The NAFTA Myth

The Mises Daily ^ | 11/30/13 | Murray Rothbard

[BfloGuy]

I've been criticized roundly by some here [usually by being called by the clever term "free traitor"] and supported, of course, by many others for my insistence on free trade as a principle of individual liberty. But free trade has been given a bad name in this country by the elite's managed trade deals which are little more than the usual crony capitalism.

We haven't experienced free trade in this country since before WWI. And we had a run of pretty amazing growth when we did.

[Vaquero]

Id like to see our trading partners being free traders also. But they are heavily invested in their manufacturers and therefore we do not have free trade with such partners

[DoughtyOne]

Any agreement that gives non-citizens the right to develop what our policies will be, is off the table for me.

These are multi-national agreements, and their review process can morph the original terms.

Who doesn’t actually agree with Free Trade as long as it makes sense? If it’s contributing to the standard of living for our citizens, I’m pretty much for it. If it puts some folks out of work so someone who is still working can get a 25% discount on what they purchase, I think it’s a decaying process on the well-being of our nation.

We MUST HAVE EMPLOYED citizens to thrive. Employing the citizens of other nations while our populace puts up with 25% unemployment and another 25% of our citizens have to work for far less than they used to, doesn’t add up on the list of what healthy nations do.

I don’t like taxes, but we do have to have ‘some’ tax base. It’s silly to thing we don’t. As we build ever larger national debt, there are contributing factors. Those factors include the financial well-being of our citizens.

As for these agreements, there are always things included that have nothing to do with trade, but more a binding of our border status, across border security, and a myriad of employment practices.

My rule of thumb is this. If we could thrive as a nation without these multi-national agreeements thick enough so no sane person would read them, then why must we have them now?

Trade took place before. We obviously don’t need these agreements to conduct it now. Further, we don’t have to have 20 nations in an agreement to get an agreement.

These things get far afield. They shouldn’t.

Personal agreements nation by nation are a better way to go IMO. If there is a reason to alter the agreement, we can do so without offending the other 19 nations in the agreement.

We hobble ourselves, and make agreements that don’t benefit us all too often.

I just don’t agree with this drive to turn us into a multi-national co-op.

We obviously didn’t have to go this route. And when you look at where we were twenty-five years ago today, and where we are now, I defy anyone to say we’re better off economically today.

[Mouton]

We obviously didn’t have to go this route. And when you look at where we were twenty-five years ago today, and where we are now, I defy anyone to say we’re better off economically today.

Were if it were not for the arguments by Ross Perot long ago, Clinton would never have been president. Unfortunately those who heard Ross’s commentary thought he was a nut and Bush I went down in flames.

[DoughtyOne]

Part of Perot’s message was reasoned.

Unfortunately, it remains true that he was a nut.

Clinton stroked his ego, and the little nebish nearly walked with the whole bag of marbles.

The problem for us, was that globalist suicidal trade was going to happen, Bush or Clinton.

The globalists drafted the plan. Both parties bought into it. Here we are today. Perot was right, but guess who ushered in the globalist of his choice. Ross Perot.

[rbg81]

Unfortunately, it remains true that he [Perot] was a nut.

---

Yeah, a “nut” who made a few billion dollars. Wish I was that nuts.

As for free trade, if one trading partner is practicing free trade and the other is managing its trade, the the first partner is a sap.

[DoughtyOne]

Agreed. I will grant you that on the surface Perot looked like a financial sage, but he acquired his wealth from government contracts. At the very least, that places a very valid asterisk after his wealth IMO.

[BillGunn]

Btt

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks.

[RC one]

We haven't experienced free trade in this country since before WWI.

I pretty much have to agree with that. Capitalism works just fine when socialists aren't interfering with it. Unfortunately, they have been interfering with it for a long time and then they have the gall to claim that it doesn't work and, therefore, we need more socialism. It's like someone pouring sugar into their gas tank and then complaining when their car stops working and then demanding more sugar to fix it.

[RaceBannon]

boy did this topic cause quite a stir 10 years ago!!!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/954156/posts

[Count of Monte Fisto]

True free trade with First World countries like Japan and Germany would be fine. In fact the competition would invigorate all our economies.

But our system could never compete with Third wage slave gulags like Red China and India. American workers making 15 bucks an hour and benefits can never compete with some poor Chinese kid making 10 cents a 14 hour shift.

The Globalists know this and have used Red Chinese cheap labor to deindustrialize us and to deliberately wreck our economy. Without a strong middle-class or economic independence the USA can be easily submerged into the Globalist's One World Government.

The Globalists and their Free Traitor dupes have ruined this country.

[BfloGuy]

American workers making 15 bucks an hour and benefits can never compete with some poor Chinese kid making 10 cents a 14 hour shift.

We should let the country where 10¢/hour is the prevailing wage[hint: that ain't China] make what they can and buy it from them freeing up our capital for the items they can't afford to make.

[BfloGuy]

boy did this topic cause quite a stir 10 years ago!!!

It's painful for me to read threads like that because our idiocratic leaders have tarred the concept of the freedom to trade with crony-capitalist nonsense like NAFTA.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

freeing up our capital for the items they can't afford to make.

With our state-of-the-art robots.

Ska-rew the unions.

