Posted on 09/17/2003 7:06:29 AM PDT by Theodore R.
The slow awakening of George W.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: September 17, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Last July, U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick delivered a halftime pep talk to dispirited globalists, thrown on the defensive by the hemorrhaging of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
"What ... a surprise," Zoellick railed at his troops, "to see that the proponents of [free trade] ... have so often abandoned the debate to the economic isolationists and purveyors of fright and retreat."
But by September, Zoellick's own boss seemed to be drifting toward the camp of the "economic isolationists and purveyors of fright."
At a rally in Ohio, which has lost 160,000 manufacturing jobs since mid-2000, President Bush railed: "We've lost thousands of manufacturing jobs because production moved overseas. ... America must send a message overseas – say, look, we expect there to be a fair playing field when it comes to trade."
Yes, friends, at long last, we have their attention.
What's behind this radically revised presidential rhetoric? It is this: U.S. manufacturing jobs are vanishing, and unless he turns it around, Bush's presidency may vanish along with them.
The numbers are breathtaking. Manufacturing jobs have been disappearing for 37 straight months. Not since the Depression have we lost production jobs three years in a row. Since 2000, one in every six manufacturing jobs, 2.7 million, has disappeared. These jobs paid an average wage of $54,000.
Unfortunately for President Bush, while he has a good heart, he was horribly miseducated at Harvard. He simply cannot comprehend that it is free-trade globalism that is destroying U.S. manufacturing jobs, and may yet destroy his presidency.
The serial killer of manufacturing jobs is imports, which are now equal to almost 15 percent of GDP, four times the level they held between 1860 and 1960. What has caused this flood of imports? The trade deals that people like Robert Zoellick negotiate and George W. Bush celebrates.
Consider the numbers.
In July alone, the United States exported $86.1 billion in goods and services. But we imported $126.5 billion, for a trade deficit of $40.4 billion. The total trade deficit for 2003 is estimated at between $480 billion and $500 billion. But the deficit in goods will run closer to $550 billion.
The president's father and Bill Clinton contended that every $1 billion in exports created 20,000 jobs. Thus, a $550 billion trade deficit kills 11 million production and manufacturing jobs.
Say goodbye to blue-collar America.
What is the Bush prescription for curing this metastasizing cancer? In Ohio, he declared, "See, we in America believe we can compete with anybody, just so long as the rules are fair, and we intend to keep the rules fair."
How, Mr. President?
Consider the nation that runs the largest trade surplus with us. In July, we bought $13.4 billion in goods from China and sold China $2.1 billion. U.S. imports from China this year should come in around $160 billion, and U.S. exports to China at $25 billion.
We will thus buy 10 percent of the entire GDP of China, while she buys 0.25 percent of the GDP of the United States. Is this "fair trade"? But how does Bush propose to close this exploding deficit? How can he?
Where a U.S. manufacturing worker may cost $53,000 a year, a factory in China – with $53,000 and using the same machinery and technology as a U.S. factory – can employ 25 reliable, intelligent, hardworking Chinese at $1 an hour.
If you force U.S. businessmen to pay kids who sweep the floor a $5-an-hour minimum wage, while their rivals pay highly skilled Chinese workers $1 an hour, how do you square that with the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws?
Does the president, when he goes on about keeping "the rules fair," mean he will insist that China start paying its skilled workers $25 an hour and subject their factories to the same payroll taxes, wage-and-hour laws, OSHA inspections and environmental rules as ours?
Beijing will tell him to go fly a kite, Made in China.
It is absurd to think we can force foreign nations to accept U.S. rules and regulations on production and American standards on wages and benefits. And why should foreign nations comply, when – with their present policies and laws – they are looting our industrial base and walking away with our inheritance?
The men who have custody today of what was once the most awesome manufacturing base the world had ever seen are ideologues, impervious to argument or evidence. Like the socialists of Eastern Europe, zealots like Zoellick are beyond retraining. They are uneducable. They have to go. The sooner they do, the sooner we can get about rebuilding the self-sufficient and sovereign America they gave away.
So are you going to the game or not? Who do you think will win?
The question is too broad. Sometimes they are sometimes they are not, there is not a definitave answer here.
Americans aren't more competitive on any level that would cause the unemployment rate to decline once a cyclical correction is over?
American's can compete on a skills basis, not a wage basis.
Do you think the stock market and economy should go up endlessly?
The stock market will go up gradually over time up until there is a massive labor shortage from the boomer retirement. Alternatively the credit bubble will pop because of unemployment and interest rates will skyrocket sending the market back down.
Do you realize that 93.9% of the American work force is employed?
Any analyst (finance/business/otherwise) worth his salt knows that relying on a metric like "those seeking work" is foolish. The number is subject to political tampering and will say whatever the current administration wants it to say. Use the SS database and IRS database and you'll have a real number that reflects reality.
And only blind, or those with anti-American agendas refuse to admit this.
Open borders, invasion of *millions* of illegal aliens and the global free traitors are killing America, one job at a time.
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That's an approximation of where the spoiled kids in this country think we're going and where they want to lead us. Fifty years ago my mother said communism was a system in which advocates all were going to become artists, poets, and intellectuals. We have a new form of communism. Under the new form of communism for the elite we will have a $10,000,000,000,000 trade deficit so all the substantive work will be done in other countries to support us while we become a nation of artists, poets, intellectuals, lawyers, and paper pushers coasting in easy lives on the work of others.
This is why discussing economics with people in your crowd is futile. You simply don't understand what economic efficiency even means.
Start a thread about football so I can ignore it, moron.
I think the onus is on the free traders to explain what to do about the unemployable. There will be a large group of unemployable people in the future. Economically, culturally, law enforcement wise, what is their plan to counter-act this by product of "free trade". I went to my home town 2 weeks ago, to an area that was booming in the 80's and 90's. The job losses in the area are huge. Gangs, guns, drugs, graffiti have moved in blighting the area. This was an upwardly mobile community. I felt safe growing up there when the economy was good. I wouldn't go out there alone, or unarmed now though.
Unemployed young men are roaming the streets.
Yes.
You keep saying the same thing. But you keep coming to these threads.
You have NOTHING constructive to offer, so why don't you go away?
So will you be watching? Come on. Give me your prediction. LSU's got a pretty strong offense. Do you think we can stop that?
Maybe you could charter an invisible jet and take some time off of your invisible job and go to the game....ahhh, no that would not work because then you could not sit on FR all day playing the part of ruthless billionare tycoon from your parent's basement.
Bwahahahahaha! Ain't that the truth?
By his own admission, he was barely able to maintain a "C" average.
And his undergraduate major was what? History?
Sheeesh, that MBA of his has "rubber stamp" written all over it.
About the only thing he learned how to do was schmoooze with Daddy's cronies.
Yeah, he'd be a nice guy to schmoooze with, alright. I wouldn't mind inviting him to a backyard Barbeque myself. It'd be fun. But it's also no secret as to why he's so frustratingly clueless most of the time, either.
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