FREE TRADE IS A BAD IDEA

For years it hasn't set right with me, and I've tried to figure out why. And now I know. It's because it violates a simple principle of life.

International free trade, while certainly necessary and useful to an extent, can easily be overemphasized to such a degree that it jeopardizes a country's economic self-interest and national security.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, all Mexican protections against American or Canadian agricultural imports are about to disappear. That means cheaper Canadian and American farm products are going to flood Mexico.

And Mexican farms are going to close down. The impact on Mexican agriculture is going to be immense.

Which means Mexico is going to be less capable of supplying its own needs. And it means a ton of farm workers are going to be out of work and headed north. And that's not good for anybody.

Just like it's no good that the United States has a dramatic trade deficit, that it buys far more from overseas than it sells. And that there are entire sections of the American economy which are dependent on foreign goods. For whole product lines, there simply are no American manufacturers anymore. From electronic goods to clothing to steel, we don't make things anymore.

And American corporations are closing domestic factories to shift manufacturing overseas.

Because independence is good and interdependence is bad. Because interdependence is the same as reliance and that is the opposite of self-reliance.

And history teaches that -- without exception -- prosperity and security require national self-reliance. Americans should eat American agricultural products and use American manufactured products and channel their income back into the economy that produced it -- the American economy. When a nation becomes reliant on foreign products -- as the United States clearly is -- its comfort and peace are held hostage by the producers of those foreign products.

If a nation cannot produce what it needs -- as the United States now cannot -- it is in a precarious position that weakens and enslaves it.

We will be weakened as we exchange our prosperity -- hard currency -- for foreign products, and we will be enslaved as our national policy inevitably must be tailored to preserve our access to foreign goods. These are truths which have been understood and implemented around the world for centuries. To abandon them now is to abandon national self-interest and to doom the United States to premature but certain decline.

In developing countries, lingering poverty and delayed development are tied directly to a failure to be nationally self-reliant. When nations feed themselves, they do not starve. When they manufacture their own goods, they don't go without.

When they understand that their consumer dollars must be recycled into their own economies, they do not long linger in recession or unemployment.

Free trade serves a very few at the top of international corporations, but it does not serve the average American. Rather, it takes away his job and his nation's strength.

Certainly, the flow of goods and produce around the globe is needful and beneficial, but so is protection, and buttering your own bread first. The sense of national economic identity must not be lost, and neither should the commitment to protecting American prosperity -- even at the cost of limiting free trade.

Our first obligation is to feed, house, clothe and prosper American families. Every thing else comes second. That must be our attitude. Just as Mexico and every other nation must have the same attitude about its people and its economy.

No, I did read an article that we were going to purchase some for Taiwan and the person from whom we purchased our subs would not sell them to us because of the political situation. Now the article could have been wrong or your article could have been wrong. Either is possible.

But you get my drift. I didn't lie that is what I read - but even if the article I read was incorrect - the premise is still the same. It is suicidal to attempt to be the world's consumer and export elite technology. Well, guess what, we are now importing some of those elite technologist and guess what, there are intelligent people around the world that can do any job any American can do - so what happens when the elite technological jobs are gone. Are we going to just be the masters? - masters of what? a wasteland. Do you think when these rulers get the factories, their export system, their customers in line they are going to continue to allow American tech companies to continue to make the lion's share of profit on this? Pie in the sky thinking.

[The 'free' in free trade refers to free from government restriction. With respect to government interference in trade there are two directions you can go. More freedom, or more government (essentially political) control. Which economies do best?]

But you see, what you have is interference and more interference - and therefore, less freedom. What you have is just the preaching of free trade - not the fact.

Now when and if we ever have free trade, we should discuss it - until then we have to discuss what we have. Which is sending all our jobs overseas, taxing the remaining workers to oblivion (either income tax, property tax or whatever) - then we import a lot of skilled and skilled workers. Yes sir. That is free trade and no government interference isn't it?

