Clinton killed it....
Perhaps we can go further and blame kissinger
Deep State?
Try Sam Walton. With Clinton’s blessing he looked to use China to make his store label products at a much lower price than rivals. His success in growing his business set up a tidal wave of imitators.major brands followed as they lost sales to Walton.
The NLRB and the EPA. Given our cheap energy manufacturing never would have left if it wasn’t for eco-Nazis and unionists, aided of course be leftists in government.
We got so wealthy because we exported to the rest of the world, and that enabled our mass production, low-skilled, and semi-skilled workers to have a standard of living, including long-term and pension benefits, that has never been seen before or since by production workers.
The problem was that it was all enabled by an export-dominant economy that was not sustainable. Money that should have been invested in modernizing factories was instead spent on unsustainable, locked-in union benefits and inefficient boondoggles like the "job banks".
Our steel and auto industries aren't dying because of low wage competition. They're dying because the factories are largely old, out of data, and inefficient. The Japanese wanted to buy US Steel, invest some billions, and make competitive steel here in the U.S., but Trump and Biden both opposed that deal.
Congress-both houses, AND their Confederate lobbyists!!!
State legislators and their gaggle of lobbyists.
Mayors, eldermen, the whole lot of them.
And all the time, all those Democrats with their cans of Pabst blue ribbon, their red bandanas, and white socks, claiming they are for the working man!
I’d say it’s a combination of things. Federal and state government laws and regulations, and union and corporate greed. Outrageous.
It was the fed...
It was both republiCAN’Ts and democommies...
It was all about abolishing the middle class...
Sad part is they darn near succeeded
It was American consumers. They chose the Chinese products over the American goods.
It was a conscious effort to strip mine the US economy and make huge profits. It is still going on. The only thing that fixes it is a world war which we will win after millions of needless casualties and tactical loses while we re industrialize. Kind of like WWII.
Root cause? liberal 60's policies and people who became more focused on feelings and doing the minimum. The Great New Deal by Johnson significantly contributed and IMO, has been the most responsible for the downfall of society and the economy.
Not one word of the legislation and bills that gave a monetary incentive for companies to move overseas...not a word. I read all of the article and it was all Republican taking the brunt of the blame. Wall street is touched upon as a catalyst also. Long winded but just skimming the surface. Without manufacturing plants the middle class gets eliminated and corporate and governmental thieves rise and profit. The masses be damned approach.
https://www.devex.com/organizations/overseas-private-investment-corporation-opic-united-states-44419
from inception... from the drawing board, who came up with, put together the contracts, who designed the partnerships of NAFTA and GATT?
IMHO, those are the ones who sold America out...
The bottom line.
wy69
Ivy league MBA’s. Then all the other MBA who lemminged after them.
Everyone.
Consumers - happy if things are cheaper
Corporations - happy if profits are higher
Politicians (D or R) - happy if lobbyists support their campaigns and their stock portfolio improves
We all exploited cheap labor, regardless of working conditions. Out of sight, out of mind.
It fed a monster too.
Hey Grok. Which states tax carbon dioxide?
Grok:
As of April 9, 2025, no U.S. state has implemented a direct carbon tax on carbon dioxide emissions in the traditional sense—like a statewide fee per ton of CO2 emitted across all sectors. However, several states have adopted carbon pricing mechanisms that effectively put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, primarily through cap-and-trade programs rather than outright taxes. Here’s the breakdown based on the latest info:
California: Has a cap-and-trade program launched in 2013, covering about 85% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2). It sets a declining cap on emissions, and companies buy or trade allowances at auction. It’s not a tax per se, but it prices carbon—current allowance prices hover around $30-$40 per ton.
Washington: Implemented the Climate Commitment Act in 2023, establishing a cap-and-invest program. It caps CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions across major sectors (like energy and industry) and requires emitters to purchase allowances. Prices started at about $20 per ton and have risen since. Again, not a direct tax, but it functions as a market-based carbon price.
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) States: This involves 11 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia. RGGI, started in 2009, is a cap-and-trade system targeting CO2 emissions from power plants. Allowance prices have typically been lower, around $10-$15 per ton recently, though they fluctuate with auctions.
Oregon: Finalized rules in 2022 for a Climate Protection Program, which caps emissions from fossil fuel combustion (including CO2) and requires large emitters to reduce emissions or buy credits. It’s not fully rolled out yet, but it’s another cap-and-trade variant, not a tax.
Massachusetts (additional program): Beyond RGGI, it has a state-specific cap-and-trade system for power plants, running parallel to RGGI, with a stricter emissions decline out to 2050. It’s layered on top of the regional effort.
