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A Plan to Save American Manufacturing
TradeAlert.org ^ | Wednesday, December 31, 2003 | Kevin L. Kearns, Alan Tonelson, and William Hawkins

Posted on 01/01/2004 9:04:11 AM PST by Willie Green

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

Although warnings about the crisis engulfing American manufacturing have been intensifying for months, the sector´s woes continue to be significantly underestimated – certainly by official Washington and even by many manufacturers themselves.  In fact, despite the current boost in growth fueled by deficit spending, tax cuts, mortgage re-financings, and other one-time stimuli, the decline of American manufacturing is fast nearing the point of irreversibility – at least from the standpoint of restoring a critical mass of industries producing in the United States to world leadership.

The nation, in short, faces a manufacturing emergency. Unless drastic measures are taken quickly, this emergency will turn the United States into a second-class manufacturing power, greatly diminishing its own future economic prospects. Further, national security and flexibility in foreign affairs will be severely compromised.  Finally, the international imbalances being created by the manufacturing crisis will likely push the world into a major dollar crisis and could cause a protracted depression.

In part, the manufacturing crisis reflects the economy´s latest cyclical downturn and the deflating of the bubble of the 1990s.  Likewise, the manufacturing employment portion of the crisis stems in part from the increases in productivity in recent years.  But neither of these factors sufficiently explains the root cause of manufacturing´s current troubles, which are the worst by many measures since the end of World War II, and that is the cumulative and continuing effects of two decades of misguided, ill-advised, and weak-willed U.S. trade and globalization policies.

During this period, Washington has consistently failed to open foreign consumption markets adequately to U.S. producers – despite years of promises and the fanfare that greeted each new trade agreement.  In addition, the American government has failed miserably to combat predatory foreign trade practices aimed at undermining U.S. producers in their home market.  Perversely, Washington has responded to these failures by encouraging U.S. manufacturers to supply their home market from low-cost third world production platforms like Mexico and China. And most U.S. multinational corporations, and indeed some of their smaller suppliers, have responded with enthusiasm.

NO TIME TO LOSE

The most serious global macroeconomic dangers stemming from the continued flight of American manufacturing overseas have to date been avoided and may be postponed still further by continued financial policy legerdemain – though the faster America´s international debts keep rising, the more difficult the challenge of correcting the imbalances. But regardless of when the crunch actually comes, the weakening of domestic manufacturing is already undermining the material foundations of American national success.

The prolonged wage slump triggered by the overseas migration of America´s best-paying jobs on average has been rippling through the U.S. economy and American society for at least two decades.  The loss of these important jobs represents a shrinking of the employment base needed for a middle-class standard of living, stable families, and the local and state tax revenues necessary for a first-world level of responsibly financed public infrastructure and social services. Consequently, Americans find increasingly at risk their hard-won 20th century gains in access to quality education, health care, and retirement security (whether paid for by a solvent public sector or a sufficiently broad-based and profitable private sector).

In addition, the manufacturing crisis raises serious questions about the U.S. economy´s ability to maintain a high-tech, world-leading military without worrisome dependence on foreign products and technologies.  Although it is true that defense-related imports come overwhelmingly from long-time allies or traditionally friendly countries, it is just as true that they are growing rapidly at a time when major disagreements increasingly mark the relationships between the United States and these countries.

Further, the massive loss of tax revenue – both corporate and personal – directly attributable to a disappearing industrial base will undoubtedly constrain America´s ability to sustain military operations in both peacetime and wartime at levels that U.S. policymakers have come to take for granted.  Thus the country faces a future in which the ability to project power and thereby affect events and outcomes the world over will be much more limited than anytime in the last century and a quarter.

Most worrisome, the decline of American manufacturing is quickly feeding on itself and gaining unstoppable momentum. Washington´s continuing failure to secure equitable terms of trade forces more and more U.S. firms to compensate by outsourcing.  These moves create powerful pressure for growing numbers of the remaining hold-out companies to follow suit.

The migration of prime contractors overseas inexorably pulls much of their supply chains with them. The export of blue-collar production work leads to the export of white-collar manufacturing-related work, as companies seek the advantages of locating researchers and designers near the factories they service.  In fact, there is a continuous feed-back loop between R&D efforts and the factory floor, with the two functions, R&D and production, operating in tandem.  And as is well documented, R&D and other technology work often produce a clustering effect, which draws labs and similar facilities from other industries in search of new synergies. The notion that the United States will retain high-end design functions while letting production migrate overseas is wishful thinking.  Without major globalization policy changes, this vicious cycle of manufacturing flight cannot be turned into a virtuous cycle of manufacturing resurgence.

