Posted on 03/13/2016 9:33:18 AM PDT by impimp
Free trade is again under attack, despite having been, for over a century, the basis of America's wealth. Some groups in the United States blame free trade for the loss of manufacturing jobs, while others blame it for exposing some U.S. producers to foreign competition.
Free trade, however, is good for America, and for a very simple reason: It allows American workers to specialize in goods and services that they produce more efficiently than the rest of the world and then to exchange them for goods and services that other countries produce at higher quality and lower cost.
Specialization and free trade allow the U.S. to become more competitive and innovative. Innovation constantly provides new technologies that allow Americans to produce more, cure more diseases, pollute less, improve education, and choose from a greater range of investment opportunities. The resulting economic growth generates better-paying jobs, higher standards of living, and a greater appreciation of the benefits of living in a peaceful society.
New technologies bring about change, which, as U.S. economic history shows, benefits society as a whole. In the process, however, some sectors suffer until they can adapt to the new changes and begin to benefit from them. Today, Americans are experiencing some of that "suffering" because new technologies are challenging old methods of production.
This change is especially visible in the manufacturing sector, just as it was in the agricultural sector 100 years ago. But in the same way that it adapted then to a new, more industry-based society, America will adapt again to a new, more knowledge-based society.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritage.org ...
“Why America Needs to Support Free Trade” So the 0001% can employ slaves at 17cents per hour?
“Free trade:”
Elites and billionaires get the goldmine.
Ordinary Americans get the SHAFT!
Trump is absolutely right on this issue.
Plus the other countries do not have the same protections on their workers as the US does.
My husband visited on of his companies factories in China and he was appaled.
It was filled with young women around 18 years old with small hands to assemble circuit boards. They had to live at the factory and worked 12 hour days with minimal time off. The sad thing is it was considered a good job because it wasn’t in a farm.
I disagree.
Factories which make goods (as well as the sourcing for the raw materials) will determine future wealth. Third world nations attracted factories with cheap labor which has been steadily replaced with growing automation.
Those factories are magnets for innovation. By exporting our factories, we’ve also exported that innovation. While we continue to excel at creating the technologies that will make those factories more efficient, we also have cut ourselves off from the profit from those innovations.
Yes, overall, our cost of goods have plummeted, with almost every metric for measuring wealth exceeding inflation. But we did this on credit against future creations.
Yes, we designed the machines that pluck the needed rare earth materials, but they are built elsewhere, and those needed materials won’t be exported. We designed the machines used to make the goods, and sold those templates to others to build.
Yes, it will be expensive to return much of those factories to the mainland, and it will hurt the short term economy. But please explain where the economy of the future is?
80% of the working population is in service related industries, more than half of which can immediately be replaced by existing automation for less than two years of salary and benefits. (30% can be replaced with automation that costs less than six months of salary and benefits.)
Yes, real free trade is good.
Government negotiated trade deals, especially when foreign interests control our media and our politicians, that's bad.
I saw it coming, tried to position myself to thrive with the changes, did pretty well on my own from ‘96 until 2007, when things started getting a little sketchy, customers holding invoices, nitpicking, canceling orders, etc. which only got worse going into 2008. Several ended up going bankrupt, left me holding the bag. Awful year, 2008, had to shut it down. Ended up going to work for one of those customers, considerable loss of income. Went from low six figures to a third of that, clawed my way back to half. It’s been tough, but have held it together more or less. Others have had it worse than me, though. And still the hits keep coming, more offshore competition, more waves of immigration that suppresses wages. We’re headed toward penury being the norm rather than the exception if something doesn’t change, imho.
The “free trade” theoreticians don’t want to hear that what we have is “managed trade” and that it was set up to disadvantage the United States for political reasons, not economics.
The hand outs were on purpose, to generate alliances and reduce military tensions with certain countries: China is still a Communist tyrannocracy that only allows free enterprise and property ownership under restricted conditions....which benefit the Communists.
But the U.S. wanted a counterweight to the Soviet Union and later Russia, although the rationale for the latter is weak to say the least.
And the other political reason was to crush Unionism in the U.S., which is primarily political but also economic.
“Free Trade” deals have almost nothing to with some naive principle advanced by Adam Smith, whose own writing was intended to uphold the class system. On the contrary, they are merely tools of international policy and to some extent domestic policy.
First and foremost, they are designed to drive the middle and lower classes of America into destitution and ultimately to lose significant political power so that the independence of the United States can be destroyed: the global order can then be imposed.
We have Free Trade in the States that are United, and it’s guaranteed in the Constitution. The Federal union has a Congress which can negotiate interstate rules so that trade rules are normalized across the States. There is no similar entity for the world, and that is what the globalist elites want: a world government that suborns the independence of the U.S. Senate and House. The WTO, TPA etc are of course merely first steps down this road.
The goal is crush any opposition to this mounted by the Little People of the U.S., which of course is...us.
And you suggest . . . what?
The problem is that the TPP is not a free trade agreement, nor is NAFTA or the countless other trade deals.
Free trade is thoughtless fanaticism all with a nasal look and glazed eyes.
I support Trump too, and your post is so correct. Thank you.
Just to add, the United States' second -ranked (after Canada) destination for exports is Mexico. Our deficit with Mexico is minuscule, and without oil we purchase from Mexico, we would have a trade surplus. NAFTA did not create a giant "sucking sound", we are blowing our jobs there because of proximity and an egregious and punitive tax and regulatory climate for American manufacturers.
Labor costs are way down the list of reasons to move, but CEO's can't tell the truth because they have to deal with the Feds long after they hit the door.
