You're weaseling on the word 'prohibitive' again. Whatever legislative handle you want to hide behind doesn't change your goal, to use the power of the government to manage who Americans can trade with.
Your worrying about the ephemeral "wealth" or "consumer choices" of the U.S. as measured by paper estimates, but not real production, will be shown to be the phantasm it is when the dollar prop is kicked out that is holding it up. When the Pacific Rim states stop buying U.S. treasuries and sell off, and buy things that are tangible...like Unocal.
Why shouldn't the Chinese and other Asian countries that willingly picked up the U.S. government's debt trade it for something tangible? They sent us tangible goods for paper, now they want something tangible for the paper. This should come as no suprise. The threat to the value of the dollar stems from the orgy of spending (and the credit creation it underpins) from Washington, D.C. The Chinese can't be blamed for the failure of the GOP to control spending, and the failure of the American public to hold their overspending politicians accountable.
And American Consumers will not be buying many foreign goods then. Because they will be too poor, only being able to buy things with collapsed U.S. dollars. Where, or where is your concern for these future American consumers? [sound of crickets chirping from Free Trader's side]
I've already expressed concern about how the U.S. government is devaluing the dollar and creating claims on future tax resources with it's reckless spending, but these are matters wholly independent of China. China didn't force the U.S. taxpayer into the SSI ponzi scheme, China didn't force us to pass Medicare, prescription drug giveaways, or any of the other billions of dollars in largesse. The devaluation of the dollar can't be pinned on the Chinese, or anywhere except Washington, D.C.
Its wages, however, were generally established while it was still free as a British colonial province. Freedom was why its wages got to where they were
How did Hong Kong manage to increase wages and wealth without adopting the kind of tariffs you propose for the U.S.?
Rather difficult to do, since you started out shrieking about devastation to our poor, poor, poor, poor consumers... well, gee, how did they suddenly get so poor, Mr. Free Trader?
Because the government taxes everthing they do. They work until around May just to pay the taxes, and then the government borrows beyond that to place them further in the hole. Couple that with K Street seeking to place roadblocks on their ability to trade to their advantage, and a Federal Reserve that has created an environment of negative real interest rates to encourage further indebtedness (used to prop up a consumption level that wages don't support). None of this can be blamed on China.
How other people are restricted in their ability to trade is beyond the purview of our government.
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
So the U.S. Congress can set China's tariff rates? Why don't they just eliminate them then, instead of asking China's government to do it? Methinks you missed the point.
Tariffs, imposts and duties are how "our government" was supposed to be funded.
Yep, and the government is only supposed to do what is detailed in Article I, Section 8. But dispensing over 1 trillion in largesse means taking ever larger sums from more and more sources.
You likely have never studied Alexander Hamilton, the Founder, who was the architect of American commerce and manufactures.
I have, and I have little use for that mercantilist. Maybe if he had a clue what kind of Leviathan the Federal government would become he'd have not been so eager to see it created. The concerns he dismissed with respect to usurpation have long come to pass. Even the effort to allay those concerns, the 10th amendment, is a dead letter.
The whole context of George Washington's Farewell Address (which you failed to even attribute to him)
Pardon me for assuming Freepers would be familiar with it absent a cite.
he was really worried about...and that was FOREIGN INFLUENCE, BUDDY.
Liberty was what concerned him. Foreign influence was an aspect of the threat to liberty. For example, people insisting that the U.S. must adopt Israel's interests and enemies as her own.
Shown in context:
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils? Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.
False. I believe that when a foreign nation uses prohibitive manipulations against our nation's manufactures, it is appropriate for us to fight fire with fire. I still believe in trade and commerce. I would be prohibiting (i.e., countering) their advantage obtained from their manipulations.
Your entire extended attempt to try and rescue your debunked misuse of George Washington fails... And you know why? George Washington believed strongly in protective tariffs too. You take his statements out of that context, they are practically meaningless and you derive a false understanding. Alexander Hamilton and George Washington saw eye to eye on these things. And you show your true colors against both Hamilton, and George Washington who you misuse...
P.S. You clearly haven't studied Alexander Hamilton, or your disdain would have long ago vanished. He was a true Revolutionary War hero. A dedicated slavery abolitionist. An economic visionary. Assuming you are an American.