LESSONS OF THE RECENT PAST

The following action plan for saving and reviving U.S. industry incorporates recent policy lessons that Americans simply can no longer afford to ignore.

First, although America´s regulatory and tax systems have unnecessarily raised domestic business costs in many instances, the manufacturing crisis springs from far deeper roots. No regulatory, health care, or tax reform schemes that would produce acceptable economic, social, or political results can overcome the damage being done to American manufacturing by today´s globalization policy failures. Improved industrial competitiveness cannot and should not be based on gutting the basics of a just, humane, and inclusive society. Fundamentally new globalization policies are the sine qua non for saving and reviving American manufacturing.

Second, the United States will always have more control over its own actions than over the actions of other countries. Therefore, the keys to reversing American manufacturing´s decline lie neither in more market-opening trade agreements nor in efforts to micro-manage economic and social conditions overseas. Despite decades of so-called free trade agreements, too many foreign markets still remain too closed to U.S. exports. The main reason: Most of the world´s countries view trade as a zero sum game, with a piece of the American domestic market as the prize.  The handful of economies wealthy enough to consume American-made goods can erect new trade barriers faster than U.S. negotiators can even identify them. The U.S. government, moreover, has too much trouble enforcing its own laws and regulations here at home to imagine that enforcing foreign laws and regulations, even those imposed by future trade agreements, will be successful.

Instead, to achieve the necessary results, the United States must focus on managing its own behavior and controlling access to its own market, unilaterally conditioning that access ona strategic analysis of its own national needs and on acceptable practices by its trade partners. In addition, the United States must rely mainly on its own power and leverage to achieve satisfactory terms of trade.  As the record unmistakably shows, one-country-one-vote international organizations like the World Trade Organization too readily turn into mechanisms for undermining American sovereignty, diluting American power, and maintaining global economic free-riding.

Finally, Washington must recognize that simply promoting economic growth and higher incomes abroad will not alone cure U.S. manufacturing´s ills and rebalance America´s trade accounts. Most countries refuse to trust their economic fates to market forces or refuse to permit higher domestic growth to draw in proportionately higher volumes of imports. In short, too little commerce around the world is free enough to allow potential future growth to serve as a U.S. trade and manufacturing cure-all.

The following U.S. Business and Industry Council manufacturing blueprint emphasizes short-term emergency measures for reversing domestic manufacturing´s decline and laying the foundation for its revival. But it also includes longer-term proposals for ensuring that U.S. trade and globalization policies do not revert to the practices that have produced today´s crisis.

EMERGENCY MEASURES

1. The president must declare that the United States faces a manufacturing, R&D, and outsourcing emergency no less threatening to America´s long-term future than even the Great Depression. He must also make clear that the crisis stems mainly from the manipulation of world trading system by mercantilist countries and to the encouragement of offshoring by U.S. trade policy.

2. The president should create an Apollo Program-type task force in the federal government to oversee Washington´s response to the manufacturing crisis. Its mission should be to restore domestic U.S. manufacturing to global preeminence and to boost domestic manufacturing employment and wages.  The program should involve all agencies of U.S. government.

3. Federal R&D spending should be tripled and Washington should offer matching grants to industry.  Special emphasis should be placed on tasking the national labs with helping to develop commercially viable, high-tech products to be manufactured in the United States.

4. The U.S. trade deficit should be quickly and dramatically reduced by imposing a “variable trade equalization tariff” on imports from countries running a trade surplus ten percent or greater of total bilateral trade.  These tariffs should be increased each year until bilateral surpluses fall below the threshold level, at which time they would be removed. Tariffs should be imposed on U.S. trading partners as soon as surpluses reach the 10 percent threshold.

The United States should offer a partial exemption for the world´s poorest countries, but only if concrete, measurable trade breaks from the other OECD countries follow suit and only if the developing country seeking the exemption demonstrates a commitment to democracy and the economic advancement of all its people.  Exemptions are not intended to enrich corrupt, dictatorial elites.

In addition, exceptions would be made for energy imports and other commodities that are not found in the United States and for which no acceptable substitutes exist.

5. Companies manufacturing or assembling in the United States should be barred from treating service work performed overseas as a deductible business expense.  Private companies that outsource overseas the processing of sensitive records, such as medical and financial records, must ensure that their subcontractors meet U.S. privacy standards or face stiff fines.  

