendor ship them to
you 8 months later.
After the parts are returned the vendor sues you for
them and claims under UCC the parts are custom when they
are not.
After fighting a year in court we decide the litigation
is to costly and decide to buy the $8,000 worth of parts
only to find out the vendor does not have them.
Never lost a single law suit. The lawyers just won bigger.
I could go on all night.
It's the lawyers.
Plus the crooks they work for.
2. Regulations.
Mountains of paperwork, surveys, reporting, environmental surveys, etc.
Every time the government comes up with a new law or program
you just know you and three other people are going
to be busy for a couple of months ( while not doing what you need to do).
Accountants, accountants and more accounts.
A good accountant is worth their weight in gold.
Most want you do all the work and then they kiss
the end product like they were the pope.
Never doing the do-diligence to verify the end product
is correct leaving you to hire another accountant to
correct it.
3.Personnel
A good employee is worth his weight in GOLD.
I have over a hundred of them.
Many have been with the company for 15+ years,
some since it's inception.
How do you tell a good employee?
Simple, they love their job so henceforth they are good
at it. Pay them well and you never find them on the job market.
However due to growth there aways the need for more.
I have learned one thing in 20 years.
A good person almost always has a job.
As for the new hires, 80% of the new hires can't or won't
do their job.
Most within 6 months are either interfering with,
gossiping about, and attacking the good employees (they have special radar and can pick them out in a NY minute).
50% of them turn to grand theft in 1 year less.
Then when terminated they sue the company.
Back to #1.
With all that when does one have the time to actually
do what they are in business for in the first place.
I could write a book.
In fact someday I will.
1. Stop the frivolous lawsuits.
2. Get rid of the ridiculous regulations.
3. Stop taxing business on their inventory's of raw materials and unfinished goods.
Lower the ridiculous tax rates and let the monies be used
for capital equipment and personnel.
4.Stop allowing China to rig their currency so that
Americans cannot compete.
I can take electronic equipment made in China and make
a bill of materials for millions of units and have the parts
and raw material's come to more than the Chinese retail it
for.
That's a free market?
America can win through automation and innovation.
So how does selling stuff make in China, help with any of that?
Gore pulled out his trade balance chart to show a surplus for 1992...and if NAFTA passed and continued we'd have the largest trade surplus with Mexico than any other nation.
We were hitting deficits in ‘95 with no stop in illegal immigration or raise in Mexican standards of living.
“Two term clinton destroyed our manufacturing base.
By 2000 it was well on it’s way to being gutted”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sure. It’s no coincidence that Birl Crinton was the former governor of the state that just happened to be the headquarters of the largest Retailer of Chinese goods in the US.
Wasn’t his wife on the Board of Directors?
Don’t blame just clinton, cause plenty of Big Government Republicans helped it along.
In 1994, the Republicans took over both houses of CONgress and you think that they have no blame for this also!
Really! You can’t be serious, if you really DO believe that!
As a matter of fact she was... You win a cookie.
Read more here:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0312-01.htm
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