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.
How high should tariffs be to allow us to end welfare?
Back when bringing China into the WTO was discussed, I wrote Dick Armey, Ann Richardson and Phil Gramm that all we were doing is arming our enemy and that we'd be at war with them in 20 years (OK, I was off a bit). I told them they would then want to send my grandson off to war and it was gonna be "Hell no, he won't go!".
Gramm patted me on the head, saying that "globalism was good", Richardson never bothered to answer. Armey sent me a two page letter, laying out why it was good for America. At least he (or his staff) took the time to give a reasoned response.
Now, of a sudden, the current bunch is worried. I ought to suggest that they contact the above.
Typical, simplistic, inane, nonsense from you.
Won’t answer? Can’t?
Compared to the income tax the Free Traitors™ hide behind tariffs are a damn fair tax engine.
You ask inane, stupid questions. Show me where I said tariffs would end welfare.
You and I get it. It is so simple but so hard a concept for some to grasp. What is their problem? Are they just stupid?
Anyone defending the British and Mercantilism during the revolutionary war usually found out what a noose felt like.
Earth to Socon we are in a trade war now.
Why are minors and farmers exalted but manufacturing workers hated?
The raise the price on IMPORTED goods.
The workers in Indiana at carrier were making $14.00/hr. Is that high paid?
I think a lot of them just had some theories crammed into their heads in college and left thinking they possessed great knowledge and wisdom. Now they seem incapable or unwilling to look at the negative results of those theories as implemented by our government over several decades.
Some are so in love with their theories that they'll never abandon them. And some might be profiting from the international trade scams.
My real position on this is: mostly free trade between nations of comparable living standards. And tariffs on imports from nations with far lower living standards, unless those have some unique product not available elsewhere.
But, then there are all those non-tariff trade barriers used all over the world. We should really be negotiating nation by nation rather then with all this big trading blocks.
Because businesses always pay the taxes out of their profits, not consumers in the form of higher prices.
we do want to vote to protect American industry from unfair competition from foreign countries
Uh huh. And government is just the entity to get that done. Conservatives advocating for crony capitalism. Amazing.
So the U.S. having customs is "marxism"?
Huh?
Right. Because domestic producers would never raise their prices when the prices of their foreign competitors get increased. Economic reality doesn't change because you don't understand economics. You want to raise taxes and increase government control of the economy, at the expense of the middle class, to protect jobs in industries that manage to influence federal government bureaucrats. Remind me of this thread the next time you complain about corruption in government or crony capitalism.
LOL. The end of welfare as we know it rests in the ability of government to raise taxes. You heard it here first, folks. The answer to the problem government created is to give even more of our money to government, while allowing them greater power to control us. Some conservatives can be funny.
I agree with your assessment.
Fixed.
Germany ramped up the colonization/”chartered company” of Africa in 1883-84 under Wilhelm I who gave the Chancellor basically free reign concerning foreign and domestic policy. Historians still question his sudden departure from his original position.
Does history mean nothing? Tariffs brought us the great depression, started by a businessman who became President.
Also brought us the “The Great Society”
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