6.. Washington should declare a moratorium on all current and future free trade talks pending development of new national trade strategy. The United States government clearly has lost the ability to negotiate trade agreements that enrich the great majority of Americans and strengthen the domestic manufacturing base on net. U.S. leaders should not engage in trade negotiations until this ability is regained.

To develop a fundamentally new national trade strategy, the president and Congress should appoint a National Trade Strategy Commission that includes representatives of business plus civil society groups, such as labor unions and environmental groups. The business representatives on the Commission should be dominated by companies and industries that produce the great majority of their product and value in the United States. The Commission should also include representatives of the nation´s science and technology and national security communities.

7. Washington should declare a moratorium on U.S. compliance with WTO panel decisions pending dramatic reform of organization to reflect America´s position in world economy. The UN Security Council veto and the IMF/World Bank weighted voting systems are possible models of international organization structures appropriate to America´s geopolitical and economic superpower status. If appropriate reform is not completed by the end of 2005, the United States should declare its intention to withdraw from the organization as soon as legally permissible.

8. Washington should declare a moratorium on U.S. compliance with NAFTA panel decisions pending reform of NAFTA´s dispute-resolution process to reflect U.S. predominance in the North American economy. In addition, NAFTA´s rules of origin and external tariffs should be revised to offer meaningful trade preferences to goods with much higher levels of North American content.

9. The U.S. government should resolve the Foreign Sales Corporation tax dispute with the European Union and the World Trade Organization by replacing the current FSC tax incentive with a major tax break for any company, either American or foreign-owned, that performs genuine manufacturing activity in the United States.  Qualification for the tax break would require detailed certification that true manufacturing is occurring in the United States.

10. The United States should expedite procedures for anti-dumping and countervailing duty suits. Threshholds for standing, actionability, and remedies should all be eased. In addition, remedies should be extended to companies up and downstream from immediately affected industries to ensure protection for suppliers and consumers, and prevent foreign economic interests from using divide and conquer tactics against domestic industries.

11. The current steel tariffs should be expanded to cover industries using significant quantities of U.S.-made steel.  Further, the option of extending the tariffs beyond the original three-year deadline should be left open in order to determine conclusively that foreign steel subsidization and dumping have ceased.

12. A stiff tariff should be imposed on countries determined by the U.S. government to be manipulating their currencies for trade advantage. In light of the Treasury Department´s equivocation on the currency policies of Asian mercantilist nations, the definition of currency manipulation that now exists must be broadened.  A strong dollar remains in the long-term interests of the U.S. economy, but foreign governments must not be able to distort trade flows to the advantage of their companies by giving them artificial cost advantages.    

13. The defense industry must be treated by the federal government in a fundamentally different way from the commercial sector.  It exists solely to serve the national interest and national security, and must be structured and managed accordingly.  Therefore, a 65 percent U.S. content requirement should be imposed on all military procurement, rising to 80 percent in five years and 95 percent in ten years.  This requirement should immediately cover the procurement of all goods and services for domestic military facilities and operations, and to the fullest extent possible cover foreign bases as well.  Presidential waiver authority should be sharply limited, especially for countries that have records as problem traders or that demand offsets for purchases of American weapons systems.

14. Public money taken from the domestic economy by taxes or borrowing should be returned to the domestic economic economy by the procurement of American-produced goods and services.  Procuring government services domestically is also necessary to ensure the continued privacy and security of the financial and health records of all Americans.  Thus a 50 percent U.S.-content requirement should be imposed on all non-military federal procurement, rising to 80 percent in five years and 95 percent in ten years. Presidential waiver authority should be sharply limited. This requirement should immediately cover the procurement of all services for domestic facilities and programs.

15. The scheduled abolition of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement governing world trade in textile and apparel should be suspended indefinitely, pending a study of the effects of the MFA's abolition on domestic and third-world producers in these industries.

16. Stiff tariffs should be levied on countries that impose offset requirements on U.S. defense manufacturers.

17. The president should declare a moratorium on foreign acquisitions of U.S. defense-related companies pending completion of comprehensive study of the status of the roughly 1,500 such companies acquired since 1988 under the current policy framework and government screening system.

18. Strict, detailed country-of-origin labeling should be required on all food and agricultural imports.

19. Legal immigration into the United States should be limited to 500,000 annually. Enforcement measures to halt illegal immigration should be dramatically increased, including significant and sustained increases in the budgets of those federal agencies responsible for enforcing immigration laws.  

Immigration at today´s levels – both legal and illegal – can only serve to depress wages for American workers by artificially inflating the supply of labor. Moreover, the most likely victims of such massive immigration flows are the recent arrivals themselves, who are forced to compete directly for jobs with the unending flow of newcomers arriving right after them.

