I'll answer your question but will you answer mine? What if we put a trade embargo on China and other countries? then won't we be able to make in the U.S. the 2 trillion dollars of products we import into the U.S. ever year? we can make 2 trillion dollars worth of more products here in the U.S. which will increase our wealth ,living standards, jobs etc.
“Ask yourself why is the value of manufactured goods climbing while job losses accelerate?”
That value is just inflation and overvalued Currency and they include mining and utilities in manufacturing to inflate the numbers. The dollar is overvalued. A worker in China makes 50 cents a n hour. You really think an American has 30 times a higher living standard than a Chinese person? So also a product an American produces costs 30 times more but that doesn't mean he is producing 30 times more.
China manipulates currency to keep the dollar high. That is just more globalist propaganda.If you look at manufacturing jobs in the U.S. in any way by percentage , total number , whatever , it is clear that U.S. manufacturing is disappearing.
These quotes are from a study that is linked below:
“Robert Scott calculates that 2.4 million American jobs were lost between 2001 and 2008 as a result of increased trade with China,
The paper shows that Chinese currency manipulation— which has kept the value of the Chinese yuan low even as its exports have surged–is a major factor behind the widespread job loss”
http://www.epi.org/publication/counting_the_jobs_lost_to_china/
China has stolen U.S. technology. And they manipulated currency so that they can pay workers 1/30th what U.S. workers make. They used our technology and our U.S. market to pillage , con ,destroy our jobs and our people. China is the enemy.
The U.S didn't trade with communist china for decades and we were on top of the world. There is nothing is some stupid free trade theory that says we have to trade with China .Just the simple fact that they stole and are stealing U.S. technology and intellectual property is enough to stop all trade with China as the U.S. had done for decades (not only China but USSR and Cuba too we didn't trade with).
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday that China is holding to its decades-old strategy to steal American intellectual property, in a pointed statement reflecting U.S. officials' growing impatience with Beijing. "They China have made possible systematic stealing of intellectual property of American companies and have not been very aggressive to put in place the basic protections for property rights that every serious economy needs over time," Geithner told a forum in Washington. "We're seeing China continue to be very, very aggressive in a strategy they started several decades ago, which goes like this: you want to sell to our country, we want you to come produce here ... if you want to come produce here, you need to transfer your technology to us," Geithner said.
As president I would cut off all trade with China just because of the intellectual property they stole from us.I would do a trade embargo against China and guess what then we could actually make our own electronics and a million other products that we use: and that would increase our manufacturing jobs and factories by tenfold.
Chinese currency is overvalued? Call your buddy Geithner, get your facts straight and try it again. Of course you have also quoted articles that say it is overvalued. You can count the jobs lost to China but were is your accounting of jobs created because of trade with China?
Yes the average US citizen has a SOL much higher, incredibly higher, than the average Chinese.
“So if we stop importing from China we can create manufacturing jobs in the U.S.”
“We” do not create anything. “We” are not being stolen from by the Chinese. When it comes to business and job creation the job creators are individuals and it is they who are stolen from. Maybe in a collective utopia ‘we” do all this. But for now individuals create jobs and thy do so in pursuit of their own interest. Our government has created huge hurdles against investment and job creation. Simply making china the bogey man will not work.
How do you propose to “bring back” all that iron and steel making capacity? Where will you get the money from? The reasons it left have now been added to and multiplied. Have you seen what it takes to build a new steel plant, coke ovens, refinery, or electric plant in this country? We get a few things now and then when our government grants special privileges and is granted the proper obeisance but our manufacturing is leaving and its not because of the Chinese.
Did you read the article? Do you see how small a percentage Chinese imports are in our economy? Are you going to ban trade everywhere to keep what we ban from going to other countries? Yes China steals and it is up to individual and the companies they own to decide if doing business with China is worth it or not. Why does Apple keep doing business in China? GM? GE?
I guess banning imports means no more imported oil so our oil prices will skyrocket, no more imported wood...oops their goes housing prices, we import most of our rare earth metals so their goes high tech manufacturing. But gee at least we can get back all of those jobs assembling furniture and painting cheap plastic figurines.
Of course we have effectively banned sugar imports. How has that worked out? Glad you saved a few jobs for the wealthy sugar growers so that we could decimate the far more valuable candy making industry?
Are you serious about debt? Its our government driving up debt with reckless spending and its the same government you wish to put in charge of eliminating all imports?