No state currently has a broad, economy-wide carbon tax like you’d see in countries such as Canada or Sweden, where emitters pay a fixed rate per ton of CO2. Boulder, Colorado, did have a municipal carbon tax on electricity from 2007 to 2012 (around $7 per ton, later raised), but it expired and hasn’t been replicated statewide. Proposals for outright carbon taxes—like Washington’s failed Initiative 732 in 2016—haven’t gained traction.
These cap-and-trade systems indirectly tax carbon by making emitters pay for allowances, but they differ from a direct tax because the price isn’t fixed by law—it’s set by market dynamics within a capped limit. Over 30% of the U.S. population lives in states with some form of carbon pricing, mostly via these programs. If you’re looking for a specific state or more details on how these work, let me know!
Trump wants to make the U.S. a manufacturing country again.
Manufacturing provided jobs at all skill levels and allowed us to advance through merit. It paid for our healthcare. The bigger the company, the better deals they were able to make with the healthcare company. We got sick leave, vacation time and retirement savings. California Manufacturing has dropped from 15.6% to 7.7% over the last 30 years. We are now a service economy. Computer related industries put Americans in debt with college loans so that they could hire foreign VISA holders that work cheaper and can’t easily change jobs.
The globalists decided that the U.S. had to limit their production of CO2 so that other countries could pollute indiscriminately and bring themselves out of poverty.
It worked for many countries.
We have the World Trade Organization and it is worthless. China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001. They had to commit to significant reforms—like reducing tariffs, opening markets, and improving intellectual property protections—to get in.
China has stolen our trade secrets, ignored our patent laws and won’t allow us to manufacture in their country unless they own 51 percent of the company. As our country shut down manufacturing, our country became reliant on solar and wind generators made in China.
American-made cars sold in China annually, as of 2023, is 150,000 to 250,000. That’s a tiny slice of China’s 26-30 million total vehicle sales yearly.
In 2005, THE EPOCH TIMES acquired a secret speech given by Defense Minister Chi Haotian to high-level Communist Party Cadres sometime before his retirement in 2003.
…
Chi Haotian said:
Our resources are in very short supply. The environment is severely polluted, especially that of soil, water, and air. Not only our ability to sustain and develop our race, but even its survival is gravely threatened, to a degree much greater than faced by Germany back then.
Anybody who has been to Western countries knows that their living space is much better than ours. They have forests alongside the highways, while we hardly have any trees by our streets. Their sky is often blue with white clouds, while our sky is covered by a layer of dark haze. Their tap water is clean enough for drinking, while even our ground water is so polluted that it can’t be drunk without filtering. They have few people in the streets, and two or three people can occupy a small residential building; in contrast, our streets are always crawling with people, and several people have to share one room.
…
Chi Haotian continued:
To resolve the issue of America we must be able to transcend conventions and restrictions. In history, when a country defeated another country or occupied another country, it could not kill all the people in the conquered land because back then you could not kill people effectively with sabers or long spears, or even with rifles or machine guns. Therefore, it was impossible to gain a stretch of land without keeping the people on that land. However, if we conquered America in this fashion, we would not be able to make many people migrate there.
Only by using special means to “clean up” America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. This is the only choice left for us. This is not a matter of whether we are willing to do it or not. What kind of special means is there available for us to “clean up America”?
Conventional weapons such as fighters, canons, missiles and battleships won’t do; neither will highly destructive weapons such as nuclear weapons. We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons, despite the fact that we have been exclaiming that we will have the Taiwan issue resolved at whatever cost. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves.
There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio-weapons have been invented one after another. Of course, we have not been idle, in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of “cleaning up” America all of a sudden. When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country.
From a humanitarian perspective, we should issue a warning to the American people and persuade them to leave America and leave the land they have lived in to the Chinese people. Or at least they should leave half of the United States to be China’s colony, because America was first discovered by the Chinese. But would this work? If this strategy does not work, then there is only one choice left to us. That is, use decisive means to “clean up” America and reserve America for our use in a moment. Our historical experience has proven that as long as we make it happen, nobody in the world can do anything about us. Furthermore, if the United States as the leader is gone, then other enemies have to surrender to us.
Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness, but if the Americans do not die then the Chinese have to die. If the Chinese people are strapped to the present land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place. According to the computation of the author of Yellow Peril, more than half of the Chinese will die, and that figure would be more than 800 million people!
Just after the liberation, our yellow land supported nearly 500 million people, while today the official figure of the population is more than 1.3 billion. This yellow land has reached the limit of its capacity. One day, who knows how soon it will come, the great collapse will occur any time and more than half the population will have to go.