QUESTION: Are free-trade agreements good or bad for U.S. manufacturing jobs?

Northwest Indiana News ^ | Monday, October 06, 2003 | Barbara Glepko-Toncheff (Letter to the Editor)

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

The American consumers have hurt themselves by being awed by the "better deal" Trojan horse and consistently sending their hard-earned dollars overseas to the coffers of foreign-owned companies being subsidized by the American government. These companies then take the lion's share of the profits, pay taxes there to support their homeland, and come back and buy up more of the American pie, while greedy politicians and CEOs to massage our trade laws to their benefit.

Every American should read author Roger Simmermaker's hot new book: "How Americans Can Buy American" before our sovereignty is completely sold out and the living standard bar is lowered more. The first chapter can be read online, and the author can be contacted there.

Burdened with legacy costs, three times higher taxes and government-imposed regulations, domestic-owned companies have to compete with slave labor and are forced to look for the cheapest way to conduct business to please the consumer's demands for the cheapest, thus the job exodus.

In essence, the American consumers helped fuel the same vehicle that came back and ran over them. We will become a colony again by losing our manufacturing independence, only this time under Asian rule. Total capitalism will be the death of our middle class society. Do you think the wealthiest among us care? Only Wal-Mart workers and rich CEOs will be left.

The Internal Revenue Service was formed to make up for the deficit when the tariffs were dropped in 1913. That's why all four great men on Mount Rushmore were protectionists. Do you like April 15? Grandma was right when she told you, "Don't be penny wise and pound foolish!"

Barbara Glepko-Toncheff

Chagrin Falls, Ohio

[1rudeboy]

Self-serving? Bah
Simplistic? Maybe

But if things are more complicated, as you suggest, then perhaps you can explain why protectionists have such a symbiotic relationship with the Left, why hedgetrimmer cites Robert Reich with a straight face, or why Willie can cite Ralph Nader's organization to support his positions? (To his credit he hasn't done so recently).

Get off the pot. Tell me how complicated things are. Explain to me why your philosophical comrades have that bust of Lenin in their room.

[1rudeboy]

Your reply #76 is simply false. If you require a response, I'll need a valid question.

[1rudeboy]

The communist agenda for the US advocates free trade regardless of the risk to our society.

Again, false. The communists, in your limited example, advocated free trade because they felt it was a danger to our society. At the risk of appearing simplistic [/sarcasm], would you care to explain why you agree with the previous sentence?

[hedgetrimmer]

Why do you think it isn't a danger for our country to trade with communist nations?

[1rudeboy]

One final thing. The ITC study that you mention came down firmly on the fence about steel tariffs. That you think it favors the tariffs in the first place questions your commitment to "rigorous" study.

[hedgetrimmer]

Explain to me why your philosophical comrades have that bust of Lenin in their room

Oops you are getting me mixed up with someone else. That is the categorically groundless charge you leveled at me. Or maybe its the only argument you have that supports the "free trade" system as we have it today. That everyone who questions it is a philosophical comrade with lenin. I wonder....

[1rudeboy]

Leading question. I feel that I'm appearing in a bad Perry Mason episode.

[1rudeboy]

Groundless? [laugh]
I am simply asking why your political/philosophical objectives coincide with those of the Left. Which is not the same as calling you a leftist, I hope you understand. But what makes you think that you are magically immune from the comparison?

[hedgetrimmer]

Its interesting that you have not posted one fact to bolster anything you have said, you have not cited one paper, you do not answer questions put to you and you insult people by calling them names.Then you get your posters and your insults mixed up(he he).So many posters, so many insults, its easy to see how you might get confused.

[1rudeboy]

[yawn]

[1rudeboy]

Ok, I'll admit that I'm curious, my Robert Reich-loving friend, who do you think I mixed-up?

[hedgetrimmer]

Imagine yourself at the latest WTO meeting in Cancun

Then you won't be bored.

[Grit]

However,this was an exceedingly big cause of the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

As predicted by Bastiat in 1850...

Slavery and Tariffs Are Plunder

But even in the United States, there are two issues - and only two - that have always endangered the public peace.

What are these two issues? They are slavery and tariffs. These are the only two issues where, contrary to the general spirit of the republic of the United States, law has assumed the character of a plunderer.

Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property.

It is a most remarkable fact that this double legal crime - a sorrowful inheritance from the Old World - should be the only issue which can, and perhaps will, lead to the ruin of the Union. It is indeed impossible to imagine, at the very heart of a society, a more astounding fact than this: The law has come to be an instrument of injustice. And if this fact brings terrible consequence in Europe, where the perversion of the law is a principle; a system?

[hedgetrimmer]

Tariffs protect property.

A tariff on foreign almonds protects the value of the almond growers crop(his property).

[Grit]

Thus the term 'protectionist'

[hedgetrimmer]

How can tariffs be plunder and protect at the same time?

[Grit]

How can tariffs be plunder and protect at the same time?

It depends on which side of the equation you are on. One man's protection is another man's plunder.

A tariff on foreign almonds protects the value of the almond growers crop(his property).

...at the expense of the almond purchaser. Now my Almond Joy costs $1.50. That's 50 cents I no longer have to spend on other fine American made products.

[hedgetrimmer]

So the WTO supports free trade. Well here is what one US senator says:

Meanwhile a powerful US lawmaker said he would identify countries to blame for the debacle and try to shut them out of lucrative free-trade pacts with the United States.

Senator Charles Grassley said in a statement, "I will use my position as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over international trade policy in the US Senate, to carefully scrutinize the positions taken by many WTO members during this ministerial.

"I will take note of those nations that played a constructive role in Cancun, and those nations that did not."

How free is that!

[hedgetrimmer]

Well, I am on the American side. Which side are you on?

[TopQuark]

Does your "freedom of exchange" extend to communist countries?

Yes, it does. The individual firms and consumers in those countries are not free to engage in trade, and the government acts as the trading partner. You are free to seel to that entity and free from buy from it.