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.

[Dane]

Only 2 cities in Japan were bombed.

Really? Are you saying only Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I guess the Doolittle raid on Tokyo and subsequent fire bombings on Tokyo and other cities in Japan are just one big conspiracy theory to you.

[GrandMoM]

BUMP

[DoctorMichael]

".......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..........."

........and what WILL our wonderful trading partners, the Chinese, want to buy with all that surplus of American dollars that they can't already make for themselves?

"Big Ticket" items?

Hmmmmmmmmm.........Cray Supercomputers for modeling nuclear bombs before manufacture?

Hmmmmmmmmm..........Ballistic missle technology?

[Gargantua]

NAFTA and GATT are the cluprits whose hands are dirty with the blood of the slaughtered American manufacturing base.

And, since these (NAFTA & GATT) are merely acronyms for bad policy, they have no hands. It is the hands of the Big-Business, Multinational Corporation-owned American Senators, Representatives and Presidents (plural) who facilitated this selling out of our nation's riches and future.

They are the ones whose hands are smeared with this blood... or are they?

After all, we are the imbeciles who vote them into office, who sign their paychecks, and then sit idle as they vote themselves pay raises, and $100,000.00+ per-year retirement benefits packages.

I guess, looked at fully, it is we, the American sheeple, whose blood is on our own hands. Take pride. We've done a great job with the sacred trust left to us by the Founders.

We blame guys like Perot and Buchanan for being right about this crap, and then we vote for the Dem-Rep Duopoly.

Excuse me now, I have to go puke.

;-/

[Texas_Dawg]

Hmmmmmmmmm.........Cray Supercomputers for modeling nuclear bombs before manufacture?

That would be great. Some friends and I as well as some clients of ours have made a killing owning CRAY. Higher revs would be great.

[Poohbah]

Does that $15-per-barrel figure come before or AFTER the EPA/OSHA/Clean Water Act/EEOC regulatory costs are factoed in.

Before. Most private enterprises use a 2.5-3.5 multiplier to account for indirect costs--i.e., if your industrial process costs $1,000, your final cost will be $2,500 to $3,500.

So, oil at $15 a barrel from this process will cost $37.50 to $52.50 a barrel.

After that, the producer has to make a profit--which means another $3.75 to $5.25 a barrel (assuming 10% markup to cover the cost of capital and have some profit--that evil word--left over).

Total cost: $41.25-$57.75 a barrel.

[TomB]

Only 2 cities in Japan were bombed.

I don't suppose you have a link to support this idiocy?

[Walkin Man]

President Bush is done, put a fork in him. He is well on the way to being a one-term President.

He could care less if millions of Americans are losing their jobs due to the free-trade religious cult that controls the Repub party.

You can not only thank free-traitors for massive unemployment in America, you can say hello to 8 years of demoRat control, all thanks to the free-traitors.

[ckilmer]

I wish you guys would take a moment to read the article from discover magazine that I posted.

the company is funded by the epa and the doe and it has sec clearance. It has one working plant in philadelphia that processes sewage that's been open for two years. another plant in missouri w/$20 million funding from Conagra changes turkey entrails to oil. Both plants do the job for $15@barrel. That is the cost to them of the process of converting carbon based sewage & waste is $15@barrel. The epa loves this stuff.

There are a number of former republican officials who also endorse this technology. it is the real deal.

[Recourse]

Don't buy into Pat's propaganda. Protectionism only weakens our economy. Protectionist measures give domestic producers an artificial advantage over their foreign counterparts. At first glance, such barriers may seem to be advantageous measures that save jobs. In truth, however, policies that exclude foreign products only hurt the global economy and all who participate in it. Consumers in the importing nation have to pay more for that widget—when it could have been produced and imported from another country at a lower cost. These restrictions undoubtedly benefit local producers but are an inefficient use of money for everyone else.

Every job "saved" in a particular industry costs consumers.

[DoctorMichael]

"....Higher revs would be great......"

Was it Lenin or Stalin that said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope to hang them"?

[steve50]

In the Preamble it says "to promote the general welfare...". Most Americans, myself included believe that this intells creating and maintaining an economic climate that is conducive to the formation and expansion of the middle class.

The Preamble says that "to promote the general welfare" is one of the reasons they wrote the Constitution. The Constitution then goes on to clearly limit the powers of the government and nowhere does it give them the right to social engineer classes. The liberal interpetation of this clause has caused many of our problems.

[Theodore R.]

If what you say happens, the GOP will never figure out what caused antoher defeat. They will say that Bush ran too much as a "conservative" and did not appeal sufficiently to "moderates." The GOP then will either renominate G.W. on a "more moderate" platform for 2008 for a third run, or it will field Jeb. There will be no shortage of Bush candidacies in 2008, I would imagine.

