Posted on 03/21/2016 8:54:09 AM PDT by Theoria
Republicans rallied around a law to expand trade. Now it may doom them.
The Republican establishment began losing its party to Donald Trump on May 24, 2000, at 5:41 p.m., on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Urged on by their presidential standard-bearer, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, and by nearly all of the business lobbyists who represented the core of the party’s donor class, three-quarters of House Republicans voted to extend the status of permanent normal trade relations to China. They were more than enough, when added to a minority of Democrats, to secure passage of a bill that would sail through the Senate and be signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
The legislation, a top Republican priority, held the promise of greater economic prosperity for Americans. But few could predict that it would cause a series of economic and political earthquakes that has helped put the GOP in the difficult spot it is in today: with the most anti-trade Republican candidate in modern history, Trump, moving closer to clinching the party’s nomination.
“I try not to regret things,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a Trump supporter who was one of 83 senators to vote for the China bill. “That’s one I regret.”
“The Republican electorate has gone along with their leaders, begrudgingly, for 20 or 30 years,” Sessions said. “I supported all these trade agreements . . . but it’s becoming clear that the promises that were made weren’t true.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If anyone can name a single piece of legislation passed over the past thirty years....which helped to build jobs and improve the US economy....I’d like to know the one.
Neither party has done much of anything worth bragging about.
bookmark
Bingo. Article is spot-on.
The American People gave free trade a 30 year test drive.
The results are in. No Sale!
There is a big difference between free trade and Kool-Aid drinking free trade just as there is a big difference between trading partners like Japan (mutually beneficial) and China (where benefits flow mostly one-way).
By “free trade” I of course mean these 8000 page agreements that are chocked-full of crony capitalist fine print.
In essence the D.C. establishment’s definition of “free trade”.
Are you sure that it is free trade causing those problems? And not more to do with stupid and ignorant rules, regulations and laws passed by Congress.
Pat Buchanan was warning about this as early as 1991! The American people can’t understand.
Which are supported by businesses that lobby for such rules and regs that keep other business out of contention.
When the Obit is written folks will wonder why no one listened when The Great Betrayal was written. Nostradamus like.
Agreed!
Yep, free trade is the problem.
Nothing at all to do with high corporate taxes, political power purchased by labor unions, government wildly printing money, stifling energy policies, incomprehensible product-liability court decisions, lax enforcement of patent laws, double taxation of foreign profits, minimum wage edicts......
.....corporate decision-making besieged by EPA, OSHA, Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, and capital formation restricted by Federal Reserve lunacy........diplomas issued increasingly to college graduates unaware of Adam Smith but very knowledgeable of the writings of Noam Chomsky.......
.......incessant vilification of capitalism and religion from Hollywood, and the elevation of those in “public service” far above those who toil in the private sector.
The exodus of jobs from our shores has far more to do with an inhospitable environment for corporations and entrepreneurs, than trade agreements, IMHO. Baby, bathwater.
Bookmark
Who turned the tide with Japan and Korea, causing them to invest in auto plants in the US, employing workers in the US ?
Likewise Mercedes, BMW and VW build vehicles in the US.
That looks like evidence of sound negotiating, and deal making. Win Win.
Which companies in China and Mexico are doing similar measures, to retain the privilege of selling their goods here ?
Fair trade, not just free trade.
Thirty years isn't exactly a "test drive".
The results are in: Clunker! Hoopty! Lemon!
But none of that stuff was ever about America. It was just about the superrich and large corporations, and about breaking down U.S. living standards to be "competitive" with semi-free labor and convict-based labor in Kowloon and Calcutta.
Yeah, "inhospitable environment", I'm sure!
Damned greedy employees who just won't commit to the boss's welfare ....
They just won't give up eating!! Those pigs! Two squares a day and a cot, and they never think about their boss's capital formation at all! Just insanely selfish!
Cry me a river.
It’s quite amusing to me how important protectionists think their issue is (and how they falsely assume the majority of Republican voters agree with them) to voters. Here I’m sitting wondering how come Buchanan and Perot weren’t elected then, lol.
I’m pretty positive Trump’s insincere promise to build a “yuge” wall on the Mexican border has a LOT more to do with his success than his promise to raise taxes on American consumers. But to hear protectionists fantasize it’s that promise of a tax hike that will lead legions of union democrat scum to deliver Trump a “yuge” landslide.
Our country seemed to do better from where I sit in the 200+ years it was “protectionist” than it is doing now. I am sure that the uniparty establishment and other people making money off of the dismantling of our industrial base disagree.
The reckoning is coming. I am eager and blood thirsty to cast my vote. The saliva is dripping from my K9 teeth in anticipation. Trump 2016.
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