Replies

"Looks like they want to keep Free Trade Street one way."

India and China are dominated by American or European FMCG groups like Colgate-Palmolive, Gilette, Proctor and Gamble, Nestle, Unilever etc. It's not one way. FAce facts these countries are opening up and since 2 billion people are being freed from the socialist 'heaven' there will be greater supply of technically sound people. Supply and demand. The thigns that can make us even more competitive than we are (and we're 25% of the world GDP and have a near 5% growth -- phenomenal, we add the euqivalent of Australia to our GDP yearly) is by reducing the size of government, not increasing it with tariffs, taxes, regulations, rules, lawyers, politicians etc. etc.

Agreed that US regs/taxes are a part of the problem.

Are you REALLY trying to tell us that Chinese laborers, working for $0.35/hour, are going to buy millions of SUV's in 2004? 2005? Or Palmer-Johnson yachts?

PRC/American companies manufacture, in China, cars, furniture, consumer electronics, tools, plumbing items, and most other household products you and I buy regularly.

Why the hell would Chinese people buy US product? And HOW would they buy it?

You've had a little too much GWB/Minkew/Libertarian KoolAid.

"The things that can make us even more competitive than we are ........ is by reducing the size of government, not increasing it with tariffs, taxes, regulations, rules, lawyers, politicians etc. etc."

I certainly agree with you there. In addition, we have a tax system that puts US producers at a disadvantage vs their international counterparts in most of the world's markets - including our own. A friend sent the following letter to the WSJ

Dear WSJ,

Discussing "comparative advantage" is useful, but where is the discussion of "comparative TAX advantage", which is a reasonable name for what the 120 Value Added Tax (VAT)countries have over the USA.

That differential is 15 to 25% in the European Union. In short, they add their VAT to our products when our products arrive on their shores, despite all the embedded taxes in US products (20-35% according to Dr. Dale Jorgenson of Harvard). Thus, we aren't competitive in Europe, or other VAT country. (TAX advantage)!

When they ship their products to the USA, they strip out those VAT taxes and, essentially, sell their stuff tax free in competition with our products, on our own shores, which are loaded with payroll, profits, and other taxes. (Thus, TAX advantage!)

I await your discussion.

(name withheld)

He didn't even mention the hundreds of billions of dollars which are wasted on compliance costs annually. Free trade when we have a tax system like ours is tantamount to economic suicide.

>FAce facts these countries are opening up and since 2 billion people are being freed from the socialist 'heaven' there will be greater supply of technically sound people.

What you mention is the natural result of economic liberty. The result up to this point has been a kind of world technical wage. Programmers in Europe and the US tend to live similar lifestyles even if the wages themselves may vary due to local conditions.

But what the US corporations are availing themselves of is something which is the opposite of real free trade and actual capitalism. They are making use of an India government designed surplus of programmers. They are arbing the difference between US and Indian wages and standards of living. The fact this can be done is enabled by a whole series by govt import/export supports, host country labor policies, investment subsidies, tax laws. This is what the Carly Fiorina oddly calls free trade.

Normally business flows would push the Indian technical wage nearer to world levels but this is not happening. US companies create something called captive facilities in which the local offshore employees are kept carefully isolated from world price levels.

If true free market were in operation here, you'd have alot fewer India Java programmers and alot more Indian carpenters and builders.

FAce facts these countries are opening up and since 2 billion people are being freed from the socialist 'heaven' there will be greater supply of technically sound people

Face facts yourself. India has teh world's second highest tariffs on American goods per teh WTO China imposes a 50% tariff on normal goods with another 14% VAT on top of that. this in a nation where the average annual income in the countryside is $1,000/yr in Beijing it is admittedly $2,00/yr. Gee that allows a whole lot of disposable income to buy American produced goods and services. Right.

Oh yes and we have nopt gone into the currency controls and the non-tariff restriction and the technology ownership issues either. The American people are being sacrificed on an altar of lies that we have anything resembling Free Trade.

Now tell me how much liberty the average Chinese enjoys these days. Why just a few years back that had teh bifg demonstrations in Tianamen Square where they errected a stute of liberty and those ended peacefully right. Wrong, [insulting name omitted due to Free Republic rules]. Maybe, just maybe, if you actually looked at the issue you wuld not be spouting the previous drivel. It is an insult to your reader's intellect. It is one way. china is importing capital equipment and exporting consumer garbage with rules that give them ownership of the technology in the future.