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.

[raybbr]

In providing funding for trade capacity building in the foreign operations appropriations for fiscal years 2003 and 2004.....

It's amazing. Free traders will whine about subsidies but refuse to even recognize subsidies to foreigners.

[Nowhere Man]

We are the only country in the world where law acknowledges the sovereignty of the people. That is the source of the American way of life. I see this happening no where else.

The American way of life is rapidly vanishing, and "free" (global) trade is the harbinger thereof.

Don't kid yourself, nor sell your birthright for a mess of "affordable" electronc pottage.

I have the perfect quote to all of this:

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - Mark 8:36

[hedgetrimmer]

Its not your money, no matter how little you think it is.

[A. Pole]

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.

Actually the worship of riches and contempt for the poor is vulgar and stupid. Nothing "elitist" about it. People who display such attitude betray their bad race and lineage.

[A. Pole]

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.

How many children Ayn Rand raised?

[Nowhere Man]

Precisely. As I have said a million times, the Christian conservative is the child and grandchild of New Deal Democrats and the great grandchild of William Jennings Bryan Populists. As Phyllis Schalfly's column over on Newsmax criticizing the EU and CAFTA show, the Christian conservative IS Joe Sixpack, not John Galt tracing a dollar sign in the sand (a blasphemous evocation of Christ with the condemned adultress). CAFTA and Social Security privatization are in trouble because the Christian Right does not share libertarian goals.

I guess in many ways, I would be one of the Christian Conservatives you illustrated here. Very conservative in a military, social, religious, moral sense but more moderate economically. I know in my family, Dad's side are "Pittsburgh Democrats," heck, some of my ancestors who came over from Russia were active in the labor and union movement to unionize coal mines in West Virginia. I know in 1980, I supported Ronald Reagan due to his stance on the military and social issues, so again, I prove that point. Well, I was 14 in 1980 so I couldn't vote but you get the idea. B-) William Jennings Bryan is another fave of mine.

I know myself, I'm just an average Joe or "Archie Bunker."

[Dog Gone]

I'd bet it's more of my money than it is yours. But it's an average of 15 cents per American anually.

I hope you can afford to spend a penny per month to stabilize Central America. You're whining about a penny.

[Nowhere Man]

How many children Ayn Rand raised?

I don't think she had any, IIRC. Come to think of it, if I could cast a movie about Ayn Rand and I could call upon any actress dead or living to play her, I think Bette Davis (circa 1945/50) would fill the bill, she (Rand) does have the Bette Davis look.

[A. Pole]

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.

Marxism is built upon laissez-faire views. Marx used Smith, Ricardo and others to develop his theory. Have you read Marx?

Or at least read some abbreviated Marxist review on this connection. I will make it easy for you:
Chapter 2 of "Marx’s Capital — Philosophy and Political Economy" by Geoff Pilling

[A. Pole]

Yeah, laissez-faire capitalists who want more freedom

They want more freedom or rather license for themselves while they want enslave the rest by concentrating the property in their hands and reshaping government into a mere protector of their position.

They dehumanise workers by turning the human labor into a commodity while reserving the true human status to those who own the products of human labor. That is why freemarketeers despise poor and worship the rich. They are like the ancient slaveowners who have seen the slaves as "talking tools".

[A. Pole]

You sound like a child who has been reading too much Rand and thinks he's some Roark or Rearden towering above the common scum.

Ayn Rand was a self-centered, infantile egoist. She was not capable to reproduce by natural means.

[A. Pole]

It's like trying to explain sex to a room full of yeast.

What the follower of Ayn Rand can know about the sex?

[A. Pole]

she (Rand) does have the Bette Davis look.

Let me see.

Ayn Rand:

Bette Davis:

Why do they look so sad?

[Axenolith]

I'm sorry that changing economics and progress caused your business to become obsolete. But I don't think a world where we establish artificial government barriers in order to keep the buggy whip industry intact is very smart.

That's disingenuous. His business wasn't made obsolete, it was outsourced and the same items are being made by lower cost labor, in a country, I might add, that probably won't be to inclined to make deliveries should hostilities break out...

[Axenolith]

Or do you flatter yourself with the notion that all Americans are smarter than all Chinese or Indians ?

Not to mention the fact that those two countries are graduating scientists and engineers at a rate approximately an order of magnitude higher than we are...

[Axenolith]

While it's probably unwritten, the way this will unfold is that large corporations and banks will capitalize these projects and then, when X amount of them go under, the Government (US) will foot the bill...

[Axenolith]

BTW, how is the "whole nation richer" when the balance sheet just keeps hemmoraging red ink? Consumer debt is something like near 90% of GDP. "Rich" isn't a Nintendo or Playstation in every home, it's lasting stuff like paid off homes and money in the bank (that doesn't depreciate like water evaporating either).

[hedgetrimmer]

I'd bet it's more of my money than it is yours.

You lose.

[Havoc]

Marx was commenting on projected outcomes. He's saying nothing more than the author of the theory said himself. But, I don't see you equating Iconoclast's quote with the author of the theory - only with Marx. So, are you going to thusly stipulate that the author of your theory was a Marxist?

[Havoc]

I don't care what you equate filth with. I wasn't commenting on filth. You crossed that line into betraying your thought processes on the matter. And they're disgusting to say the least - right up there with fascist Germany of WWII. Your kind is why most people outside the republican party hate the republican party and why I left it.