Posted on 03/04/2016 5:36:46 PM PST by Innovative
Donald Trump spent five years building a mutually beneficial relationship with the organization that hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, filling its coffers with at least $150,000 in cash and scoring coveted speaking slots that started him on a course towards winning the Republican presidential nomination.
But he ended up canceling what would have been his biggest CPAC speech at the last minute amid plans for protest and disruptions, apparently deciding that his surging presidential campaign no longer needed any boost from the once-storied group.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
David Copperfield.
This whole charade is getting stomach turning to the nth degree.
What I find even more disturbing is the ease with which so many can be deceived.
I shudder to think what this portends for our country.
Exactly so and extremely troubling!
“What has become of our country.”
A very large % of our population is dependent on their income coming from illegals in various and horrible ways.
They will do anything to protect that income and status.
Since we no longer have any serious manufacturing in this country, we will simply pick more money off of the money trees and buy those cheap goods manufactured in other countries.
Give it up, PPO (Paid Political Operative).
Far too many people are now going to college and can't even get a lousy job.
Many products made in China are not only rotten, but dangerous to one's heath.
Now that car manufacturers are making cars in Mexico, more LEMONS are coming off the boats and sold here, than when Americans made these cars. But then the unions ruined that industry.
Yes; especially when so many of the easily deceived are posting to FR.
We have American companies that DESIGN the products. They don’t actually have to be manufactured here. That can be done with cheap labor elsewhere. You don’t become a leading economic power by doing cheap manual labor. You do it by being highly educated and selling your ideas, creativity and inventions. It’s as true for an individual as it is for a country.
I much prefer using overseas labor to importing the cheap labor through immigration like Trump said he wants to do last night. That just fills our country up with liberal voters and non-English speakers.
Because they’re going to lousy colleges and getting lousy government-subsidized degrees. People who get STEM degrees are doing great. That’s why Zuckerberg and Trump want to bring in cheap, highly-educated labor to get their wages down. Most degrees are worthless. You have to get education that takes effort to complete and actually translates into saleable skills.
There’s no need to worry about low-quality products. If the recalls and returns actually make it less profitable to manufacture overseas, the manufacturing will move back here. The free market works great and doesn’t need to be micro-managed. The actual owners of the company know what they’re doing, as opposed to nosy busybody government bureaucrats.
I definitely agree the unions need to be busted and also that minimum wage needs to be repealed (and not replaced). Legal burdens on what business can do can only mess up the natural fairness of free market capitalism.
>>We have American companies that DESIGN the products. They don’t actually have to be manufactured here. That can be done with cheap labor elsewhere.
I think I understand. All we need is 200 million people designing products, and we don’t have to manufacture anything, provided we can protect our patents from overseas pirates; and providing they will pay us for the use of our patents.
We can also buy our tanks, planes, and other military hardware from other countries with the money they pay us for designing them, provided we don’t reveal any military design secrets.
Have you really thought this through?
When you say “free trade”, are you implying that other countries have the same understanding of free trade as you do? Or, do other countries deny our companies the ability trade freely?
Is Donald Trump right about Fair Trade? You bet.
Trade restrictions by other countries who take advantage of our nation’s fairness must be dealt with harshly, as Mr. Trump articulates.
Trump has been spouting off the same “we make bad trade deals” line since the 1980s. It just sounds like loose barroom banter to me, not anything I take seriously. I don’t believe he’s studied any deal and can tell anyone what specifically is wrong with it or what needs to be changed. Unless someone tells me what specifically is wrong with the deals, it’s a meaningless statement to me.
If someone can point to something specific in an existing trade deal that is “unfair,” I’ll hear it out. I wouldn’t doubt that something can be found, but I don’t buy that that’s the issue. Trump is appealing to the “China steals our jobs” crowd explicitly. He throws in the “I like free trade but I want fair trade” when he’s criticized for that from the right. This is all politics. It’s meaningless crosstalk and bluster that amounts to nothing serious.
His only specific change I’m aware of that he’s suggested is that he wants to tax imports from any U.S. company that builds a factory in another country. I disagree with that as strongly as I disagree with ANY tax hike.
I assume with any trade deal, there is a give and take that has to be struck. We have a big economic advantage over any third-world country. Perhaps they demanded some protections to balance that out. It would take a real expert to pore over any trade deal and make sense of it. I imagine it’s like trying to read Obamacare. As of yet, I haven’t seen anyone point to anything specific in an existing trade deal that is considered unfair.
I’ve heard of all kinds of trade disputes that have had to be deliberated on over the years. That’s life. You can’t interact with people without someone sometimes trying to take unfair advantage of a situation. I doubt any piece of paper is going to solve that. Those matters have to be settled on a case by case basis.
Worse still is the amount of time being wasted every day in this country due to the shoddy products coming out of China. Do remember when, maybe twenty years ago we were first starting to see "counterfeit" Chinese made knock-offs of genuine American products? I remember seeing a tv show about it. They took two Big Bertha golf clubs to the company that really makes them and one proved to be a "chinese knock-off".
Well the joke is on us now. Chinese knock-offs are no longer deemed counterfeit. They have replace 90% of what used to be made in America. And it is all junk. Breakdowns and downtime galore.
OTOH, not all Americans belong at any college and they need to work and get off welfare!
>> I haven’t seen anyone point to anything specific in an existing trade deal that is considered unfair.
Bottom line: We either have a country, or we don’t.
If you don’t believe in fair trade, we’re from different worlds. No nation can survive if they are always on the short end of the financial stick. That’s just plain common sense.
Our trade deals always put us on the short end of the stick because the globalists pay off our politicians to make sure we are on the short end. That’s Cruz, Rubio, etc.
All career politicians are bought, owned, and controlled by globalists, with perhaps the exception of Jeff Sessions, and maybe a few others.
Perhaps you might find this enlightening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtL41Pr2d5s
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.