Posted on 02/19/2016 6:56:22 AM PST by Kaslin
Republican hawks are aflutter today over China's installation of anti-aircraft missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea.
But do these Republicans, good free-traders all, realize their own indispensable role in converting an indigent China into the mighty and menacing power that seeks to push us out of Asia?
Last year, China ran up the largest trade surplus in history, at our expense, $365 billion. We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us.
Using Census Bureau statistics, Terry Jeffrey of CNSNEWS.com documents how Beijing has, over decades, looted and carted off the greatest manufacturing base the world had ever seen.
In 1985, China's trade surplus with us was a paltry $6 million. By 1992, when some of us were being denounced as "protectionists" for raising the issue, the U.S. trade deficit with China had crossed the $10 billion mark.
In 2002, it crossed the $100 billion mark. In 2005, the $200 billion mark. In each of the last four years, Communist China has run an annual trade surplus at the expense of the United States in excess of $300 billion.
Total trade deficits with China in the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era? $4 trillion. Total U.S. trade deficit in 2015 -- $736 billion, 4 percent of our GDP.
To understand why Detroit look as it does, while the desolate Shanghai Richard Nixon visited in '72 is the great and gleaming metropolis of 2016, look to our trade deficits.
They also help explain America's 2 percent growth, her deindustrialization, her shrinking share of the world economy, and the stagnation of U.S. wages as manufacturing jobs are replaced by service jobs.
Those trade deficits also explain the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
Yet, with the exception of Trump, none of the GOP candidates seems willing to debate, defend or denounce the policies that eviscerated America -- and empowered the People's Republic.
Workers, however, know what our politicians refuse to discuss.
They are being sold out for the benefit of corporate elites who pay off those politicians with the big cash contributions that keep the parties flush.
Politicians who play ball with Wall Street and K Street know they will be taken care of, if they are defeated or when they retire from public office, so long as they have performed.
Free trade is not a zero-sum game. The losers are the workers whose jobs, factories and futures are shipped abroad, and the dead and dying towns left behind when the manufacturing plants shut down.
America is on a path of national decline because, while we have been looking out for what is best for the "global economy," our rivals have been looking out for what is best for their own nations.
Consider OPEC, which is reeling from the oil price collapse. Russia is colluding with Saudi Arabia and Iraq to cut production to firm up the market and prevent prices from falling further.
This is pure price fixing, but we all understand self-interest.
What might a U.S. national-interest-based trade policy look like?
Controlling the largest market on earth, we might impose on foreign producers a cover charge, an admissions fee, a tariff, to get into our market.
Example: Impose a 20 percent tariff on foreign cars entering the USA. This might raise the cost of a Lexus or Mercedes produced and assembled abroad from $50,000 to $60,000.
However, if Lexus or Mercedes buys or makes all their parts in the USA and assembles all their cars here, no tariff. Their cars could still sell for $50,000. This would be a powerful incentive to shift production here. As an added incentive, all tariff revenue could be used to reduce or eliminate corporate taxes in the USA.
Between the Civil War and World War I, under Republicans, the U.S. became the world's greatest industrial power and a wholly self-sufficient nation. How? We taxed foreign goods entering the United States, but did not tax the profits of U.S. companies or the incomes of U.S. workers.
The difference between economic patriots and globalists who inhabit corporate-funded think tanks and public policy institutes is that the latter think of what is best for their corporate benefactors and the global economy. The former put America and Americans first.
Academics revere Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Richard Cobden.
But none of them ever built a great nation. Patriots look to Alexander Hamilton and those post-Civil War Republicans who built the greatest national industrial powerhouse the world had ever seen.
Indeed, what great nation did free trade ever build?
As father of a united Germany, Chancellor Bismarck said, when he decided to build Germany on the American and not the British model, "I see that those countries which possess protection are prospering, and that those countries which possess free trade are decaying."
So it is true today. Unfortunately, it is America, now wedded to the fatal dogma of free trade, that is decaying.
What was the U-6 unemployment rate 30 years ago?
What is the U-6 unemployment rate today?
What was the real value of a dollar 30 years ago?
What is the real value of a dollar today?
How many industrial manufacturers were there in the US 30 years ago?
How many industrial manufacturers are there in the US today?
Tell me we aren’t going downhill without any brakes.....
Obama places a $10 per barrel tariff on imported oil. Do you change the price you're charging when selling your US oil? Why?/Why not?
Actually, from most “private” analysts, we do not need to import ANY oil...We, according to these private (not government funded) reports, we can be self sustaining for a long, long time..
We can dream. Meanwhile, do you adjust the price of the US oil you're selling?
Do you mean oil that we export?
This is from July, 2014...
The United States exported crude oil on Thursday, effectively ending a half-century ban on selling American oil abroad and opening the door for a radical transformation of the world economy, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The U.S. has large deposits of the kind of rocks that contain oil. The two biggest deposits are located in Eagle Ford, Texas, and Bakken, North Dakota. These fields have helped U.S. oil production grow by nearly 50% in just three years. America is now well on its way to becoming the world’s biggest oil producer, outstripping giants such as Saudi Arabia.
This increase of production could have huge political consequences, as the U.S. becomes less and less dependent on foreign oil and gas, much of which comes from volatile regions where America has few friends — think of Iran, Venezuela, and Russia.
There is no reason to raise the price on the oil we export...In fact, it would probably be better if we did not export and just relied on our own resources.
Obama places a $10 per barrel tariff on imported oil. Do you change the price you're charging when selling your US oil? Why?/Why not?
