Posted on 11/15/2003 6:30:03 AM PST by cp124
Please take one minute to read this and save your company, your job, and our country.
If we dont organize now, manufacturing will simply become extinct in the United States. Since the enactment of China free trade and Fast Track legislation, what was a trickle of jobs lost abroad is today a torrent. You think its hard now? China is, by a country mile, the worlds largest buyer of the latest technology and production capacity. Then running it with .90 Cents an hour wages, no OSHA, no EPA, no Workmans Comp. no out of control tort system, no Disabilities ACT or countless other government mandated added costs beyond your control. In addition, since 1994 China has pegged their currency to the dollar giving Chinese goods another huge competitive boost in the USA. China and our other trade partners are not the enemy, it's our trade policy that is at fault. (Please note we have received some emails asking if we are advocating a dismemberment of USA worker benefits, the answer is absolutely not!)
People speak of a jobless recovery. Duh! If I take my product and eliminate the American workers, sell my plant and equipment (or ship the equipment to China) my cost for finished goods drops by what 40%, 50%, and 60%? My company makes a big buck. Wall Street is joyous; the stock shoots up along with unemployment. Gone are the manufacturing jobs. Gone is the consumer purchasing power. Gone is your business or your job. At the end of the day a few get rich. As for the USA we spiral downward.
Our manufacturing capacity is vaporizing before our eyes.
Our machine tool industry is all but dead. Dont believe it? The price of used machinery in the US is in free fall. A man whose shop was worth $5 million before China free trade will be lucky to fetch $1M today.
We are rapidly eliminating skilled, high paying manufacturing jobs and converting them to minimum wage dead ends.
America must have a sensible and fair trade policy. If the government is going to saddle us with unending costs then, we need to employ some fair trade methodology to allow Americans to compete at home and abroad.
Democrat or Republican it makes no difference, there is plenty of blame on both sides on how we arrived here. Our interest in not partisan, just American!
We are all talking about it, but few of us have time to seriously address these issues while struggling to keep our own businesses alive.
A Simple Plan:
Each month we will select a government leader to receive our message. We are going to flood this individual with a demand that we will not settle for anything less than FAIR TRADE.
Heres how:
I know its a pain but we MUST SEND LETTERS. The e-mails and fax numbers that we can get access to for these people wont work for volume required. WE NEED BULK!
If just once a month, we use the power of an ordinary letter multiplied by five (or more) business associates or co-workers, and their five and so on and if we all have the discipline to do this, we can deliver our message in literally a ton of mail .directly to our politicians door.
Step 1. Printing and sending the letter.
Simply Click on the "September Letter" button to the left and print. If you experience any trouble printing the document, simply copy and paste into your computer's editing software. Or, if you feel like voicing your own opinons and experiences - write your own letter.
Step 2. VERY IMPORTANT
FORWARD THIS WEB ADDRESS TO A MINIMUM OF 5 BUSINESS ASSOCIATES, PARTNERS, CO-WORKERS, AND/OR ANY INDIVIDUALS THE MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN SAVING OUR USA MANUFACTURING BASE. PLEASE STRESS THAT THEY GIVE THIS THEIR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION AND CONTINUE TO FORWARD IT ON. OUR CONTACTS COME FROM METALWORKING, SO IF YOU HAVE CONTACTS IN OTHER FIELDS OF MANUFACTURING PLEASE USE THEM.
Step 3. Make sure you mail your letter as soon as possible.
THIS WON'T WORK AND NITHER WILL YOU UNLESS YOU MAKE YOURSELF HEARD!
Our government leader for November 2003 is:
President George W. Bush The White House U.S. Department of Commerce 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20500
You are being coy again.
You didn't answer my question.
I will ask it again:
If your customers' businesses are getting their asses kicked by WalMart, then they aren't buying as much from you, are they?
Do you want to do business in America when a third of your profits is confiscated for taxes, state taxes, worker's compensation and unemployment costs?
There is nothing "Free Market" about pitting the living standards of one nation against that of another...
Chinese workers manufacturing consumer products at wages that prohibit them from purchasing those consumer products is nothing but PURE THIEVERY.
It is the extraction of American Wealth - and eventually enough of us will wake up to that fact and exact a murderous rage upon you TRAITORS.
If that's the case, then why has domestic manufacturing output been rising for the last decade?
Dubya's been getting some serious grief for the steel tariffs.