And the guilt trip about usurpation you try to lay on him is really not one that would have been anticipated in 1796. The Communist Party and its covert tentacles dedicated to the very usurpations you allude to (from the Bill of Rights, etc) was not yet in being...or even conceivable then. In his day, precedent had a real palpable weight in the court rooms he argued in. Today, as the shyters in black robes demonstrate, it is a non-factor...to be given lip-service only for the theatrical benefit of for the unwashed masses.
Fine. So why have they been buying our Treasuries up to this point, despite their low interest? Why didn't they instead buy American cars, planes, trains, heavy machinery, electronics, consumer goods etc.? Because, as we all know, they have not been engaged in commerce in good faith, rather that runs precisely counter to their plainly visible objective: The absolute destruction the U.S., its economy and military supremacy, and their usurpation of our previous position. They transparently yearn for Chinese Hegemony. And they will perpetrate any evil, any crime, and as Ronald Reagan said, "reserving to themselves the right to lie, to cheat, and to steal" to get there.
The PRC doesn't want to do ANYTHING to prop up American industry. They wish to steal those very surviving industries for themselves. Hence they are very careful to only buy American manufactured goods and machine tools that are at distressed prices...such as auctions of defunct manufacturing plants, Chapter 11 sell-offs, or Chap. 7 liquidations. Relocating them to Tianjin, etc. If they have to buy state of the art, and pay top dollar, they prioritize buying from outside the U.S., and from U.S. competitors. All to weaken the U.S. The main enemy.
Your points on the Congress and President's deficit spending have some merit, as the Chinese didn't "make" them do it. But they did rather deliberately, and knowingly, enable the consumption binge. By buying those Treasuries, it financed the deficits with the debt purchases, and like a credit-card junky we kept on increasing the spending rather than pulling back. The Chinese Government was cannily acting like a drug pusher. And the Chinese fellow-travellers, the Democrats, gleefully pushed the spending-aholicism along, cheerily egging on the smugly-overconfident GOP which engaged in a "bidding war" for the Demoncrats voter base.
It was a cynical, misguided and ultimately futile exercise...as the narrowness of victory proved. Why Karl Rove is not currently swinging from the highest rafters is beyond me.
The Treasury purchases also served their purpose by aiding and abetting their conspiracy to keep their wages excessively deflated versus the U.S. and their competitors. To become....and stay...an economic "industrial capital black hole" sucking in everything into the maw of its "low cost" vortex. The treasury purchases have often been timed to and sized to optimize their currency manipulation to keep the rmimbi-dollar ratio "pegged."
The PRC has always been prepared to take a "hit" on these securities, as they knew that the dollar was weakening...and their T-Bill purchases were artificially sustaining it... They always hoped to time it of course. So that the "rug-pulling" operation of selling off U.S. Treasuries would have the effect of reversing roles. It was a cynical, calculated ploy on their part. Well worth the loss of the "investment" if it had the intended effect of bankrupting the U.S. and smashing its military finance capability.
GWB is only now finally making noises about tariffing China in retaliation for its WTO-illegal currency peg (only a part of the overall Chinese wage-suppression plan). Hence, China may be hurrying up its timetable. Having to do the rug-pulling now or the very near future may be premature from the standpoint of their ulterior plans.
Or maybe not. We'll see.
I've already expressed concern about how the U.S. government is devaluing the dollar and creating claims on future tax resources with it's reckless spending...
To your credit, you, unlike a number of pseudo free trade spin-meisters here at Free Republic, admit to concern about the devaluation of the dollar. And also the disadvantageous taxes and regulatory over-burdens on our manufacturers.
If all that is so, how do you feel about the following proposal to cure the problem:
(1) Eliminate all forms of the U.S. Income Tax. Corporate, Personal, and Capital Gain. All of it. Rescind 16th Amendment if needed to effectuate this. (i.e., making sure the States also have to eliminate it).
(2) Replace the funds lost with exclusively consumption taxes so as to promote production and savings again:
Via
-- (a)a National Sales Tax...constitutionally limited to 15%. And
-- (b) a 25% foreign "revenue" tariff. (Revenue tariffs are permitted by WTO regime).
(3) Pass a Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment with teeth. Spelling out that shortfalls automatically come out (through disallotment) of Domestic Spending Giveaways, not Defense.
The "enemy within" of a runaway government you fear would be constitutionally curtailed.
And the "enemy without" would similarly see its plans foiled. By the Power of the People being asserted at the last instant to save the Republic.