Yes, we need to be free to compete but we are not. Our government is building factories for them - then giving them foreign aid - and we are buying their products. That's the way I want to do business.

Another very dangerous point is the quality of the products we are buying. It is cheap, poor quality and doesn't last. The American worker is getting taken big time.

Like I said, when we have free trade - then let's discuss it - until then we are discussing only a theory - We do not even have a semblence of free trade.

[This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us [1].

That's cute -

Now let me pose,

" Congressman or candidate greedy: I am tired of paying these lazy, uneducated Americanworkers their salaries. After all, they are just everyday laborers - they get their hands dirty - they are not of the elite like us. They don't 'deserve' to have the salaries I am having to pay them. Besides there are many poor people in the world that will work for peanuts.

If you will take more of taxpayer's monies, help me build plants in(___________ you fill in the blanks), I can make my $100 Calvins, or my $150. Nikes for 5 dollars and I can make more money. This will mean that I will have to close my plants here and if we don't do something the peasants my rise. I propose you take some more of the taxpayers money and pay these displaced workers for a period of time 2 years and educate them for another job. What job,you ask? That's their problem. But in two years, they will have accepted their fate a little more and will not be so rabid.

Now at the same time, I would like to keep some of my work here - construction, agriculture, etc. so I will need some workers for that. I just don't think these construction men 'deserve' the pay they are getting, or the people in my poultry plants - I mean if they had any 'real worth', they wouldn't be doing that work anyway. What I want you to do is cease and desist enforcing immigration laws and let as many as want to come in from other countries. Now I can pay them much less, but they will need medical expenses paid, the children will have to be educated, they will need food, and housing. They simply will not come unless they have that. Also, they can send a lot, a lot of money back to their home country and make those politicians happy. I don't want to have to collect and match taxes, etc. Now what I want you to do is make the taxapayers pay all these expenses so I can make an even bigger profit. Now if taxpayers complain, we will ignore them for the most part, - but we can use the old RACIST, BIGOT, WOMEN & CHILDREN phrases. Oh, and 'just hardworking people looking for a better life','our lettuce will rot int he fields without them', 'they are doing the work no one else wants'. Just us the old 'repeat the lie often enough. That will shut them up.

Now one more thing, you need to take some more of those worker's wages so we can send 'foreign aid' to the politicians ( you know 'grease the palms) of those said politicians. - so they will love us when we open our plants and they won't tax us or place any restrictions on us.

Now if you will do this, I will make you wealthy and keep, or get you in office, and you can probably even get a little kickback from those foreign rulers.

Now get this Congressman or Candidate greedy - now here is the best part - we are going to call this FREE TRADE!! How can anyone argue with that?

If that neighbor who desires also has a job and the wherewithall to pay for that AND if it is not already being done by one of the millions of workers we have imported - both skilled and unskilled.

Are you suggesting that even if everyone of the unemployed were put to work there would be no more work to be done? There's always more work, the only question as to whether or not it will be done is if the person wanting it done can agree on a price with a person willing to do it. This falls under the realm of Bastiat's 'unseen'.

True but you are suggesting the government had nothing to do with the situation and it had much to do with it. While it is not designed to cause pain, it is not designed use our tax dollars to finance other countries to put us out of work and it is not designed to use our tax dollars to finance the moving offshore of American companies to put us out of work.

None of which has anything to do with free trade. I'll stand alongside you in arguing against government largesse. Government handouts are not free trade.

When the light bulb was invented - it didn't move the work offshore - it remained here so the candlemakers could perhaps learn to make light bulbs. Big difference.

Do you think that was a one for one swap of jobs, or that it should have been? Cost savings may result in worker dislocation, but the vast array of consumers who now save money by using lightbulbs over candles have more disposable income. In any marketplace change of preference you can undoubtably find a disatisfied producer who no longer meets market demands. Is he more important than the multitudes who no longer chose his product, for whatever reason? Is he entitled to their money, even when they have better alternatives? Is your glass always half empty?

