Lets not obfuscate the debate. Fact. Since the 1980`s the US has gone from a manufacturing oriented nation, to a service oriented nation. I'm more concerned with what happens to workers here in the good old USA, then what happens to workers around the globe. What we have today maybe called free trade, but in many cases, it is far from fair trade.
What's to obfuscate? You think the economy is going down the tubes, and I say it has seldom been as powerful and glowing. Free trade has caused pain, but it has also caused many success stories.
Exxon and Conoco posted record profits. You think the 100s of thousands of people in the oil/gas industry are making minimum wage?
Boeing is experiencing a rennaisance, and has re-staffed to near pre-911 levels, despite Airbus government funded largess.
Paccar, builder of heavy trucks here in the NW has record stock prices, and the big trucks keep rolling off the assembly line.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe has placed orders for so many locomotives and rail cars it'll make your head spin.
The Wine industry on the West coast continues to experience impressive growth, despite all the Australian, european, and S. American competition.
Despite the globalization of SW engineers and programmers, Microsoft is still raking in billions.
Starbucks continues to open stores around the country and globe. Who designs and builds these places? I know, and they are busier than the proverbial one legged man.
Our lone steel plant in Seattle operates 24/7 producing rebar for the construction industry and just spent millions upgrading some of their systems the last few years.
A brand new Chlorine plant is opening in Longview Washington, first in the country in ages. Who designed and built it? Who will run it? Who will program the automation?
It goes on and on.
It isn't free trade, its "free trade", meaning it is brokered by an unconstitutional process which grants unconstitutional authority to the unelected. They in turn, have set up a rigged system that transfers wealth from the American people to the third world so that the transnationalists can 'expand' their markets to every communist, socialist and totalitarian dictatorship on earth.
Let me guess, you don't think we manufacture anything here anymore?