The H-1B visa program for technology workers should be abolished.  A new federal commission comprised both of U.S. technology worker interests and tech industry interests should conduct a study to determine labor needs in technology industries and how they should be met.

LONGER-TERM MEASURES

1. Washington must insist that any future trade agreements be strictly reciprocal and strongly enforceable by the U.S. government, unilaterally if necessary.

2. Any future U.S. trade agreements must include provisions penalizing signatories for currency manipulation.  IN fact, currency manipulation can be used to defeat or offset the effects of reducing or eliminating trade barriers.  

3. The president should launch a major diplomatic campaign to press other OECD countries to increase third world imports, enforceable unilaterally by tariffs on the products of any non-cooperating OECD countries. Under-importing of third-world products by the European Union and Japan in particular has greatly increased the pressure on the U.S. market to absorb third-world production. Greater burden sharing in this vital sphere is urgently needed.

Because the overriding interest of U.S. trade policy is to advance the economic interests of the great majority on the American people and the long-term security and prosperity of the United States, Americans should feel no special obligation to import goods or services from third-world, or indeed any other, countries.  Such imports are especially unacceptable if they sacrifice the interests of American workers and domestic companies.  But a campaign to get Europe and Japan to do more is needed for three reasons:

  1. to counter perceptions that U.S. protectionism is the greatest current barrier to third world economic development;
  2. to highlight America´s record in promoting this development; and
  3. to call attention to the poor importing records of the other main OECD countries.

4. The United States should focus any new trade agreements on high-income countries capable of serving as final consumers of U.S. exports. Washington´s recent focus on third world countries capable of serving only as re-export platforms has been a substantial contributor to today´s current trade deficits.  In particular, the United States should seek a free trade agreement with Europe that excludes agriculture.  Washington should also take stronger measures to open Japanese and Korean markets, including unilateral tariffs if necessary.

5. The president should remove responsibility for monitoring and enforcing trade agreements from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative and place it in the Department of Commerce. As the lead agency for negotiating new trade agreements, the USTR´s office has every incentive to soft-pedal the deficiencies in both the structure and functioning of these agreements. Dividing these responsibilities would eliminate a major policy-making conflict of interest.  

6. Congress should enact strict foreign lobbying reform covering all federal officials, including lifetime bans on working for foreign interests for former senior Executive and Legislative branch officials.

7. The Commerce and Defense Departments should be designated as co-chairs of the inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews all proposed foreign acquisitions of U.S. defense-related companies. Exon-Florio filings  must be made mandatory, and the threshold for investigation lowered.  With the Treasury Department chairing this panel for its decade-and-a-half of existence, national security concerns have not been adequately addressed in CFIUS´s decisions, which generally reflect only Treasury´s desire to see surplus dollars in foreign hands repatriated effortlessly.

8. The president should commission immediate reports – written by special Commercial Action Teams composed mainly of industry representatives and some government officials – on foreign subsidies existing outside the steel industry and implement tariffs to offset them. Washington should first offer to negotiate the abolition of such subsidies, but it must insist on results that are achieved quickly, as well as completely verifiable and enforceable by the U.S. government.

9. The federal government must publish more complete and timely foreign trade and investment data. This data should include detailed information on the importing, sourcing, and employment trends of all multinational companies and in fact all companies that do business in the United States.  The provision of the data to the appropriate government agencies must be made mandatory.

10. The president should launch a comprehensive review of all U.S. defense alliances to determine which remain relevant to 21st century U.S. interests.  The president should explicitly state that foreign policy and defense considerations will no longer automatically trump the economic interests of the United States and the American people.

STRONG – BUT ESSENTIAL – MEDICINE

No one should assume that implementing this manufacturing revival plan will be pain-free. All economic adjustments and transitions exact costs as well as create benefits.  Those necessary to improve the long-run fundamentals of American manufacturing and strengthen the foundations of the U.S. and world economies as a whole will be that much more difficult because of the national and global economic excesses that were fostered since the completion of the “Tokyo Round” of international trade talks, but especially during the 1990s.

Specifically, some temporary slowdown in U.S. and global growth rates seems unavoidable. And thanks to the power of recklessly expanded international trade and investment, pushed unceasingly by economic ideologues and short-sighted multinational companies, achieving this slowdown will require serious restrictions on trade and investment flows.

Yet the only alternatives proposed to date are policies that are already proven failures, or that are surrenders to wishful thinking. Moreover, these responses can only postpone the day of reckoning, not prevent it. And just as permitting a disease to fester usually ensures that the needed treatment will be that much stronger, more painful, and less certain to work, permitting the manufacturing crisis to fester and inflating the global economic bubble further will only increase, not decrease the economic dangers facing America and the world.