That sounds so good. Now once again, you have to do something that someone can pay money for, that means those people also have to have jobs and disposable income. This is not a shifting of jobs, this is an elimination of jobs in America. That is the difference.

It is good, because it allows the marketplace to adapt to reflect the desires of the participants. If capital and labor are misallocated to more expensive production process making those processes cheaper frees up both labor and capital. It is precisely because of our heavy specialization of labor, irrespective of borders, that we can employ so many people at such high, real rates of income. Americans continue to lead the world in per capita income because we allow the marketplace to continually refine and increase productivity. Japan's staunch poltical defense of the status quo with regard to capital and labor allocation is chief among it's reasons for a stagnant economy. Why bring those conditions here?

Now that sounds good also, but you see what if those neighbors do not have the money to pay for your services or goods and if those service jobs are already filled by someone else (millions of foreign workers, for example).

Again, we will never run out of work in want of being done. The only difference is how the resolution of that work is attained. We can ignore it and try to lock politically favored enterprises and laborers at their present rates and stagnate the process of generating capital and increasing wealth, or we can allow the market to reflect the desires of both consumers and laborers freely, as we have done in attaining a standard of living that is the envy of the world. I'm for the latter - which requires freedom.

Now are you saying that all this great standard of living we have in this country is all due to foreign trade? Don't think so. Remember when we made TV, washers/dryers, refrigerators, all those luxuries? WEll, guess what, people could afford them then. I haven't seen a reduction in price. I have seen the price of items rise drastically. Just looked at a new stove - $500 to $800 for just a normal electric stove. Now our salaries have not quadrupled in the last 15 years (since I last bought a stove and they were made in USA), but the price of stoves have.

Price comparisons are almost useless because the effect of government induced currency inflation affects all goods differently. Also worth noting is that the goods themselves aren't comparable, but lets give it a whirl since you brought it up. In 1955 Motorola made a 19" color TV that 'only' cost $995. Per capita personal income in 1955 was a whopping $1,881. Today you can walk out of Wal-Mart with a 20" flat screen color TV (with remote of course) for under $200. Per capita personal income is currently ~$36,000. Should we continue to play this game with all the products you mentioned?

What we are attempting to get across to you is someone, somewhere, has to be making money at some time. WE can't just reach into the sky and pull it out. To do that we have to have a product or service that someone, showhere, somehow has the money to buy. You never say what kind of jobs you think will be available - it is always the 'one my neighbors want' - now what will that be in light of the fact your neighbor may and probably will be either out of work - or seriously strapped for the monies to pay you.

Your nightmare scenario is unplausible because the shifts are not all at once. We won't wake up and find 150 million jobs left the country and everyone is out of work. People losing and finding new work is a constant process. There's no advantage in taking a snapshot and trying to weild law to bend mankind forever to that image of preferences. As particular demands shift, the marketplace shifts in response to them. A recession, where aggregate job loss tends to exceed job creation, is a response to loose credit policies, where capital has been misallocated and the marketplace begins to correct. I don't tell you what the jobs are that will be created because it's impossible to know. If my grandfather had been told upon the birth of his grandson that the boy wouldn't work on a farm, but would one day manage computer network's increasing the productivity of scores of people, he could only ask you, "what is a computer network?" The notion that you, or I, or any individual can 'see' what the market will produce next is the folly that doomed the USSR. Let go of that notion. The marketplace exists to fulfill the desires of the participants. Let it work, and we'll see what they want soon enough...

[To promote the lowering of trade barriers, such as this latest proposal from the Bush administration: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41291-2002Nov26.html]

Well, right. Sounds good. Not sure that is the government job. But,hey, we hey we use almost no taxpayer's dollars for this did we? I mean it is just some little old meetings" Right? Why isn't this being done by business if we are talking - FREE TRADE.

why does the taxpayers have to pay that person unemployment for 2 years and train them for another job - no government interference here - just free trade.

