Posted on 12/18/2007 1:37:29 AM PST by WildcatClan
NASHUA – Speaking to about 40 BAE Systems workers in what he called a "town hall meeting," Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter again blasted an opponent because his former company is doing business with a Chinese defense contractor.
Hunter, a U.S. congressman from California, called on Bain Capital, a company founded by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, another GOP presidential contender, to drop its strategic partnership with Chinese defense contractor Huawei Technologies in a bid to buy U.S. defense contractor 3Com.
Hunter will also ask Romney to use his influence with Bain to end the proposed merger between Huawei and 3Com.
The congressman called the merger "unpatriotic" and a threat to national security.
During his address, which concluded with questions from BAE workers on their lunch breaks, Hunter touched on conservative themes that have become linchpins of his campaign.
"Immigration is the hottest issue in show business right now," Hunter said.
"Everybody in the world who has a TV set right now knows how to get into the U.S. illegally," Hunter said.
In response to questions, Hunter said he opposes creating a North American union for trade, similar to the European union.
"I have an idea for a North American union – if Canada and Mexico had supported us when we went to Iraq. They turned their back on us," Hunter said.
He also said he favored having corporations and businesses paying "next to nothing" in taxes to encourage companies to grow here and not move operation overseas.
(Excerpt) Read more at nashuatelegraph.com ...
He is asking him to use his leverage....they are his picked successors to kill this abomination. Grow a pair, will ya Mitt.
Generally things were always getting better. Today the cost of education, fuel, housing, continues to spiral upwards. The number of jobs available to new graduates has diminished. Its harder for younger people to reach the same degree of relative affluence that their parents had achieved.
I base this upon my personal observations.
I was born in the mid 1940’s and remember things always appearing to get better technologically and socially. More and better jobs for Americans with ever higher pay and benefits. Better products.
Now I see fewer high paying jobs except for certain key career ladders, I see cheap junk sold in stores by ignorant, uninformed salespeople to customers who don’t seem to appreciate quality or realize that the garbage they are buying was once made here as a quality product at reasonable prices.
We manufacture more than ever.
the loss of American jobs overseas
We have record employment.
and to illegal invadres at home is threatening the standard of living for the masses of average middle income Americans here.
We need a wall, a big one.
I think the loss of American trade dollars to Red China
Loss of trade dollars? You mean when an American spends his money and gets a Chinese product? Maybe loss isn't the right word?
“And meanwhile, the forces of falsehood...the phoney free traders...have set it up so that the Chicoms exports have almost NO duties or tariffs...or customs inspections let alone safety inspections... to ship into the U.S.A.”
I was reading an article about Chinese tariffs on American imported cars being around 20% and the import duty on the car the Chinese want to import to the U.S. was 3%. How is that fair? Why do we have to support the Chinese like this?
That's funny. Who told you that?
Foreign third world nations don’t care about their citizens’ welfare, their environment or the quality of the product produced, especially when their is very little competition in the homelands of the countries they are exporting to.
Your concern for foreigners is touching. Maybe you should pay extra for their goods, so they can afford to clean up their environment and give their citizens more rights?
There is no way an American worker can successfully compete with an underpaid peon with no benefits,
Exactly! Which is why our $14 trillion economy can't compete with Burkina Faso, their $19 billion economy and their underpaid peons.
If the Middle Class in America goes
More of the Middle Class is making more money than ever.
While it seems like a fine distinction to be drawing, there is so much confusion (sometimes deliberate) between the two that it is almost impossible to have a rational discussion concerning trade with someone who inadvertently equates the two.
So, for example (and not speaking of you specifically), it's possible to come across someone who seeks to impose the Hunter standard (I'll tariff your product x at the same rate you tariff my product x) where it is already being applied--in a case like the Agreement Bush just signed with Peru--resulting in the rather strange outcome of someone opposing a Free Trade Agreement because it does what he wishes.
We manufacture far fewer products than we did 10 years ago.