The implementation of restorative measurers cannot be left to the good sense of Washington policymakers and elected officials.  As a group, they have demonstrated convincingly time and again that they do not grasp the magnitude of the problems they have created and that they are bereft of comprehensive solutions.  Instead, they prefer cosmetic changes, designed to relieve political pressure and ensure reelection.

If the necessary policy reorientation is to be accomplished, the impetus must come from the remaining domestic manufacturers, their employees, their communities, and local and state governments, which are experiencing first-hand the budget crises caused in large part by globalization policies – whether the movement of plants overseas, company bankruptcies due to unfair foreign practices, high-tech and other services outsourcing, uncontrolled immigration with the resulting disproportionate consumption of social services, etc.  In short, grass roots efforts must reach critical mass to force Washington to change two generations of misguided policies.

If any political leaders or economic experts know how to solve the manufacturing and trade crises without the significant trade restrictions featured in our action plan, the U.S. Business and Industry Council would welcome their ideas with open arms. But we would also be wondering what they´ve been waiting for.  The time for comprehensive action to save American manufacturing has long since passed. Very soon there will be little left to save.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: freetrade; globalism; immigration; manufacturing; nationaldebt; nationalsecurity; sovereignty; technology; thebusheconomy; trade; tradedeficit
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To: nmh
You have no idea what I do for a living or what my living standard is. You are trying to make an inference to support your argument that is baseless.

The global elites do control your life. If you are living in a city that is an Agenda 21 city, they are dictating how your city should be run. But maybe you are blind and you do not see the effect of globalism on your freedom and property rights.
101 posted on 01/01/2004 1:41:03 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
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To: ninenot
"At this time, NAM officials are speaking for the Fortune100 types, albeit they are agonizing over it."

I think they have some 10,000 small business members. It is important to note that there are different views and agendas in NAM. Thanks.

"Since China usually builds the buildings and purchases the initial round of machinery, American FDI will not be large, even for sizeable plants."

That should be made clear, also. Thanks. Sacramento's Tom Sullivan loves to cite the European v. China differences to wave aside the offshore problem. Not a problem in his mind. I guess not, Wall Street is booming!

I was struct by the Motorola case posted recently. There is IMO THE problem with offshoring. The chi-coms took Motorola's technology and started competing. Motorola is losing its market in China. I suspect that is how the chi-coms' version of Lenin's NEP works.

The chi-com companies with the major portion of exports to the U.S. stole the technology and started their own factories.

Our useful idiot "capitalists" are now filing claims with taxpayer supported Ex-Im Bank and OPIC?

102 posted on 01/01/2004 1:47:15 PM PST by WilliamofCarmichael
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To: nmh
the WTO authorized themselves the ability to sue first world nations (us) on behalf of the third world countries we so 'abuse' and created an international court in addition to the international criminal court to do it.

You were on the thread the other day where this information was posted, but its so easy for you to forget anything that doesn't support your worldview.

The official opening of the Advisory Centre for WTO Law today is a (small) historic moment in its own right. But it is also part of a larger development: a growth of the judicial settlement of disputes reflected in a growth in the number of international judicial institutions.

Many new international rules, laid down in multilateral agreements, have been created over the last two decades. Many new international courts and tribunals have been instituted with a view to facilitating the application and enforcement of those rules. I will just mention the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the various War Crimes Tribunals, for the former Yugoslavia and Central Africa, and the International Criminal Court. The Panels and Appellate Body of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Understanding are part of that development, and probably the most prolific part, with some 240 complaints lodged and some 56 final judgments rendered in six years.

It is, therefore, fitting that, today, the official opening of the Advisory Centre for WTO Law marks the start of a true legal aid centre on an international scale. Individuals appearing as defendants before War Crimes Tribunals have always been able to call upon pro bono legal aid. The International Court of Justice has a small fund out of which costs of legal assistance can be paid for countries who need such help. But today marks the first time a true legal aid centre has been established within the international legal system, with a view to combating the unequal possibilities of access to international justice as between States. States have banded together and have created a multilateral treaty supported by a substantial guarantee fund, which makes subsidization and the provision of high quality legal aid to States which need such help possible.