[Then what you're arguing against is government interference, not free trade. Don't let yourself be fooled just because the bureaucrats steal the title for their purposes... ]

Ahhhh. Now you are talking!! But it seems it is not only the bureaucrats that are misusing the title for their purposes. But there seems to be some on here who have tried to argue free trade when they know that is not what we have. It is also all those people who are making money off it. I was never fooled. This has been my premise all along. And I have never tried to fool anyone by arguing for or against FREE TRADE, when that is not what we have. I have argued against the situation we now have. Now we have agreed what we have is not FREE TRADE. Why are we arguing that it is a good thing - since it is only a theory - certainly not a fact.

Ah, Pooh, you have made my day.

{And we're the biggest big guy there is, and we make it clear that they'd BETTER sell to us or else.] [No, we'll merely sink every China-bound oil tanker with a genuine AMERICAN-MADE Mark 48 torpedo.] No, they have inferior Russian knock-offs, and they don't have a navy. The biggest naval power in the world is the United States; everyone else is a very distant also-ran. DO try to pay attention to the details, son. [ We have munitions factories already, son, they're just not being used right now] >Well, didn't I read we were going to purchase nuclear subs from some other country to give to Taiwan - because this other country makes our subs?]

My Dad can beat up your dad.

[Let me guess: you got your education from the public school system. The fact of the matter is that we only manufacture nuclear submarines, because that's all the US Navy uses; diesel-electric boats are made elsewhere. Our submarines are made here in the USA. 'Tis a far better idea to keep your mouth shut, and merely be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all remaining doubt.]

Macho talk about how big our army is. How great our subs are. Absolutely no ideas, no facts, just macho schoolground rhetoric.

Once again, you made my day.

But you see, what you have is interference and more interference - and therefore, less freedom. What you have is just the preaching of free trade - not the fact.

I'm not arguing that our current arrangements represent absolutely, completely free trade. In fact, no one here has asserted that, so you can shelve that straw man for the moment.

As you've pointed out, we have interference, and more inteference as our current options. Therefore, more freedom, or less freedom. I'm solidly on the side of more freedom, which puts us in the direction of free trade. I don't expect we'll get there overnight, but we'll never get there by increasing government interference in the marketplace.

Which is sending all our jobs overseas, taxing the remaining workers to oblivion (either income tax, property tax or whatever) - then we import a lot of skilled and skilled workers. Yes sir. That is free trade and no government interference isn't it?

No, it's not, and it's entirely disingenous to try and label that mixed bag as "free trade". Jobs are not 'sent' overseas. They go there in response to marketplace demands, that is a tenet of free trade. 'Taxing workers to oblivion' or creating government subsidies is government interference in the market, and on the opposite end of the spectrum from free trade. Arguments against it are arguments FOR free trade.

[Only one condition would support your argument. The Ameican worker is incapable of change and or higher skilled labor. We simply do not possess the intellectual capacity to offer superior service to the world. We cannot strive for anything greater than punching holes in metal. ]

Yes, I do believe we are. WE have proven that in the past. We didn't get where we are because we are incapable.

Now this is the deal - we have a government that is working against us - we have a government helping to export our work. Right now it is manufacturing jobs. Of course it is importing some skilled foreign workers at the same time. Now, do you realize that yes, we are capable, but so is the rest of the world. All the world is not just poor people willing to work forever for you for peanuts. Soon they will realize they do not have the same government interference and they can run the same kind of company, or whatever you have, cheaper and better than you. That is what I am saying. While you may feel insulated from all this - no one is. And to say, "I'll produce something my neighbor needs' - well that neighbor needs an income first.

This is happening - not because of free trade but because of governmemt manipulation - and you see,t hey can manipulate in your favor - or not!

Well, right. Sounds good. Not sure that is the government job.

Under our Constitution the federal government is empowered to regulate foreign commerce. This puts them in the situation of trying to lower trade barriers between our nation and others. Lower tariffs is again a move in the direction of free trade.

