Posted on 11/13/2012 2:00:40 PM PST by DannyTN
Romney promised that he would act on China's currency manipulation "on his first day." So Republicans can pretend Romney won, and actually act on China's currency manipulation! If they would actually do what they promised to do we could get a lot a lot of "job creation" going on. Or will they continue to obstruct?
China continues to manipulate its currency. It has been getting better but not fast enough. This manipulation keeps the prices of things made in China lower than they should be -- even before taking into account all of the other trade cheating China has been doing. And that means that jobs, factories, industries and big chunks of our economy continue to move to China. Look at what happened with Sensata the day before the election.
For various non-trade reasons -- Obama needs China's help with Korea, etc. -- the President has resisted declaring China to be a currency manipulator. Action by Congress to push this forward strengthens the President's hand in getting something done on this, and in the end could just get it done outside of the administration. So to accomplish this there is a bill to act on China's currency manipulation.
The "China Currency Bill" has passed the Senate but is stalled in the House by Republican leadership. Speaker Boehner is keeping the bill from coming up for a vote. It could come to the floor and pass if just a few of the 60+ Republican cosponsors would actually cosponsor the bill be signing a "discharge petition" to bring it up for a vote.
The people want this. Polls overwhelmingly showed that the public "gets it" about China and trade and what is happening to all the jobs and factories and industries. This polling was why Romney campaigned for this. And this was a democracy election -- the people made it very clear what they want to happen.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio recently pushed to have this bill revived and voted on in the House, and now the voters have given their stamp of approval by reelecting Brown. Across the board the public has made it clear that it is time to act. Republicans should pretend it is Romney's "first day" and act on Chinese currency manipulation -- like he promised they would do.
The election is over, it is time for action, not more obstruction.
The only way to kill wasteful government spending is to elect people of good character. Irresponsible politicians won't care what the interest rate is or even if they have to promise that your children will pay it back in gold.
I'm not sure I'd consider consumer spending "wasteful" especially what is left of consumer spending after the last few years. And I don't think it's something you want to kill either. When the economy is at full employment, then you can let interest rates rise. Letting them rise now with 25% unemployment would only result in more personal, business and government bankruptcies. It would be ridiculous.
"We need increased savings for productive asset creation, and we also need prices and wages to fall."
There's plenty of cash sitting on the sidelines looking for safe investments. We need investment opportunities and that's only going to come from getting people employed again. And we don't need prices and wages to fall. We don't want to be China. Free trade with China is making us like China. That's what we need to reverse.
We don't need to be competitive to sell to the Chinese. They aren't going to buy from us anyway. There is only one buyer and that is Americans. So why are we letting Chinese sellers compete against Americans, when Americans are the only ones buying.
"We won’t be able to rely on Chinese imports much longer anyway, due to our ongoing inflation."
We'd have to see a lot more inflation than we are seeing to make a dent in the wage differential with China. They aren't going away anytime soon, unless we make them go away.
"The unemployment situation will not be solved until we have a real economic recovery. "
Which we won't have because we are too busy exporting our remaining jobs overseas. Stop the exporting, bring the jobs back to America and we will have a real economic recovery. Jobs ARE the recovery.
Think of the tariff as a “Buy American” tax. Either Buy American and put your fellow countrymen to work or either you or China is going to have to pay the tariff.
Tariffs are like taxes.
The end-user pays the tariff. Just as the end-user pays the tax.
In order to "put our fellow countryman to workj", he must produce a product of similar quality at a lower price, or of higher quality at the same price.
Until then, a tariff is simply another tax on the American consumer.
Competition between domestic competitors will keep prices low.
The domestic competitor will only raise it’s price if it’s the only domestic competitor.
Government-protected industries compete with each other to keep prices low? You really are breaking new ground in economic theory.
Well said!
Buy American.
And tax foreign.
Romney didn't get it at all. He tapped into a little of the anti-Chinese sentiment and got a bump in the polls as a result, but then he went on and explained that he'd only use the threat of tariffs to get China to play fair with intellectual property rules and currency manipulation.
Romney didn't get that the real issue is the wage differential that is killing our industries. Neither does Obama. Surprisingly the rat Moderator Candy Crowley asked about wages after Romney brought up China, but neither candidate responded to her. Obama said he wanted high paying jobs instead of low paying jobs, a stupid sentiment when 25% have no job at all. And Romney just repeated, Government doesn't create jobs.
What you mean is, tax Americans to buy American.
No, tariffs are not like taxes because only the imports are taxed. Therefore a couple of things can happen.
The best result though, is that production moves back to the U.S. because then Americans are earning salaries, paying income taxes, and spending money in the American market. And none of that is happening, when Americans are unemployed.
No, I mean tax Americans for buying foreign. Use that tax to pay for the extra safety next outlays for the unemployed.
If Americans buy American, there is no tariff.
Enthusiastic bump!
Good post.
No matter how many times you repeat it, it is not true. Funny how protectionists claim that it's "about saving high-paying jobs" out of one side of their mouths, and out of the other side claim "but it won't cost you anything."
Where do you think the money to pay the "higher" wage comes from?
Domestic producers aren't protected from other each other. Domestic competitors drive the price down. Did you think competition only occurs across international borders?
If you look closely, there is a neat little graph that shows how much domestic producers raised their tire prices after the tariff on Chinese tires was imposed.
So keep promising what you cannot deliver. I want a pony.
Where do you think the money to pay unemployment and medicaid and food stamps for the unemployed comes from?
The same place, of course. You just want more of it, and more it from me up front.
Exactly, Danny. Exactly. The tariff has to be paid...and what is the "price rise to the consumer" if not a tax?
Protectionism is a dead-end street.
Unless it is less expensive to produce the item in the U.S. But, because it wasn't, that's why the production moved overseas in the first place.
With regard to wage differential - those in manufacturing in the USA need to realize that their skills aren’t worth that much.
First thing you've said that I agree with.
The problem is, you think this is a good thing.
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