The seeds of this system can already be found in the DSU. Article 27, paragraph 2, provides for “additional legal advice and assistance” (additional, that is over and above the normal assistance to all Members) “in respect of dispute settlement to developing country Members”. The Secretariat shall accordingly make available “a qualified legal expert from the WTO technical cooperation services” to any developing country. However, such assistance could not go beyond a certain point because the Secretariat had to preserve its impartiality, according to this provision. It was inconceivable that one part of the Secretariat would help a developing country litigate a case, whilst another part of the Secretariat would help the Panel write the report on that case.

--SPEECHES — DG MIKE MOORE




*** It’s doubtful that the Senate would have approved this dramatic transfer of national sovereignty had it been proposed in a formal treaty. Additionally, the Republican-led Congress that acquired power in January 1995 included scores of freshmen skeptical of international bodies like the WTO. The drive to entangle our nation in the WTO may have been doomed but for the willingness of Republican House leader Newt Gingrich to cooperate with like-minded Democratic internationalists in convening a special lame-duck session of Congress to approve the agreement.

To his credit, Gingrich candidly described the consequences of congressional approval of the WTO. "[W]e need to be honest about the fact that we are transferring from the United States, at a practical level, significant authority to a new organization. This is a transformational moment," admitted Gingrich during congressional hearings in late 1994. "I would feel better if the people who favor this would just be honest about the scale of change." Comparing the WTO agreement with the 1991 Maastricht treaty, which created the European Union, Gingrich predicted that "twenty years from now we will look back on this as a very important defining moment. This is not just another trade agreement. This is adopting something which twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the U.S. Congress rejected. I am not even saying we should reject it; I, in fact, lean toward it. But I think we have to be very careful, because it is a very big transfer of power."

The power ceded by Congress to the WTO placed our nation’s economic future in the hands of unelected globalist bureaucrats.

103 posted on 01/01/2004 1:51:46 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
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To: WilliamofCarmichael
>The chi-coms permit "capitalism" in parts of their country. That ain't capitalism. That's Lenin's New Economic Plan, chi-com version.

What is not generally realized is that Stalin also implemented many psuedo-freemarket incentives to control the Soviet Economy. Read Mancur Olson on how Stalin got his people to produce more for submarket wages. Click Here for book review

Stalin supplied the labor for all businesses in his country as a single entity and set below market wages. But he also created some higher than market rewards for the few, rare top performers. Stalin created a wage arbitrage and the Soviet state was scooping up the differences bet market wages and what the workers were actually paid. Western businesses loved this kind of system and invested in Stalin, giving him steel mills and auto factories. An instant profit and no problems with the unpredictability of a real market economy with real free trade.

104 posted on 01/01/2004 1:52:57 PM PST by Dialup Llama
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To: nmh
The U.S. is still a sovereign country and not answering to some international court or international agreements of any kind.

We don't answer to the

International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea?

the WTO's Dispute Settlement Understanding ?



The WTO’s procedure for resolving trade quarrels under the Dispute Settlement Understanding is vital for enforcing the rules and therefore for ensuring that trade flows smoothly.

A dispute arises when a member government believes another member government is violating an agreement or a commitment that it has made in the WTO. The authors of these agreements are the member governments themselves — the agreements are the outcome of negotiations among members. Ultimate responsibility for settling disputes also lies with member governments, through the Dispute Settlement Body.

** You are telling me that the US has never been called before this body and never participated in any of its decisions?
105 posted on 01/01/2004 1:55:56 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
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To: nmh
The U.S. is still a sovereign country and not answering to some international court or international agreements of any kind

Dispute body adopts rulings on US steel safeguards and Japan’s measures on apples

The Dispute Settlement Body, on 10 December 2003, adopted the panel and Appellate Body reports on US definitive safeguard measures on imports of certain steel products and Japanese measures affecting the importation of apples. Summary of the meeting

Appellate Body issues report on steel dispute

The Appellate Body, on 10 November 2003, issued its report on the complaints brought to the WTO by Brazil, China, the European Communities, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland against United States — Definitive Safeguard Measures on Imports of Certain Steel Products. It upheld most of the Panel's conclusions that the US measures were inconsistent with the WTO Safeguards Agreement and the GATT 1994 but reversed some findings regarding tin mill products and stainless steel wire which did not affect the overall result.