But,hey, we hey we use almost no taxpayer's dollars for this did we? I mean it is just some little old meetings" Right? Why isn't this being done by business if we are talking - FREE TRADE.

Because tariffs are taxes instituted by governments, and our federal government is tasked by the Constitution with the duty of regulating ours. Businesses can plead with foreign governments to lower their tariffs on American goods, but likely without the effectiveness of the American government, which has power over our reciprocal tariffs.

why does the taxpayers have to pay that person unemployment for 2 years and train them for another job - no government interference here - just free trade.

Once again I'm forced to explain to you that government interference in the marketplace is not free trade. "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. " -Abraham Lincoln

They were arguing in favor of free trade. If you can't see the difference the failing is yours, not theirs.

It is also all those people who are making money off it. I was never fooled.

Free trade benefits all by freeing capital and labor for expanding production to meet new and existing demands. It's not simply the owners of the relocated factory that benefit. It's the multitude of consumers who pay lower prices as result, in addition to the producers and consumers of industries which can grow with the labor and capital freed by the increased efficiency. You can't seem to see past the first step of the process...

And I have never tried to fool anyone by arguing for or against FREE TRADE, when that is not what we have. I have argued against the situation we now have. Now we have agreed what we have is not FREE TRADE.

In arguing against "the situation we now have", do you support moving in the direction of free trade, or toward more state control of the marketplace?

Why are we arguing that it is a good thing - since it is only a theory - certainly not a fact.

Because, in case you forgot, the article was titled "Free trade is a bad idea." Sheesh...

You know what I posted to you responded to all you statements and it was so long it would have taken all day to load.

So what we have is not free trade. So why all this argument about the benefits of free trade. It is a theory - nothing else. Certainly not what we are experiencing today.

In the candle and buggy whip analogy - the jobs did not just go away. The candle makers could work for light bulb companies and the buggy whip people could work for auto workers and other could find jobs int he economy because it was still there. The light bulb and auto manufactures didn't open their factories in Mexico - they did it right here in the gold old US of A, thereby creating jobs.

Food, shelter and clothing is very expensive in America - it has not become cheaper, well cheaper, but not more econimical. It will not be as easy to just sell apples to pay the bills as they did in the depression or the miscellaneous jobs my grandfather did to feed three families through the depression. We can't all plant a little garden to help feed us or barter with our neighbors who have a cow. You see the government didn't take 50% of what he made.

Yes a TV in l955 was expensive. That's not a really good example as they were just coming out and in five years they were reasonable. Now I was really thinking of more recent years when we people had more disposable income. Some things are cheaper - not the necessities.

As for the half empty glass. I am pretty good at seeing things from both angles. My glass is pretty full - because I don't need much and am quite healthy for my age - but I know young families who are struggling and will not get ahead in today's situation. It is good to see the glass half full, but since it is still half full, we have to realize something happened to that other half. WE need to face reality and to stop pretending that what we are experiencing is free trade and it will all work out and everyone in the world will suddenly have middle class lifestyles. That's a fairy tale.

I will fight to the death to keep you from changing this blessed country into a religious theocracy ruled by people who think they are the arbiter of God's will for the rest of us.

Don;t be silly. I have no power to change this country into anything -- nor would I do so if by some miracle I gained that power. I'm not a politician; I'm a comic book artist.

And I have never advocated "changing this blessed country into a religious theocracy". I am a monarchist, not a theocrat.

History shows us what happens then, Taliban, Japanese theocracy in the thirties, etc.

And history shows us what happens when a culture forgets or opposes God: eventually, revolution. The Irish Famine; the guillotine; regicide; cathedrals sacked by mobs chanting "Freedom!", overturning the altars of God and replacing them with idols of Reason deified; the Soviet dictatorship; Hitler's pagan blood-and-soil cult; the God-Is-Dead '60s; Roe v. Wade; millions of dead babies every year; lust, greed, vulgarity, and decadence everywhere one turns; those are the fruits of the separation of church and state. The theocracies of Cromwell and Khomeni were nightmarish, but their crimes pale in comparison with the horrors dealt out by the thoroughly secular governments of our modern "peoples' republics".