At the onset of free trade mania under GHWB the usa had ‘comparative’ advantage in all things. 30 years later the nation is nearly deindustrialized. Get your face out of Ricardo’s book and open your eyes dammit!
Mexico floods or dumps people in to the US both legally and illegally the US doesn't into Mexico.. access do Americans owning property anything in Mexico is highly restricted... it a one way street
China floods or dumps product in to the US... but the US access to China markets are highly restricted again it's a one way street
im in favor of free trade when it's truly free trade two countries have equal access to each other’s markets in a mutually beneficial situation ........just like another favor of immigration which country has equal access of letting their people move between the two countries and have equal ability to control that flows between two countries
what am I am not in favor of is a one way relationship that benefit of one country and all disadvantage to the other (US) that's what we currently have.
that's the problem we have so many basically anti-American people making the deals based on their personal benefit and based on their dislike of the US
We have the Country Clubber right there just looking to line their own pockets and screw the rest of us and we have the globalist one world order types on the left like an Obama and Soros who thinks the US has to be basically broken and subservient to their one world agenda...in both cases middle-class bourgeoisie is to be "put in their place" and becomes the peons and Serfs ....we're dealing with two different groups both the Elite left and Elite right that ultimately just see themselves as Elites.. the natural rulers and we are supposed to be under them and subservient
ultimately left or right we're dealing with one common group... people that see themselves as a natural ruling class.. and they need weak broken subservient people to rule over... and when America was always about was the exact opposite of that...
Hmm, like prices haven't been going up with all this "free trade" we have nowadays? Been to the grocery store lately? Bought a new car lately? Bought a house lately? Bought new clothes lately? Bought shoes lately? But wait - there's those "Dollar stores" everywhere. Yeah, sure. Then there's your medical bills, utility bills etc. And of course the estimated 94 million Americans out of work don't matter. They're supposed to be life's losers, right? And all of those folks forced to train their replacements where they work at before they are laid off. Free trade is working just wonderful for them. No one expected their jobs to be the product that was traded.
Face it. Americans have been sold a lie by the American elitists who are getting rich off the engineered impoverishment of Americans and the destruction of American industry.
Hey, while we're thinking about this, let's just outsource the entire American economy so nobody will have to work. We'll live off of Bernie's welfare state. Sounds like a plan to me. And maybe we should just outsource the entire American government while we're at it. Let's let foreigners do the work of ruling the nation so somebody somewhere can make some money at America's expense.
And a last thought: Why anybody would want to fight and die for America to preserve this state of affairs is inexplicable to me.
I suggest four things:
1. Lower US business taxes.
2. Cut back on regulations.
3. Make the union vs. management dynamic a level playing field. Laws favor the unions too much now.
4. Punish countries that do not engage in fair trade. For example, if Japan does not freely accept all US goods, then the US should slap tariffs on all Japanese goods.
Who is most likely to implement my dream list? It's Trump, and that's why I support him.
Free trade works great if your country’s citizens are constantly striving to improve their knowledge skills and abilities.
That’s why the United States grew so quickly during the first 85 years of the 20th Century, why Japan grew so quickly post-WWII, Asia as a whole the past three decades.
When you kill the spirit of the majority of the working age population, free trade is no longer as beneficial, which is what we’re seeing now.
It doesn’t really matter much from here out, however, as machines are the new “foreign competition.” The growth of machines replacing workers in industry is exponential, and exponential growth is dangerous because it looks like a shallow ramp, until it looks like a wall. The wall is going to force a new paradigm on human existence, and nobody knows how it will all shake out.
If one is investing (or worse spending) all their earnings on anything other than real estate and maximizing liquid asset accumulation, he will soon be in a very big pen with a whole lot of his fellow sheep.
High prices? Inflation? You are quite right about that. Talk to the Fed about it - they are the ones printing the money that depreciates our savings and earnings and monetizes the debt created by Congress.
Trade is a different bag of worms altogether. Governments love to mess with it, tax it and protect their friends, political supporters and relatives from foreign competition.
Trump is much more likely to make things worse than better with the policy changes he wants to make.
I am a Trump supporter but I agree with the concept of using all the factors you named, (tariff, regulation, taxes, Etc.) in the mix for a better deal. It is just as wrong to support total fair trade and lose jobs in country as it is to say a trade war would be wrong because prices would rise. Trump was also right on stage when he said the tariff could easily be overcome by moving a factory back to the states. In fact this is handled in military deals all the time. Countries want some weapon system and we agree that part of the assembly can be moved to the purchaser’s home base.
I would say that a negotiator could request that in return for lower tariffs a country could agree to import American goods at a certain rate or return some assembly to the states. It does not have to be all or nothing.
Exactly!!! That is what so-called “free trade” has amounted to in practice and by design I’m sure. “The Club” gets immensely rich selling off 100 million good jobs to India and China who have workers that are essentially slaves on the false promise that they will be rich someday...similar to the
“unvested options” trick the U.S. Tech industry played on American Engineers in the 1990’s...entice them to work like dogs to pump up the stock price on the insiders’ back-dated in-the-money stock options and suck out the cash while knowing their options will be worthless in 3 years before vested. Same old scam....give me your valuables now and I promise to make you a multi-millionaire “real soon now”.
Phooey!!! All these scamsters need to have their ill-gotten gains confiscated and distributed to the working people the REALLY acccounted for the success of these companies, that is, the forgotten expansion-phase engineers who got nothing but downsizing and a kick in the teeth.
These deals aren’t free trade, they are managed trade.
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