> Download the Appellate Body Report in Word format (187 pages; 722KB), in pdf format (187 pages; 1041KB)

> All documentation on the case DS248
> All documentation on the case DS249
> All documentation on the case DS251
> All documentation on the case DS252
> All documentation on the case DS253
> All documentation on the case DS254
> All documentation on the case DS258
> All documentation on the case DS259
> More on Dispute Settlement

Appellate Body issues report on US-Japan apple dispute

The Appellate Body, on 26 November 2003, issued a report upholding the findings of a panel that Japan's quarantine restrictions on imports of apples from the United States are inconsistent with certain provisions of the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.
> Download the Appellate Body Report in Word format (101
pages; 413KB), in pdf format (101 pages; 294KB)
> All documentation on the case DS245
> More on Appellate Body
> More on Dispute Settlement


http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news03_e/news03_e.htm
106 posted on 01/01/2004 2:00:21 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
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To: nmh
Change ALWAYS happens! It's ALWAYS been that way! It's not about globalization . That's just your hand scapegoat that allows you to avoid personal responsibility.

This statement tells me you can not even be honest about what is going on. The loss of jobs has everything to do with globalization, even the dumbest light bulb (to coin a phrase) in the country is aware of this fact.

I've moved on from technology.

So are the rest of the engineers in this country and in case you missed the point that has been made on many of these posts this aspect alone is reason to be concerned for the future of America. The loss of our technological capabilities is a serious issue for our future.

I'm doing something else that fits me. The bigger question is what should YOU do? I can't tell YOU what to do. YOU need to determine that. Meantime, I'm doing just fine $$$.

This is not about YOU and it is not about ME, it is about the future of this country and the future prospects of our children.

Most professions require a substantial investment of time and money. Not true. Tell that to Col Sanders who founded KFC. Look up Harland Sanders and see what he did. You're just looking for excuses.

I said MOST professions, I was not referring to a small select few individuals that by good fortune and hard work have mongered to create a multimillion dollar business. The facts are that most people invest time and money getting established in a profession then they get experience. Your cavalier attitude that these professionals can easily change is ludicrous. Not to mention the fact that loosing these jobs to other countries does nothing positive for America.

107 posted on 01/01/2004 2:06:50 PM PST by blueriver
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To: Dialup Llama
Thanks for the book reference covering Stalin's "captialism". I would just attach a reminder about NEP in the 1920s. Lenin faced problems not unlike the chi-coms had a couple of decades ago. Population and productivity problems and things like the aftermath of the likes of the Cultural Revolution.

Sound familure anyone? But it's about Russia in the 1920s:

"The economy boomed. Food supplies, while not particularly cheap, were available in plentiful supply in all the cities. Shops were filled with consumer goods, and service industries abounded. Freed from the dead hand of total and rigid central planning, the entrepreneurial spirit blossomed among the Russian people. The Russians showed themselves to be as industrious and productive as any of the peoples of the West, once they had the opportunity to earn profits on the market, and once they could own private property and feel a degree of security in its possession."

Useful idiots flooded in also with their technology. Russian nepmen became, I believe, about 40 percent of the economy. But to this day the Marxists' take on the nepmen is "those people who used the economic system for extreme profiteering." Nepmen proved that Russia could be wealthy and prosperous. But the ideologues resented the "capitalist class" and put an end to it.

When will the chi-coms blow the whistle? After they have all our technology, or before?

108 posted on 01/01/2004 2:42:50 PM PST by WilliamofCarmichael
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To: ninenot
In other words, you wanna go there with the jobs--you no longer get our Army to back you up, nor our Courts to try your tort problems. Stuff it.

-----
My problem with this idea is that it leaves American Citizens open to all kinds of abuse in foreign lands. Right now there are countries who know not to (F)mess with an American because there will be Hell to pay. I agree with Walter Williams on this one in that I can't fault a company for wanting to reduce their operating costs as low as possible. In the last article I read by Dr. Williams, he stated that he likes to pay as little for what he buys and get as much as he can for what he sells. I subscribe to that in my own life as I'm sure you do. I want the things I sell on eBay to go for the max, and then some. I also can't fault a worker for wanting to go overseas if it pays him more money. To force him/her to lose protection would be wrong, IMHO. That would be murder.
109 posted on 01/01/2004 2:45:41 PM PST by gooleyman
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To: Willie Green
Something like this would make a great part for the 2004 State of the Union Address. I hope the Adminstration's advisors pick up on this -- something is needed!
110 posted on 01/01/2004 2:48:29 PM PST by bvw
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To: alrea
Just call it socialism and make it simple.

Call it fascism and make it accurate.

111 posted on 01/01/2004 2:49:52 PM PST by iconoclast
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To: blueriver
Do you know that a substantial number of engineering students are leaving this field because they know there will be no jobs when they graduate?

