Posted on 07/11/2005 7:27:02 AM PDT by jpsb
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's trade surplus for June swelled five-fold from a year earlier as exports grew much faster than imports, offering more ammunition for foreign critics who argue that Beijing should let the yuan rise in value.
The June surplus grew to $9.68 billion, exceeding forecasts of $8.0 billion and towering above the $1.8 billion surplus recorded for June 2004.
The hydrogen bombs they have directed our way carry the legends: "Thanks to W-M, KMart, Target et al and US shoppers!" "Your shopping days are now over!" "Thanks again to the Clintons for the high tech secrets you gave us that made us possible!" "Goodbye round-eyed devils!"
Without the aid of the Yanks, and our decisive action on the side of the Brits, the results would have been much different, the same with WW II. We saved Britain and France twice from the Germans. Without our factories and ability to build war machines while fighting, the world would look much different.
And yet oddly enough, foreign trade has resulted in a number of success stories that you'd never see in the manufacturing sector. The disastrous situation on the railroads in the western U.S. last year was a good case in point, where freight operations on the Union Pacific / Southern Pacific railroad came to a near-standstill because the company didn't have enough workers to keep up with the level of freight traffic coming out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The trucking industry has been facing a shortage of qualified drivers for several years now, and the situation is expected to get worse in the future.
To top it all off, longshoremen are now among the highest-paid blue-collar workers in the U.S., with an average annual salary of somewhere between $75,000 and $85,000 per year.
And yes, the shiite is nearing the fan.
Jimmy Carter had the same feelings. So he proposed restricting trade with countries who don't govern themselves the way we do.
Which is, of course, always a personal option.
Quote: To top it all off, longshoremen are now among the highest-paid blue-collar workers in the U.S., with an average annual salary of somewhere between $75,000 and $85,000 per year
Would it not be better those same longshorman were loading ships instead of unloading them and the Union pacific trains were unloading at the pacific docks?
How is that going to happen? These ports didn't generate anything close to that level of activity even when the United States was the dominant manufacturing center in the world.
If the people in the other countries don't have any wealth, how will they buy our products? And even if they didn't sell us anything, how would be be able to produce goods for them cheaper than they can produce them for themselves?
I also like to cut to the chase. Listen to yourself. You sound JUST like a communist. How could this be?
Who are you calling "fascists"? And isn't it interesting how a communist slave operation is allowed to damage the U.S. productive economy, and your ONLY response is blindered one-sided shrillness against American economic well being (i.e. standard of living)...deriding the governmental protections afforded American workers ("Socialism") and even the return on investment of American capital and intellectual creativity ("entitled to make more money"). And you cavalierly ignore WHO and WHAT we are "competing" with. Meanwhile, contradictorily, professing concern for individual "liberty". Reallllllyyyy? Any more of your medicine falsely called liberty and we will all wind up slaving away in Chinese Laogai.
And let's diagram the forces extent who are making these silly China-Apologetics and appeasement: On the one hand we have some self-styled "optimists" claiming that "all is well" American wealth is UP! Then there is YOUR little jewel wherein your diatribe, actually displays undeniably... schadenfreud at America's demise...
You tipped your hand, Protagoras. You have outted yourself. Manifesting resentment and judgmentalism consistent with the blame-America-first crowd.
The ones who are at the top of the distribution food chain won't be impacted by your policies, they profit either way, albeit less so with U.S. labor,....but EVERYONE else in America will be when the U.S. industries all wind up in China. This should concern a real American. But let me surmise from your diatribe... you don't care.
And for the record, even if we were to do as you say...and eliminate ALL of America's governments, the vestibule of the "socialism", Federal and State, which collectively take 43% of America's GDP (indeed an excessive burden): An American employer and employee still could not begin to "compete" with what we are up against.
America's employees could not take a low enough pay to satisfy the requirements of the "market" as the Chinese will keep moving the goal posts. Until they are ready to send the balloon up. And the capital-servicing requirements for loans requires not an income deflation as you seem to thirst after, but continuity and reliability. Monthly mortgages require at the very least that much stable income to keep them serviced. And when they default, they lose their houses.
So much for your concern for the consooooooooooommmmerrr.
I think a country that proclaims its goal to be 'promoting democracy' should have this sort of thread in woven into its trade policy. We would not have the argument that 'American workers can't compete against China (in term of labor costs)' if this were the case.
I don't think it's right to expect American workers or businesses to compete against what amounts to slave labor.
And yes, individuals can reflect such a belief in their own purchasing decisions. But foreign policy and trade policy can do a little something to help ensure that individuals have access to affordable alternatives to slave-labor produced goods. If we allow our markets to be flooded with slave-manufactured goods, local alternatives vanish.
I admit it's a fine line between protecting US industry and protecting the apathy of some industries/workers, but the matter of promoting civil rights abroad ought to be one clear test. Otherwise we should get out of the democracy business and pry it off as the hood ornament of US foreign policy.
I don't get how the Chinese currency could be undervalued versus America yet overvalued against other currencies.
You could benefit from a course in fundamental economics.
Communism is a system which asserts that property is commonly owned and government controlled.
Fascism is a system which asserts that property is privately owned but government controlled.
Which attributes are most common in the current US?
Was that intentionally ironic?
Jimmy Carter agrees with you.
I know of no such proclamation. Please point it out in the founding documents. Thank you
Have no fear. It will Soon to be rectified by China bringing things in to Mexico, and trucking them up and into the U.S. via its own labor. You did see where they are sending over their oil drilling teams to Colorado, didn't you? They got their labor in on the grounds that there was a shortage of U.S. well-drilling labor...because a million of 'em were laid off...
It was never there except in the minds of certain politicians and other misinformed and misguided people.
Obviously, if we listen to you, it will all soon be owned by China, which is indubtiably communist.
So does GWB - or have you forgotten why we're in Iraq (but oddly enough, not Sudan).
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