I will not own a stock that manufacturers in China. I will not own a stock of a company that is using labor in foreign countries. If everyone would sell stock in those companies and refuse to buy these stocks that would send a message. Until then, expect these companies and their CEOs to continue to create jobs abroad. These CEOs and their boards are choosing to invest in foreign countries at the expense of Americans who need jobs!
That Sir is EXACTLY right ... I am living that nightmare now ... as I sell off at a lose the last of what I worked for all my life ... that rage swells
Get rid of the over-regulation and other government-mandated costs and the wage difference will not be enough to make the Chinese competitive. That difference is minimal when the cost of shipping is added in. We have over-regulated our own industries out of existance. That is our biggest problem.
"It is not uncommon to meet with an opinion that though the promoting of manufactures may be the interest of a part of the Union, it is contrary to that of another part. The Northern & southern regions are sometimes represented as having adverse interests in this respect. Those are called Manufacturing, these Agricultural states; and a species of opposition is imagined to subsist between the Manufacturing and Agricultural interests.
"This idea of an opposition between those two interests is the common error of the early periods of every country, but experience gradually dissipates it. Indeed they are perceived so often to succour and to befriend each other, that they come at length to be considered as one: a supposition which has been frequently abused and is not universally true.
"Particular encouragements of particular manufactures may be of a Nature to sacrifice the interests of landholders to those of manufacturers; But it is nevertheless a maxim well established by experience, and generally acknowledged, where there has been sufficient experience, that the aggregate prosperity of manufactures, and the aggregate prosperity of Agriculture are intimately connected.
" In the Course of the discussion which has had place, various weighty considerations have been adduced operating in support of that maxim. Perhaps the superior steadiness of the demand of a domestic market for the surplus produce of the soil, is alone a convincing argument of its truth.
Ideas of a contrariety of interests between the Northern and southern regions of the Union, are in the Main as unfounded as they are mischievous. The diversity of Circumstances on which such contrariety is usually predicated, authorizes a directly contrary conclusion. Mutual wants constitute one of the strongest links of political connection, and the extent of these bears a natural proportion to the diversity in the means of mutual supply.
"Suggestions of an opposite complexion are ever to be deplored, as unfriendly to the steady pursuit of one great common cause, and to the perfect harmony of all the parts.
"In proportion as the mind is accustomed to trace the intimate connexion of interest, which subsists between all the parts of a Society united under the same government--the infinite variety of channels which serve to Circulate the prosperity of each to and through the rest--in that proportion will it be little apt to be disturbed by solicitudes and Apprehensions which originate in local discriminations.
"It is a truth as important as it is agreeable, and one to which it is not easy to imagine exceptions, that every thing tending to establish substantial and permanent order, in the affairs of a Country, to increase the total mass of industry and opulence, is ultimately beneficial to every part of it.
"On the Credit of this great truth, an acquiescence may safely be accorded, from every quarter, to all institutions & arrangements, which promise a confirmation of public order, and an augmentation of National Resource.
"But there are more particular considerations which serve to fortify the idea, that the encouragement of manufactures is the interest of all parts of the Union. If the Northern and middle states should be the principal scenes of such establishments, they would immediately benefit the more southern, by creating a demand for productions; some of which they have in common with the other states, and others of which are either peculiar to them, or more abundant, or of better quality, than elsewhere.
"These productions, principally are Timber, flax, Hemp, Cotton, Wool, raw silk, Indigo, iron, lead, furs, hides, skins and coals. Of these articles Cotton & Indigo are peculiar to the southern states; as are hitherto Lead & Coal. Flax and Hemp are or may be raised in greater abundance there, than in the More Northern states; and the Wool of Virginia is said to be of better quality than that of any other state: a Circumstance rendered the more probable by the reflection that Virginia embraces the same latitudes with the finest Wool Countries of Europe. The Climate of the south is also better adapted to the production of silk.
"The extensive cultivation of Cotton can perhaps hardly be expected, but from the previous establishment of domestic Manufactories of the Article; and the surest encouragement and vent, for the others, would result from similar establishments in respect to them.
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As can be seen from the above text, Hamilton's "articulated policy" was not about America's industrial and military self-sufficiency vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Instead, it is about North v.South, Manf. states v. Agro. states.
Doubtlessly, Hamilton did say," Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply...." But it does not appear that he said it in this particular version of the Report.
Yes he has - from the steel users! Its helping the US producers of steel at the expense of the US users of steel. An unintended consequence, perhaps, but one that ought to make him reconsider.
That too is so true .... over regulating over-taxing intrusive welfare minded socialist government has caused this. It is now up to us to rid ourselves of it or surely perish
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