Posted on 12/21/2011 6:27:22 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a "key part of our 'Make It in America' agenda."
During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his Tea Party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, "a foreign worker's best friend."
In a recent news conference, President Obama gave his support to the anti-China campaign, declaring that China "has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage," adding that "we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued ... (and) that, above all, means China."
Republican 2012 presidential candidates have also jumped on the anti-China bandwagon.
Mitt Romney wrote: "If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I will work to fundamentally alter our economic relationship with China. ... I will begin on Day One by designating China as the currency manipulator it is."
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was even more challenging, saying, "I want to go to war with China."
Let's look at the magnitude of our trade with China. An excellent place to start is a recent publication (8/8/2011) by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, titled "The U.S. Content of 'Made in China.'"
One of the several questions they ask is: What is the fraction of U.S. consumer spending for goods made in China? Their data sources are the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Any trip I've made south of the border in the last 10 years.
Prior to that time, Mexicans were known for not being that wealthy along the border, except for some elite families. The general Mexican econmy still thrived on a free enterprise with my outstanding craft and tradesmen within their working class.
One could travel to any marketplace and find any number of commodities bartered, traded, sold, and offered, which had been fabricated by hand to include pottery, leather goods, linen, blankets, furniture, wooden products, silver, brass, etc.
All of those items were manufactured in Mexico.
Today, nearly all of those products are made in China and those barking for sales in the Mexican marketplace procure their stocks from Chinese sources.
The same has generally happened here in the US. Find me an HVAC unit made in America. I'm not speaking about one finally assembled in the US with 2 bolts out of shipping containers from China.
Find me a farmer's market equivalent to those from the last two centuries and have generally disappeared over the last 2 decades in the US.
Find me steel pipe manufactured in the US at competitive pricing. Same for most other steel products.
Our supply chains are not as independently robust from foreign markets as they have been for the last 2 centuries.
So basically, cars, gasoline, visits to the doctor and hospital which are very expensive to do if you fly to china, most of our food and anything that requires you to physically interact with a person is domestic, but nearly everything else comes from overseas. Electricity is mostly produced domestically but even the damn generators are built in china.
The problem is the talking heads at the universities, that have instilled the concept that money today is better than a long term investment. MBAs want their quarterly bonus now, not when they are older and so they don’t consider the long term to be in their self interest. So they screw the country to get their bonus.The first to screw ends up on top.
Tariffs are not a cure all but are a very good and fair start. In the last 30 years lots of industrial jobs have been obliterated by computerization and automation. Today’s steel mill might employ only 25% the workforce one did 30 years ago. I would put tariffs on all Chinese imports. On all steel and textile imports...just for starters
People here like to blame the black underclass. Well blacks had a lot more jobs available 20-30 years ago. Factory jobs in our cities not bs jobs at Burger King. We let those jobs go abroad with retarded free trade policies. So now we have huge urban populations that live on Gov’t handouts that the middle class pays for in taxes.
Also nuke the EPA if you want more production jobs on US soil. And fire gobs of other fatass Gov’t regulators
I didn’t cover the “we need it for defense” line of thought.
So, “Walter Williams is a fraud” and once again the Democrat’s playbook is used to attack the person instead what he said.
So China decimated US steel making? You are joking right? It wasn’t the unions, the EPA, OSHA, tax policies, energy policies, or the NRLB? Our EPA has just finished killing off a big chunk of our coal fired electric generation capacity and is well on its way to killing off coal usage altogether. Do you understand steel making enough to understand what that means? We are about to decimate all of our energy intensive industries and China has nothing to do with it. We cannot even tap our own oil and gas and you think China is causing our problems?
What part of this, from the brillant Walter Williams, do you dispute?:
“For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimated that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy — with its own GDP — it would be tied with Germany as the world’s fourth-richest economy.
“Today’s manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220, three times higher than it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990.
“That means more can be produced with fewer workers, resulting in a precipitous fall in manufacturing jobs, from 19.5 million jobs in 1979 to a little more than 10 million today.
“The bottom line is that we Americans are allowing ourselves to be suckered into believing that China is the source of our unemployment problems when the true culprit is Congress and the White House.”
GloBULList economists WILL NEVER address that issue.
Allow me to fix this for you.
We Americans are being made airtight.
OK I have no idea what that means, but I’ll agree with you anyway just on general principle, because I know we’re more or less saying the same thing.
Booyah!
The reality is that U.S. manufacturing jobs are being totally destroyed by China. In 2000 there were 17 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. .Today there are only as you say around 10 million left. in 11 years China destroyed 7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs. This is better than a massive bombing campaign. How many lives have been wrecked ? How many homeless Americans are on the street starving when we should be a super advanced society now?