And I will do my part to see to it that this country embraces the values of Christian love as I understand them.

Ditto.

But not at the point of a gun.

You're fooling yourself. All political power is ultimately based upon force; all political systems (including our own) are established and maintained at the point of a gun. The only question, then, is what kind of men will be behind those guns? You prefer a society where power is held by those with a secular, mercantilist worldview; I do not. Either way, someone's values are going to be enforced at gunpoint - mine, yours, or somebody else's. My hope is that the traditional values of western Judeo-Christian civilization are the ones that eventally triumph.

But there is no perfect political system; like human beings, there are flaws intrinsic to every form of government devised by man. This is why Our Lord and His Apostles did not much concern themselves with government or politics; relative to the pefection of the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world, all forms of government are equally poor. As Christians, our duty is to fight the cultural war, not win the political struggle; to obey the law and respect the government of our homelands no matter how wicked those governments might be. As long as we take care to render unto Caesar only that which belongs to him -- our taxes, our obedience to his laws, and our loyalty -- we are doing our Christian civic duty. It is only when Caesar presumes to demand of us that which we rightly offer only to God -- our worship, our obedience to the natural law, and our love -- that we as Christians may rightly refuse to obey.

Now I read the article - was someone slanting it for his/her own agenda. Quite possibly. That happens to the best of us.

In other words, it's not YOUR fault that you're ignorant, it's the fault of the agenda-driven guy who wrote the article.

In an age where information is a mouse-click away, where it knocks on the door, and where it tries to jimmy the window if you've locked the door...ignorance is both inexcusable and singularly demonstrative.

We'll just keep the free trade thing going with submarines.

No, we will keep it going with the most powerful Navy in the world, which keeps the oceans--the best candidate for the title of "the world common," if there is such a thing--open for our benefit.

Your apparent inability to understand basic economics is rooted in your affinity for the Marxist fallacy of "if A gets a job, it was because B lost his."

As for insulting and name calling, being told that one is ignorant is not an insult--it's either a statement of fact, or it isn't, but it most assuredly was factual in this case. Demonstrating your ignorance is foolish--again, that is a mere statement of fact. It's not insulting, it's not name-calling, it's merely stating the facts at hand. If you personally find it insulting, that's your problem. You made your bed, you lay down in it, you started smoking while lying in bed, and now you're complaining about third-degree burns. Go figure...

[Absent more government restrictions on freedom and free trade, that will never happen. The quickest route to becoming a country like that, would be to implement what you seem to be advocating. A closed system.]

I am not advocating a closed system never said that. In fact, I don't know that I advocating any system, except one without government manipulation. We do not have an open system - so why would my opposition against what we have mean that I want a closed system.

[But alas, we shall never know unless you decide to enlighten us by answering the previously asked questions about your positions on trade and freedom.]

Since I don't know what free trade is - I can't answer and as I said since it is not what we have - it is a theory - neither you nor I know what it would be, therefore, how can we say we advocate it or not.

But since the entire debate has been clouded with mentioned of free trade which has no place in this discussion.

I will tell you what I am for.

I am for getting the government out of my pocket. I don't like them using my tax dollars to build factories overseas, pay off foreign politicians so those factories can be built. I am for the government ceasing to make me subsidize the workers for the companies left here in America. The government just needs to get out of business altogether.

I am for the government cleaning out this country and protecting this country from outsiders.

Now when that is done and we have some semblence of sanity back in this country - we can talk about the theory of free trade.

You know and I know this fiasco called free trade could not have happened without the government manipulation - so why even discuss free trade. It doesn't exist. It has never existed. Now when that happens, I will read all the theories you can give me - then of course, I will read the opposing theories (because there are always those also) and I will get back to you on whether or not I am for free trade. Until then it is a waste of time, but I won't live to see the possibility of anything near free trade.

If you think we now have free trade - then I am against it.

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