Patrick J. Buchanan Examines "The Slow Awakening of George W."

Washington Times ^ | 09-17-03 | Buchanan, Patrick J.

[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.

[Texas_Dawg]

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.

Haha. Nice. I like that one (seriously).

[hchutch]

Until the regulators and trial lawyers begin to wreak their havoc, as they have done to every other area of business. As it becomes more profitable, the more the IRS takes, and that becomes a burden.

And eventually, the BS tolerance will be exhausted, and the company will start to look for a friendlier place to do business. The self-destructive cycle we began in the 1960s, where anyone who was a successful businessman now finds himself the object of envy and hatred, instigated by the lefties and the paleos.

This country had treated some of its most successful entrepreneuers, such as Bill Gates, like dirt. When they succeed, it seems as if this country, rather than thanking them, tries to destroy them. That is NOT going to make them feel favorably inclined to this country. Now, the paleos are saying, "You'd better not outsource or offshore, or we will treat you like dirt." They're ALREADY treated like dirt, they're ALREADY held in contempt. What do they have to lose by outsourcing or offshoring?

No poor person provided a productive job to anyone. People like Bill Gates have provided LOTS of productive jobs for this country, and they are thanked with attempts to bring them down. Until we break the cycle of class envy, until we can bring common sense back to regulations and the tort system, we will continue to harvest what has been sown for decades.

[Lazamataz]

You have no college education whatsoever and you prove it with every post.

[RockyMtnMan]

I understand the law of comparative-advantage quite well, you just choose to ignore the need for consumers with strong buying power. Trade deficits are a good example of your "economic efficiency" statement. The value of goods acquired by China/India at a dramatically reduced rate do not translate into better value to the consumer.

Intellectual property is more valuable than the widget itself. The trade imbalance reflects this and would be higher if we counted the value of a "job".

[dogbyte12]

I played hookey today. I have saved up vacation days. That is my excuse for posting habitually to this thread. Texas_dawg posts as much as I do when on vacation. We are to trust a guy who respects his boss, his job so much, that he can continuously post while on his employer's dime.

I simply do not believe him any more. Either his boss is blind, or stupid, or Texas_dawg is a fraud.

Can anybody picture a productive worker on Wall Street spending the entire trading day posting here?

[Lazamataz]

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.

This also could be accurate. A child would have had no college, and this person clearly has never even driven by a college campus.

[Theodore R.]

Well, TX had an election Saturday, and the doctors beat the lawyers by 1 percent.

Can the ill start going to lawyers for medical advice?

[Texas_Dawg]

you just choose to ignore the need for consumers with strong buying power

I'm a supply-sider. So was Ronald Reagan. Sorry you're not. Supply-side economics work very well.

[DoughtyOne]

The progression of the globalist debate has revealed it for what it is. In 1994,95 I railed on the idea of globalism and sending jobs overseas. The ploy in those days was to state that hi-teck was going to save the day. Who needed manufacturing if computer related jobs were going to replace them. We were all going to get an internet job and Hi Teck would be to manufacturing, what the industrial revolution had been to the horse and buggy days.

Then around 1998 hi-teck began to go bust. The tech industry bubble burst and here we are today. Note that none of the hi-teck promoters are advancing the theory that we bring back manufacturing jobs due to the hi-teck tank.

It was all a ruse to support something that they wanted. They wanted to send manufacturing overseas, and they did. Now to hell with the excuses. It's a done deal. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Now outsourcing has come along. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs stand on the brink overlooking the abyss. These outsourcing pricks don't give a damn about anyone. If they can save $0.10 an hour, they'll stab their neighbor in the back.

Ethics have for all intents and purposes vanished from this nation. A nation without them will not remain a nation for long.

[Texas_Dawg]

Can anybody picture a productive worker on Wall Street spending the entire trading day posting here?

And what do you do again?

[RLK]

This isn't about free trade. It's about the ascendence of a new breed of lazy useless commissaars. Bush and the Bush family are among them. Nobody in that family has done anything of substance since somebody in the family hit an oil well 100 years ago. Since then they fabricate importance and perpetuate their position by engaging in politics.

[dogbyte12]

26 posts an hour, during a trading day. Wow, I wish I had the time to do that when working. Even posting 26 bits of rubbish would eat up time. Consider the fact that this guy is reading, thinking, refreshing, while he is not posting, and you can figure out how much "work" this guy is doing while Wall Street is roaring.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Have you checked the stock market lately? Corporate profits were up 51% last quarter over the year before. If you'd invest in the stock market and quit complaining, bla bla bla.

For Gods sake, you never stop with this bull sh*t.

America is still littered with millions of people that got their crank caught in the door, and lost not only their butts in the stock market, but their homes and retirements etc etc.

And you stand here telling people they should invest their hard earned money in the freaking stock market? LOL!

As I've said before, I would rather juggle chain saws or go to Las Vegas, then hand over one dime to the stock market boys

You want to throw your money at the stock market? Have at it!

[RockyMtnMan]

Your statement shows your lack of knowledge of a market economy. You can't have supply without demand that's a fundamental law of economics, didn't you know that?

Reagan was a proponent of Trickle-down economics because it created jobs at home through capital investment. Capital investment has been trickling to India and China, do you think that was what Reagan meant?

[Major_Risktaker]

That is the best you can do?

[Theodore R.]

It's kind of like Wal-Mart coming into a town of 8,000 people and putting all the small merchants out of business. Wal-Mart has the variety, the lower prices, etc, and the small merchant cannot compete. So he goes out of business, and his store becomes a boarded-up eyesore for many years before some video store decides to try that location for a few months.

Not everyone can have the nice white-collar jobs. There must be jobs for the blue-collar men too. And there is a danger in a country not producing so many consumer goods. There is a very long list of what is no longer produced in the USA. It ranges from televisions to radios and even brooms.

[Texas_Dawg]

As I've said before, I would rather juggle chain saws or go to Las Vegas, then hand over one dime to the stock market boys

This probably explains why you're so unhappy. Do you keep your money in socks under the bed?

[Texas_Dawg]

Capital investment has been trickling to India and China, do you think that was what Reagan meant?

No. He meant for it to go to Japan and Mexico.

We're all doomed.

[BMiles2112]

I think the onus is on the free traders to explain what to do about the unemployable.
There is an assumption here that people, in general, aren't smart enough to figure out what jobs exist, what they pay, and what future there is in these jobs, and they will become permanently unemployed. Hundreds of thousands of former farmers found work outside agriculture once machinery made their labor virtually worthless.

[RLK]

Daddy Bush defused the Reagan momentum with a mass of momentum-absorbing bland putty. His stupid useless kid is now presiding over the destruction of this nation.