So that is why GDP per capita continues to rise? That a lower-middle class individual can acquire things that used to be completely unattainable.
I base this upon my personal observations.
Too bad your personal observations do not reflect the nation as a whole.
“We manufacture more than ever.”
But are our manufacturers RELATIVELY more than ever before, i.e. untis per capita? And what do we manufacture more of?
“We have record employment.”
But how do those salaries compare in average real earnings with, say, the 1960’s or 70’s?
“We need a wall, a big one.”
We both agree there.
“Loss of trade dollars? You mean when an American spends his money and gets a Chinese product? Maybe loss isn’t the right word?”
If an American is paying money for a product made in a Country which is hostile to us, and that same product can be better produced here, isn’t that a loss of money to a hostile power?
These aren’t rhetorical questions and I’m an economist. I;m just telling you what I have herad, and read and how things appear to my eyes.
I’m always open to facts.
Hunter has identified 4 things regarding trade with China that need correcting.
1) their currency devaluation.
2) OUR tax laws that push manufacturing offshore
3) The use of their VAT tax system to tax (tariff) our products while rebating those taxes to their exporters
4) their unimpeded theft of intellectual property, ranging from sopftware pirating, patent infringement, and espionage.
We need to treat China as the deadly enemy that they are, and not bow down to the “need” for their slave labor. If we want labor, lets move those manufacturing plants to the PI or Tawain or Africa, where they are not are avowed enemies, pointing nukes at us.
So, for example (and not speaking of you specifically), “it’s possible to come across someone who seeks to impose the Hunter standard (I’ll tariff your product x at the same rate you tariff my product x) where it is already being applied—in a case like the Agreement Bush just signed with Peru—resulting in the rather strange outcome of someone opposing a Free Trade Agreement because it does what he wishes.”
If THAT is what the trade agreement with Peru does, fine, that’s a good thing.
I am opposed to trade with a hostile power like Red China under any circumstances.
I really am not an economist, as I said. I wasn’t aware of the distinction between the two situations you described. I thought both issues were covered in one agreement.
How would ending complete trade make us better off? (hint: it won't)
I really am not an economist
You don't say?
The manufacturing sector makes more than ever, with fewer employees and is a smaller portion of GDP than in the past.
And what do we manufacture more of?
Lots of stuff. We even export more manufactured goods than ever.
But how do those salaries compare in average real earnings with, say, the 1960’s or 70’s?
They're higher.
If an American is paying money for a product made in a Country which is hostile to us, and that same product can be better produced here
Better produced here? What do you mean?
isn’t that a loss of money to a hostile power?
If you freely buy a good from a willing seller, you are not "losing" money.
These aren’t rhetorical questions and I’m an economist.
You're an economist? Where?
You are going by sales. Boeing, for example, is having a great run these last few years. Yet they have only a fraction, a small fraction, of the machine shops they used to have. I know, I worked there for a decade and still consult for them. Their employment is far from the record highs it was during the previous boom cycles.
Why you ask? A very high percentage of the MANUFACTURING is done offshore. By Japan, Italy, and others, including red China. The assembly plants and paint shops still hum, but the machine tools have all been sold for pennies on the dollar years ago. Boeing’s electronics manufacturing facilities have almost all been outsourced, some domestic, but alot foreign.
On the books, it looks like Boeing is leading the charge in manufacturing. But it ain’t. They are quickly becoming integrators. That is an absolute fact.
I work in the manufacturing world, and it is not pretty.
Yes, sales continue to rise, even as employment declines. The same thing has happened to farming over the last 200 years. We continue to grow more food on less land with fewer farmers.
No, we continue to outsource production. It is not even remotely the same thing. Yes, Boeing continually finds ways to improve their techniques, but that is not why the employment is less. When entire fuselages are made in Japan, and the landing gear is made in europe, you soon become an assembler.
Yes, the Club for Growth thinks our sovereignty doe snot matter. Idiots.
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