Great. Then our exports to China get the same treatment so your do gooding punishes both American industry and the American consumer. Your economic illiteracy will be so good for the economy.
Raise costs to consumers? You bet, that's the whole point
Excellent. Now the guy struggling to provide for his family gets even less bang for his buck so he doesn't save as much for retirement or for his kid's college. Bernie's economic ignorance will appeal to this voter. The welfare state marches on. Between you and Bernie, there's a lot of stupidity.
You can always buy from your countrymen.
Because my countrymen won't raise their prices when your beloved big government raises the price of their competitors goods? This is Economics 101. It's a shame they don't teach it in high school any longer. You did finish high school, didn't you?
Some people just have a problem with freedom. You can't have too much of it, and your prescription for what ails us - higher taxes and more government regulation/bureaucracy - will ensure we have a lot less of it. How conservative of you.
I answered in the last paragraph of my last post...
You know our largest export country is Canada and our largest import country is Canada...We basically swap oil with them and it’s because of geography...
You leave the price the same for a couple of thousand barrels? Cool.
What about the other 9 million plus that we don't export?
Nations that provide large subsidies to their industry to protect them from competition are not competitive. They also don't innovate. If other countries want to destroy their industry, why should we stop them?
large pools of relative slave laborers that nobody can compete with
What? The largest and most competitive economy in the world can't compete with slave labor? Good grief, do you think slave labor is productive? What country offering slave labor are we unable to compete with? Remember, slaves don't earn wages.
state sponsored R&D targeting manufacturing and high technology industry,
State sponsored R&D? Yeah, I always look to Russia when I want an example of innovation by state sponsored R&D. Using tax revenue to subsidize and promote industry does not a competitive economy make. Without a competitive economy, there is no innovation or wealth creation.
And his plan is to negotiate using the leverage of doing what they are doing to get this problem rectified.
Creating trade wars isn't going to benefit anyone. Slapping 35% tariffs on Ford autos from Mexico makes no sense. The American people don't need to pay more for their autos, Ford or otherwise. Negotiating good trade deals is important, but a good trade deal is one that lowers barriers. Trump may understand that and is just trying to appeal to those who don't know any better. Time will tell.
“...What about the other 9 million plus that we don’t export?...”
That reflects the domestic market...It would follow the domestic market fluctuations and have nothing at all to do with import/export...
As I said earlier, we should be self sustaining...period.
You would not adjust the price of the oil coming out of the wells you own?
Depends.
He would forego the additional revenue and would be unemployed shortly thereafter. Pollyanna economics can be hard on a guy.
Why?
We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us.
And that is a bad thing why? How bad can we be doing if we have enough money to buy that much stuff from China? China obviously isn't going to be importing goods from us because they are poorer than us and can't afford to! Plus they can produce them cheaper.
Free trade lets us take advantage of their lower labor costs and buy lots of cheap goods, saving the consumer tons of money. That's why our standard of living has SKYROCKETED in the modern era. We don't NEED higher wages when goods are as cheap and abundant as they are thanks to free trade. When we can find a cheaper source for a product than producing it ourselves, the smart thing is to use the cheaper source and reallocate your labor into doing something different. Otherwise your people are working harder than they have to for less. It's much better to get that toaster for half-price from somewhere else and buy a new shirt with the money you save instead of paying twice the price to build the toaster yourself and not get the shirt at all.
Buchanan's tariff plan simply cannot work. Other countries will retaliate with tariffs of their own. A tariff is a sales tax. Free trade is like a sales tax cut for all Americans. If we lower the amount of people we're trading with, we end up paying more for less. Higher wages don't mean anything when prices inflate at the same time.
The point of an economy is NOT to produce jobs, it's to produce goods and services. Every single company in the world would do that without ANY labor if they could. And that's a good thing. It means the cost of those goods go down and we all can afford to work less and still buy the same amount of stuff.
If you want foreigners to buy your products, make a better product or make it cheaper. Our movie industry does great internationally because although our movies have bigger budgets, they’re much better quality than most foreign productions. So we don’t have to charge more for movie tickets than any other country does.
If you suck as a producer, don’t ask the government to tax the superior, cheaper foreign goods to prop up the crappy job you’re doing. If you can’t do the job and compete on a level playing field without corporate welfare propping you up, find another line of work.
Wrong. If we cut the legal and illegal immigration, there will be more jobs for the current freeloaders.
Plus an abundance of cheaper domestic labor will spur more innovation and entrepreneurship. Welfare creates a “floor” which wages cannot go below, because people will simply take the free sh!t rather than work for less. If somebody can start up a company with people willing to work for lower labor costs than they are currently, you’ll get more start-ups, which will create more growth and jobs and higher wages over time if they’re successful.
Happiness is not defined by goods and things alone. The difference between a manufactured good and a service is often kind of arbitrary. Is paying for a massage or buying a massage chair all that different in terms of what you get? Is a manufactured book different from a digital book you download online? We can start a lot of businesses outside of manufacturing that people will be happy to pay for. We don’t need manufacturing as some sort of “special snowflake,” protected form of production.
If we are short on jobs now, it’s not because we need “manufacturing” necessarily. It means we just need more innovation in whatever form it comes. And innovating something new is always better than trying to cling to the same thing you did in the past. To spur on innovation we need to expand free markets in education (school choice), decrease regulations, decrease taxes, and cut off the free sh!t so that people are actually motivated to get out and work.
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