Posted on 02/15/2006 10:42:45 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Our hollow prosperity
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Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
PATRICK BUCHANAN
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
Now that the U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth straight all-time record, a question arises.
What constitutes failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is free trade simply right no matter the results?
Last year, the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China, the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin America. The $50 billion deficit with Mexico was the largest since NAFTA passed and also the largest in history.
When NAFTA was up for a vote in 1993, the Clintonites and their GOP fellow-travelers said it would grow our trade surplus, raise Mexico's standard of living and reduce illegal immigration.
None of this happened. Indeed, the opposite occurred. Mexico's standard of living is lower than it was in 1993, the U.S. trade surplus has vanished, and America is being invaded. Mexico is now the primary source of narcotics entering the United States.
Again, when can we say a free-trade policy has failed?
The Bushites point proudly to 4.6 million jobs created since May 2003, a 4.7 percent unemployment rate and low inflation.
Unfortunately, conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts and analysts Charles McMillion and Ed Rubenstein have taken a close look at the figures and discovered that the foundation of the Bush prosperity rests on rotten timber.
The entire job increase since 2001 has been in the service sector – credit intermediation, health care, social assistance, waiters, waitresses, bartenders, etc. – and state and local government.
But, from January 2001 to January 2006, the United States lost 2.9 million manufacturing jobs, 17 percent of all we had. Over the past five years, we have suffered a net loss in goods-producing jobs.
"The decline in some manufacturing sectors has more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing than with a super-economy that is 'the envy of the world,'" writes Roberts.
Communications equipment lost 43 percent of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37 percent ... The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30 percent. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25 percent of its workforce.
How did this happen? Imports. The U.S. trade deficit in advanced technology jobs in 2005 hit an all-time high.
As for the "knowledge industry" jobs that were going to replace blue-collar jobs, it's not happening. The information sector lost 17 percent of all its jobs over the last five years.
In the same half-decade, the U.S. economy created only 70,000 net new jobs in architecture and engineering, while hundreds of thousands of American engineers remain unemployed.
If we go back to when Clinton left office, one finds that, in five years, the United States has created a net of only 1,054,000 private-sector jobs, while government added 1.1 million. But as many new private sector jobs are not full-time, McMillion reports, "the country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001."
This is an economic triumph?
Had the United States not created the 1.4 million new jobs it did in health care since January 2001, we would have nearly half a million fewer private-sector jobs than when Bush first took the oath.
Ed Rubenstein of ESR Research Economic Consultants looks at the wage and employment figures and discovers why, though the Bushites were touting historic progress, 55 percent of the American people in a January poll rated the Bush economy only "fair" or "poor."
Not only was 2005's growth of 2 million jobs a gain of only 1.5 percent, anemic compared to the average 3.5 percent at this stage of other recoveries, the big jobs gains are going to immigrants.
Non-Hispanic whites, over 70 percent of the labor force, saw only a 1 percent employment increase in 2005. Hispanics, half of whom are foreign born, saw a 4.7 percent increase. As Hispanics will work for less in hospitals and hospices, and as waiters and waitresses, they are getting the new jobs.
But are not wages rising? Nope. When inflation is factored in, the Economic Policy Institute reports, "real wages fell by 0.5 percent over the last 12 months after falling 0.7 percent the previous 12 months."
If one looks at labor force participation – what share of the 227 million potential workers in America have jobs – it has fallen since 2002 for whites, blacks and Hispanics alike. Non-Hispanic whites are down to 63.4 percent, but black Americans have fallen to 57.7 percent.
What is going on? Hispanic immigrants are crowding out black Americans in the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled job market. And millions of our better jobs are being lost to imports and outsourcing.
The affluent free-traders, whose wealth resides in stocks in global companies, are enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens and sacrificing the American worker on the altar of the Global Economy.
None dare call it economic treason.
I wonder if this newbie thinks we haven't seen this all before?
SuperOne could be a newbie, or a retread, I'm waiting for SO to say ratty rat rat.
Good question.
I did say “legal goods” and our patent laws should be applied to pharmaceutical drugs in a way that allows developers of new drugs to earn a profit on the research and development costs.
Trading in knockoffs of those patent-protected products would still be illegal. In the same way, you couldn’t sell Chinese versions of US copyrighted books or music.
Free trade does not mean all laws regarding copyright protection are invalidated.
Are you claiming that flippin' burgers is the only thing Americans do? Is that what you do?
We used to clearly lead the world in dozens of industries, automobiles, low cost electronics, high end electronics, motorcycles, bicycles, quality furniture, cotton goods, linnen, steel, small arms (well the Russians were always the volume producers), airplanes, computer hardward, computer software, computer services.
Are you claiming we no longer manufacture any of these products? Are you one of the guys who claims 100% of goods sold at WalMart are Chinese?
Did you happen to see that thread about Republicans being happier then Democrats...and the fringe kooks so far to the right they're on the left? pat and his patsies are living proof of it.
Does Ann Coulter still have a protection order out against him?
"It's based on static, zero-sum, thinking. Essentially, they assume there is a finite of wealth to go around.
Protectionists are bad at math."
No. We believe there is a finite amount of CAPITAL to go around.
China is Socialist.
China is Authoritarian.
China is Abortionist.
China is Atheist.
China would love to export these cultural virtues outside their own border.
They are the enemy. Aiding them is treason.
Free-traders may be OK at math, but they are apparently very VERY bad at reasoning.
Neocons? Are they Joooooooos?
IMO, he could give ann coulter a few pointers in wolfing down cheesburgers to fill out that stick frame of hers.
You are a liar. Buchanan mentioned the women and children killed in Pakistan in one clause, in a long article discussing the possibility of war with Iran and how another ground war in the Mideast might not be in America's interests and should require a Congressional declaration of war.
Buchanan's starting point is always what is best for America. Which makes him hard to understand to critics who have different sentiments.
Yes. And China is investing a large part of their capital in America.
They are the enemy. Aiding them is treason.
Someone who buys Chinese goods is a traitor? What about Mexican goods? Traitor too? What about Japanese goods? Traitor? British goods? Canadian goods?
Please, spell it out for everyone. Thanks.
LOL! BS...pat is the liar. He whined about the innocent women and children AND NEVER ONCE mentioned that the target were top terrorists...and that we actually killed them.
pat doesn't give a damn about America, he only cares about his personal hatred for President Bush.
Can you explain me why it is good to protect the corporate return of research and development costs but it is not good to protect workers investment of time and money in acquiring the advance skills by the protecting their job market?
the topic is the economy.... btw ... you have been replaced by mexican.
What about you? Haven't you implied we don't manufacture anything in the US anymore? I know you've made fact-free claims about WalMart's goods.
LOL! The author is an anti-American shill...bwt...you've been replaced by another Hamas supporter.
Good one. That's what makes Pat's dissenters so mad. They can't refute his truth unless they twist his words. When Pat write an article you see an exhibition of 'neo-cons' gone wild.
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