CAFTA: Last Nail in the Coffin?

The American Conservative ^ | May 9, 2005 Issue | Patrick J. Buchanan

[A. Pole]

With U.S. prisons filling up with aliens, 10 million illegals here and counting, Californians fleeing east, savage Salvadorian gangs battling with machetes inside the Beltway, and Minutemen headed for the Arizona border, Rip Van Republican has awakened to the threat of open borders. Meanwhile, the White House dozes on.

But just as the chickens are coming home to roost on the Bush failure to defend America’s frontier, so they will soon be coming home on Bush’s embrace of free-trade fanaticism.

As I write, the Department of Commerce has just released the trade deficit numbers for February. Again, the monthly trade deficit set a record, $61 billion. In January-February 2005, the annual U.S. trade deficit was running $100 billion above the all-time record of $617 billion in 2004.

In the mail this week came the annual graphs and tables from Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, who has patiently chronicled the decline and fall of the once-awesome U.S. industrial machine. Since 1992, when some of us urged the president’s father not to grant MFN to China, the returns are these:

• Between 1993 and 2004, the U.S. trade deficit with Beijing grew 700 percent to $162 billion.
• In the last decade, China’s total trade surplus at U.S. expense was $805 billion.
• China’s leading exports to us, which account for almost half her $162 billion trade surplus, came from shipments of computers, electrical machinery, and parts.
• Leading U.S. exports to China (Boeing alone excepted) were, in ascending order: meat, meat offal, fibers, ore, slag, ash, organic chemicals, fertilizers, copper, cereals, raw hides, skins, pulp of wood, cotton, and the big seller—oil seeds and oleaginous fruits (soybeans). All very, very high-tech stuff.

China’s surplus, the largest one nation has ever run against another, provides her with the hoard of cash to buy Russian and Western weaponry to menace Taiwan and the 7th Fleet and pile up the T-bills that give Beijing the leverage it enjoys today over the sinking U.S. dollar and shaky U.S. prosperity.

In the 1993 battle of NAFTA, the Clinton-Gore-Dole-Gingrich globalists predicted our trade surplus with Mexico would grow, Mexico would prosper, and illegal immigration would be easier to control. Either they deceived us, or they deceived themselves. For since NAFTA passed:

• The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico has vanished and the annual trade deficit is now running above $50 billion a year.
• The cumulative trade deficit with Mexico is now over $300 billion.
• 1.5 million illegal aliens are caught each year crossing our border and 500,000 make it in to take up residence and enjoy all the social programs a generous but over-taxed America can provide.

With Chrysler now a German company, GM and Ford down to less than half the U.S. auto market, and GM paper looking like Argentine bonds, Americans now import $188 billion worth of autos, trucks, and parts, three times what we export. Motown is no more king of the road.

With three million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush, the U.S. dollar looking like Monopoly money, trade deficits exploding, and our dependence on foreigners for oil, the critical components of our weapons, and the cash to finance our insatiable appetite for consumer goods all growing, one would think even Bush Republicans might pause before taking another great leap forward into a future of global free trade. One would be wrong.

For CAFTA, son of NAFTA, is at hand: the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The White House will bring it up, but only if enough Republicans can be bamboozled into going along. In return for access to our market, we get access to five Central American markets and the Dominican Republic—with a total economy the size of New Haven’s—47 million consumers, half of whom are living in poverty by their standards.

The highest per capita income in Central America is $9,000 a year in Costa Rica, which is less than the U.S. minimum wage. But CAFTA will enable agribusiness and transnational companies to set up shop in Central America to dump into the U.S. and drive our last family farmers out of business and kill our last manufacturing jobs in textile and apparel.

If there are any Reagan Democrats left still loyal to the GOP, CAFTA may see them off. For if the GOP passes CAFTA over Democratic opposition, Hillary’s party may just be able to take back North Carolina, Ohio, and a couple of bright red farm states as well.

[iconoclast]

The higher they rise the harder their fall.

You don't actually expect to bump into one of the top 1% on here, do you? ;o)

[Sam the Sham]

And obviously both analyses are absolutely right.

The obvious truth is the obvious truth no matter who says it. I suppose you will start yelling "commie" because your compatriot screwed up and let slip the mask of Social Darwinist contempt for anyone who isn't brilliant or rich that underlies the free trade position.

Have at it. But it won't work for you any better than it worked for Hoover and the Liberty League. Smug elitism does not go over well with the American people.

[Toddsterpatriot]

iconclast 2. One who exposes or destroys impositions or shams

So, you gonna take out ol' Sam?

[1rudeboy]

And obviously both analyses are absolutely right.

Marxist.

[Sam the Sham]

So when you gonna start talking about my momma ?

[Toddsterpatriot]

So when you gonna start talking about my momma ?

Is she a Marxist too?

[1rudeboy]

Don't have to . . . unless you expect her to explain how her son can agree with Marx while disagreeing with Marx. Unenviable task, but a mother's love has no bounds.

[iconoclast]

the AMA controls entry into the medical marketplace and will not allow foreign doctors to drive down the fees of American doctors.

What medical buildings do YOU go to? ;o)

[Nowhere Man]

The free trade mantra in a nutshell. Rich is good. Rich is superior. Sure, half or more of the American workforce will see free trade reduce them to a third world level. But they were only losers who didn't provide valuable enough goods or services. They were weak, inferior, and we cannot tolerate the weak and inferior. The strong (or at least the well connected) must triumph. People who aren't brilliant are expendable casualties to the purity of free trade. The weak must be expended so that the strong may survive.