-----
If I had looked at Engineering that way before I graduated, I would have changed majors and missed out on the boom. I graduated in 1979. Just 2-years before that, a graduating Engineering student couldn't even buy a job. When I came out, I had offers from 4 different companies. Interviews with many more. It's kind of like I've heard about seeing a NASCAR crash ahead of you on the track. See the crash and drive right toward it. By the time you get there, it will be gone.
112 posted on 01/01/2004 3:03:35 PM PST by gooleyman
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To: Willie Green
During this period, Washington has consistently failed to open foreign consumption markets adequately to U.S. producers

----------------------

Opening markets to people who aren't paid enough money to buy goods in quantity won't accomplish anything. Neither can we sell the same class of goods to people that they are already selling to us for 1/4 price.

The remainder I will address later.

113 posted on 01/01/2004 3:10:46 PM PST by RLK
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To: XBob
During this period, Washington has consistently failed to open foreign consumption markets adequately to U.S. producers

----------------------

Opening markets to people who aren't paid enough money to buy goods in quantity won't accomplish anything. Neither can we sell the same class of goods to people that they are already selling to us for 1/4 price.

The remainder I will address later.

114 posted on 01/01/2004 3:13:19 PM PST by RLK
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To: Huber
Is manufacturing output down or just employment in manufacturing jobs?

If my company is any measure -- output is down. Our sales (output) are about 1/3 of what they were 2 years ago, and we are in danger of going under. It's nnot that my employees don't work hard and produce a great deal, it's just that we haven't had the orders. Some of the work has gone overseas, some just hasn't materialized, and some of the customers have gone under.

115 posted on 01/01/2004 3:42:38 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic
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To: Willie Green
This is not true for the products that are currently being shed from American manufacturing, many of which are also in the high-tech manufacturing sector.

MOST of which are also in the high-tech manufacturing sector. Add me to your ping list, but beware -- I'm becoming suicidal!

116 posted on 01/01/2004 3:53:59 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic
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To: Willie Green
Large corporations started breaking the "social contracts" with their white-collar workers in the 70's and 80's with mass layoffs at drop of the profit hat. The federal gubmint then got on board with "free trade" and "open borders" in the 80's and 90's.

My lesson - never work directly for a large corp. I think America's future will be in small bidness startups (less than 250 people, probably less than 25). Post-corporate America, Post-free-trade America.

117 posted on 01/01/2004 3:58:23 PM PST by searchandrecovery (America - Welcome to Sodom & Gomorrah West)
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To: RLK
114-"Opening markets to people who aren't paid enough money to buy goods in quantity won't accomplish anything. Neither can we sell the same class of goods to people that they are already selling to us for 1/4 price."

Sorry, I disagree. I spent enough time in 3rd world countries to know that there are lots of people with lots of money in these countries, while the vast majority are poor, there are still many rich. And what we could export to them is so vastly over taxed, that only the super rich can afford them.

For example, Egypt has/had (I was there from 93-95) about a 600% tax on imported vehicles. So a Jeep Cheroke, which cost about $12,000 at the time in this country, cost around $112,000 in Egypt. The taxes are not based on vehicle cost. But other things, so a Mercedes (which cost about $25,000 at the time) also cost about $112,000. So, they bought Mercedes. There are lots of Mercedes in Cairo, in fact one of the heaviest concentrations in the world. And the average income is about $100/mo.

They did however, have Ford garbage trucks in Cairo, which they bought with US Aid money.
118 posted on 01/01/2004 4:00:47 PM PST by XBob
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To: iconoclast
Call it fascism and make it accurate.

Fascism it truly is.


119 posted on 01/01/2004 4:01:27 PM PST by rdb3 (The only problem I have with conservatism is conservatives.)
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To: Willie Green
If anything, it is the federal regulatory bureacracy that places competitive utilization of our own domestic resources at an economic disadvantage when compared to nations with lax restrictions.

BINGO! An article appeared in our local press this week showing more outbound containers than I have ever seen in one place at a port in China (and I've lived in several major port cities). They profiled the work life of a young Chinese worker -- 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, 27 cents and hour. And no governmental restrictuions.

They also profiled a major manufacturing plant near here (Motorola) less than 9 years old, state of the art, totally shut down -- all work has gone to China, leaving more than 1000 local technical workers unemployed. The executives of Motorola can produce the goods cheaper and ship it in. But pretty soon there will be no one here able to buy the goods here.

In the mean time, the technology has been stolen, but for a brief time we'll have access to cheap cell phones with all the newest bells and whistles. They even make them so cheap now that people throw them away -- that's how we have trouble tracking terrorists.

120 posted on 01/01/2004 4:04:07 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic (Now I'm REALLY getting depressed!)
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