At this rate there will be no manufacturing in the U.S. at all soon.
The U.S. was on top of the world. No one was even close to us in 1970. then as you can see from the graph manufacturing job growth stopped in 1970(”free trade” with Japan) and then in 2000(Clinton's China free trade deal) manufacturing jobs took a nose dive off the cliff. Imagine if had the growth china had built on top of what we had in 1971.
Quote is from this site:
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=5078&type=0
“The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy has experienced substantial job losses over the past several years. In January 2004, the number of such jobs stood at 14.3 million, down by 3.0 million jobs, or 17.5 percent, since July 2000 and about 5.2 million since the historical peak in 1979. Employment in manufacturing was its lowest since July 1950 “
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=5078&type=0
Pretty soon there won't be any manufacturing left in the U.S. (for now only 11 million manufacturing jobs left)
Then any other jobs that can be off-shored will go.
And our debt continues to mushroom.
do any of you free traders think this is sustainable? It's not. The U.S. will collapse soon unless Products from China and other countries are banned.
Yes the government regulations have done damage to private businesses but Mcdonalds can still compete ( think the dollar menu), dollar Tree, walmart , fed ex. but these companies don't have to compete with China companies paying their workers 50 cents an hour.
Did you read the report at the link you gave? It does not support your post. Try reading it.
So government has hurt ”private businesses” but McDonalds, Walmart will be able to compete... When you can make a logical aurgument come back to this thread.
Cant reply to the facts? We have plenty of steel manufacturing for defense.
Try reading how the U.S. has lost 7 million manufacturing jobs in the last 11 years. The 11 million remaining will go soon.
Some observers have specifically attributed recent job losses in manufacturing to a surge in the bilateral trade deficit with China. From 1992 to 2003, the trade deficit with China grew from $18.3 billion to $124.0 billion, which is larger than the deficit with any other country. However, much of the increase in imports from China reflects a shift away from imports from other Asian countries rather than an increase in total imports. In fact, while U.S. imports attributable to China increased from 5 percent in 1992 to 12 percent in 2003, the share of imports from other Pacific Rim countries declined from 34 percent to 21 percentAnother sigh:
According to United Nations data, the U.S. is still the largest manufacturing country in the world. In 2009, American manufacturing output (in real terms) was nearly $2.2 trillion. That’s about 45% larger than China’s, at just under $1.5 trillion. (For statistical reasons, I chose to use figures that include mining and utilities as part of manufacturing.) Though China, of course, is growing very quickly, the U.S. has also maintained its global share of manufacturing, at 20% in 2009 compared to just over 22% in 1980. What’s more, American manufacturing is becoming more productive. In 2009, productivity in U.S. manufacturing increased by 7.7%, more than any other country followed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Anyone who still believes the “free trade” tripe claiming America is the world’s leading manufacturer anymore, hasn’t been out of the man cave they’ve been living in to actually go into a store, in the last decade.
EVERYTHING in most stores, is made in China.
To claim US manufacturing is in some alternate universe robust, simply flies in the face of what one sees around them with their own eyes, every single day.
Those are lies.
The facts are :
China has 10 times more workers in manufacturing than the U.S. has.
The U.S. has lost close to 7 million manufacturing jobs in the last 11 years alone, mostly to China. China is committing economic terrorism against the U.S.A.
In the year 2000 the U.S. had over 17 million workers in manufacturing . Today it is close to 11 million. Those 11 million will move to China soon (at this rate).
The U.S.A is in a rapid decline, Jobs are being lost to China, debt is skyrocketing , China is lending the U.S. trillions. This is not sustainable.
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=5078&type=0
Those that live in the U.S. should support the U.S.A.
We are in economic and trade war. China is the main attacker but most other countries are doing it to the U.S.A also.
We need an America first party. Close the border to illegals and foreign (factory destroying) products. We can many anything here in the U.S.A.
The U.S. lost 7 million manufacturing jobs in the last 11 years.
China has 10 times as many workers in manufacturing as the U.S.
We are in an economic war and a trade war. China is the main attacker but most other countries are doing it to the U.S.A also.
We need an America first party. Close the border to illegals and foreign (factory destroying) products. We can make anything here in the U.S.A.
We are in a trade war.
Those buying anything made in china or other countries are traitors.
Those defending “free trade” with China are traitors because China is committing economic terrorism against the U.S.A.: China is committing economic war against the U.S. by devaluating its currency, trade barriers, stealing technology, and many other ways. Wake up people.
Good posts.
Spot on.
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