But of course 1rudeboy assured me that my sense of a pervasive elitist contempt for the lower orders among free traders was pure BS so I guess he must be right.

It's the old line from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." Basically if you are not a "mover and shaker," you are either scum, stupid, lazy or just a resource to be exploited. The laissez-faire capitalist is just as bad as the socialist/communist, they tend to see people as resources and out for power. We're trading one group of thugs for another.

I try not to get too personal but all I can say is that I pray that God and Jesus opens their hearts, other than that, I just keep on truckin' and trying to bring to attention these issues we face. Speaking of religion, I do have a link to a piece done by Pope Leo XIII about the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor. Although it was written in the 1890's, it is very relevant to today.

RERUM NOVARUM - ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON CAPITAL AND LABOR

[Sam the Sham]

Frankly, I expect nothing more than namecalling from free traitor shills. Your position is politically going down in flames. CAFTA is deadmeat. The American people can see with their own eyes that cheap imports are not worth losing good jobs here over. If the GOP nominates someone who wishes to continue the open borders, free trade policy, expect New Deal II in 2008.

The public sees clearly the Social Darwinist ugliness behind the free trade position. The elitist arrogance and contempt for working people. And in America, the side that is tagged as 'elitist' loses. In 2004 it was "homo-loving, latte liberals". If Hillary is as smart as I think she is, in 2008 it will be "open borders, cheap labor globalists" unless the GOP is smart enough to dump people like you.

[Nowhere Man]

It won't sell with free traders who think of themselves as Ayn Rand's beautiful, brilliant heroes towering above the "looters" who would dare set limits on their actions. Real people in the real people see themselves as regular Joes just trying to survive and if possible get ahead. And that's not possible if they are being underbid by the entire goddam third world.

After I read "Atlas Shrugged," I had a thought where the world would have been better off if the Rand forces and the Socialist forces blew each other up into quarks thus letting the average Joes that are left to pick up the pieces and rebuild.

[Nowhere Man]

It won't sell with free traders who think of themselves as Ayn Rand's beautiful, brilliant heroes towering above the "looters" who would dare set limits on their actions. Real people in the real people see themselves as regular Joes just trying to survive and if possible get ahead. And that's not possible if they are being underbid by the entire goddam third world.

After I read "Atlas Shrugged," I had a thought where the world would have been better off if the Rand forces and the Socialist forces blew each other up into quarks thus letting the average Joes that are left to pick up the pieces and rebuild.

[1rudeboy]

"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"

[Toddsterpatriot]

The laissez-faire capitalist is just as bad as the socialist/communist, they tend to see people as resources and out for power.

Yeah, laissez-faire capitalists who want more freedom and less government regulations are very similar to socialist/communists who want ever more government control over the people and the economy.

Is this Larry David???

[iconoclast]

But it will still be in his advantage to sell shoes and hire jose.

I don't expect that old chestnut to be around much longer now that Wong Chong and Ali Haripal have gotten into the fray.

[1rudeboy]

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector grew in April for the 23rd consecutive month, while the overall economy grew for the 42nd consecutive month, say the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®.

ISM's New Export Orders Index for April registered 57.2 percent, an increase of 1.8 percentage points when compared to March's index of 55.4 percent. This is the 40th consecutive month of growth in export orders. The 11 industries reporting growth in new export orders in April are: Tobacco; Food; Chemicals; Instruments & Photographic Equipment; Printing & Publishing; Industrial & Commercial Equipment & Computers; Transportation & Equipment; Paper; Rubber & Plastic Products; Fabricated Metals; and Electronic Components & Equipment.
Source

If a rising trade deficit is responsible for "shipping jobs overseas", how do the critics of trade explain the fact that unemployment rises when the trade deficit shrinks and falls when it expands? The year 2004 fits the pattern comfortably. America's current account deficit expanded by about 0.6 per cent of GDP last year, while economic performance was also moderate to robust. Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 4 per cent and manufacturing output by 5 per cent, while the unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage points. In 2004, as in previous years, a rising current account deficit may have been bad news to headline writers, but it accompanied good news for the US economy, its factories and workers.
Source

[Sam the Sham]

Laissez faire capitalism of the free traitor variety and twentieth century totalitarianism both spring from the same poisoned root. Social Darwinism. The complete rejection of God and compassion and justice and the exaltation of force and power as the highest goods.

In both Ayn Rand and Stalinism we see the distortion of human society and human relationships in pursuit of a denial of humanity. Both ideologies hold feelings and emotions in contempt. Both reject the existence of any sphere of life that is not dominated by a mechanistic, materialistic "reason". Neither Ayn Rand nor any of her characters nor Lenin were parents because to bring a child into the world is to let loose all kinds of primal feelings and emotions that "rational" people should be above. Both the free traitor and the Leninist are completely willing to expend huge numbers of people whom they see as lower than themselves to their "rational" textbook vision of the perfect world.

[staytrue]

namecalling from free traitor shills

You accuse others of namecalling and then you use the words traitor shills. You don't see a problem here ?

[iconoclast]

Rudy, when the great unwashed are reduced to penury, do you really expect to have smaller government, or do you have a solution you haven't revealed to us yet?

[Nowhere Man]

Is this Larry David???

(South Park Stare, shrugs shoulders)

Who's Larry David? I wouldn't know him from Adam's Housecat.