[Theodore R.]

He is well on the way to being a one-term President.

We will know that this statement IS true when the nine Democrat candidates drop out of the race and endorse a "Clinton-Clark" ticket.

[EternalVigilance]

You couldn't be righter.

The so-called 'general welfare clause' is the most misinterpreted part of the document. Politicians love to use it to justify anything and everything.

Thanks for pointing it out so succinctly.

[LIBERATENJ]

OK, This is long. But it needs to be posted. This is an article written by Walter E. Williams in 1998:

Free Trade versus Fair Trade


The defeat of President Clinton's call for "fast-track" authority proves that people love monopolies in what they sell and free markets in what they buy. It means higher prices for what they sell and lower prices for what they buy. Businessmen and union leaders concoct all manner of myth-making to achieve monopoly power and international trade is no exception. Let's examine some of it.

There's the bugaboo about trade deficits, as in complaints that we buy more from Japan than they buy from us. That's not only mythology, but it's not true. Let me use domestic trade to make my point. I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me, but is there a "trade deficit?" When I buy $100 worth of groceries, the value of my current account(goods) rises by $100 but the value of my capital account(money) goes down by $100. By the same token, the grocer's current account(goods) goes down by $100 and his capital account(money) rises by $100. There's no trade imbalance whatsoever; I've given him $100 worth of value and he's given me $100 worth of value. Similarly, when a Japanese automaker sells us a $15,000 car, his current account goes down by $15,000, and ours goes up. He might purchase $15,000 worth of AT&T stock instead of buying California oranges. But just as in the grocer example, his capital account rose by $15,000 and ours goes down.

Protectionist (seekers of monopoly) sometimes argue that American workers can't compete with low-wage foreign workers. On it's face, this argument is ludicrous. If true, we would export almost nothing; American wages are about the highest in the world, yet we are the worlds major exporter. Wages alone explain virtually nothing about trade patterns. It's wages relative to productivity. For example, the fact that a Mexican road construction worker might earn just $3 an hour, while his American counterpart earns $25 an hour, doesn't mean Americans can't compete. The reason is simple. American workers have more capital(modern heavy equipment) working with them, making the output of a day's work much greater.

How about tariffs saving jobs? That's kind of true, but they're saved at the expense of other jobs. Steel-tariff restrictions might save jobs for steelworkers, but they destroy other jobs. Steel teriffs raise steel prices. Thus, steel-using companies-like tractor, refridgerator, and car manufacturers-face higher production costs. Higher costs weaken their ability to compete both domestically and internationally. Politicians love this. Steelworker beneficiaries of tariffs will be eternally grateful and know whom to vote for. The invisible victims in steel-using industries won't know why they are unemployed. Politicians can blame their plight on anything from Reaganomics, the UPS strike, or global warming.

There is no intellectually respectable argument against free trade. The thousands of pages found in GATT and NAFTA are not about free trade, but they are side deals and giveaways. Thousands of pages are not necessary free trade. At one time there wasn't free trade within our borders; here's what our Founders wrote to promote free trade: " No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another." That North American Free Trade Agreement is found in Article 1, Section 9, of our Constitution. With a word change here and there, it could just as easily serve us internationally.

[hedgetrimmer]

The Doolittle raid hit military targets, not manufacturing. "Damage to the intended military targets was modest".
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/misc-42/dooltl.htm

The claim was that all manufacturing outside of north America was reduced to rubble. I'm just saying that wasn't so.

[Theodore R.]

I like Walter E. Williams very much.

He earns his living in the open market of academe and media. He is well educated, brilliant, witty. He does not compete with slave-wage labor in India, China, and Bangladesh. He does not understand how the manufacturing base hurts the blue-collar workers, in my opinion.

[Lazamataz]

Also, the price of the product would likely go down, offsetting the deflationary effect of lower wages earned by its employees.

This is known as 'deflation', and -- while I am not an economist, I've had a few courses -- is extremely destructive to modern economies. Cash hoarding begins to occur, as cash becomes more valuable by the day. People tend not to spend valuable cash. The concept of interest on loans is negated -- people can simply borrow money that becomes more valuable by the day. Lenders won't lend.

You are hoping for a scenario that would pretty much ruin the country.

Second, given the option of working for less or not working at all, which would you choose?

*sneer* That's a hell of a choice. Lose your left leg, or only your left foot.

[Lazamataz]

Walter E. Williams, 1998: "The thousands of pages found in GATT and NAFTA are not about free trade, but they are side deals and giveaways. Thousands of pages are not necessary free trade."

Boy, has his tune changed.