[BfloGuy]

they have been interfering with it for a long time and then they have the gall to claim that it doesn't work and, therefore, we need more socialism

Yeah, the vast majority of Americans still think we have a capitalist economy when all of us under the age of 80 have never lived under a system even close to one.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Democrats, union members, black separatists...they're all just as patriotic as you.

They have a plan for a "strong middle class," too.

Why don't all you budding social engineers go fuck yourself?

[BfloGuy]

If it’s contributing to the standard of living for our citizens, I’m pretty much for it. If it puts some folks out of work so someone who is still working can get a 25% discount on what they purchase, I think it’s a decaying process on the well-being of our nation.

Free trade -- even the real kind based on actual freedom -- will always cause some to lose work. People in other countries with different economic situations will be able to produce some goods more cheaply and more efficiently.

We should take advantage of that and shift our capital into lines of production that are more capital-based and more profitable. In a well-functioning and free economy, that process would more than compensate for the losses.

It is the gradual erosion of our economic freedom that causes the overall job losses -- not the freedom, itself.

[DoughtyOne]

If it’s contributing to the standard of living for our citizens, I’m pretty much for it. If it puts some folks out of work so someone who is still working can get a 25% discount on what they purchase, I think it’s a decaying process on the well-being of our nation.

Free trade -- even the real kind based on actual freedom -- will always cause some to lose work. People in other countries with different economic situations will be able to produce some goods more cheaply and more efficiently.

Except one thing.  When you have rogue states, you don't do business with them.  You don't want them to become an economic powerhouse with evil intent.  That's precisely what we have with China.  You don't want to do that with a Hugo Chavez, a Fidel Castro, or the People's Republic of China.  It's suicide to do it.

When you make this kind of assertion, you're pretty much sticking to the Holy Grail of Conservative thought.  I'm not convinced that is a good thing.

My rule of thumb has been tied to something most people enjoy and can understand.  Sex.  Sex is great.  Can we participate in it 24 hours a day every day?  Most thinking people would recognize there are limits to even the best of things in life.  We moderate on the issue of multiple partners, setting down ground rules that make families more strong and stable.

If this is true, and I believe it to be, then why should trade be any different?  Is trade good?  Yes, it is good, but being honest with ourselves, there are times when it can be bad too.

What would be an example of bad trade?  I would say that it could be when it strengthens what would be an obvious adversary.  I would also say it could be wrong if it were to pit our workers against other workers when our workers have absolutely no chance of competing.  I'm not a union sympathizer by any means, but I do think we should be very careful about destroying jobs and industry in the United States.  That's not to say that union shops haven't caused part of the problem with their demands.  We recognize that.  That was wrong too.

One has only to look at China, what has happened there, to realize there can be some VERY BAD downsides to trade.  China benefited from the trade.  We did not as a nation.  China became wealthy, productive, and a world class nation.  We languished, our people were put out on the street with no jobs, and China also became a threat along the way.  There was nothing free about this trade.  China manipulated it's money value so that our goods going into China had to hurdle a 30-40% exhange rate that made it next to impossible to sell our goods there.

The last thing that I want to mention, is that when our business sector sells it's soul on the world market, to get cheap labor, it spreads it's patent and industrial secrets far and wide.  China won't allow anything to be made in it's nation until it has all proprietary supporting information and technology.  Out little 20 year scamper into the world of senseless free trade gone absolutely mad, was to gift China with 200 years worth of tecnology.  We gave them the secrets, gave them the tools, gave them the know how, and basically handed them the guts of our industrial machine, for free.

In what world does it make sense to undermine our ability in this manner, when the obvious damage can only result in what it was predicted to by people such as myself?

We can sit here and pat ourselves on the back for being free and doing what we want, but at the end of the day that was the main focus of the 1970s Hippies.  It wasn't realistic then.  It's isn't realistic now.  You have to use common sense.  Over the last twenty years, trade mavons used none.  Well, here we are.

Obama has doubled down, and actually made things exponentially worse.  That's not to say it was all the Democrats fault though.  Bush had a Republcian Congress, and look what that ultimately resulted in.

Our economy is sick, no doubt.  Financial practices were abysmal.  Our overseas business aqumen was downright suicidal though.

I would also submit that yes, there are times when it's best to operate as a closed shop rather than do what we have done.  What is the benefit of free trade if it facilitates our nation becoming a second or third tier nation?  Right now were in the midst of a depression that has touched at least 50% of our work-force negatively.  Is that just because we have a sick economy right now?  Well, the economy didn't help, but we were sick long before the 2008 crash.  It really hit the fan in about 2000.

In a four year term, we generally add about 9.0 million jobs.  Over two terms in office, a president can expect to see jobs go up by at least 17 million jobs.  This took place from 1960 to the year 2000.  Do you know what the job growth under Bush was? For his first term, it was negative (around 800,000 jobs).  This was the first time in over 40 years we had seen something like that.  I submit that all other things being equal, the loss of jobs under Bush was the result of inexcusable trade policies.

We should take advantage of that and shift our capital into lines of production that are more capital-based and more profitable. In a well-functioning and free economy, that process would more than compensate for the losses.

Please tell me what restrictions were placed on business in the last 20 years.  You'll have to excuse me, but business did whatever the sam hell it pleased.  It there too much taxation and regulation?  I believe so.  It's pretty well accepted that we do.  None the less, business moved off short.  Every job it could send away, it did.

Our government messed with the lending industry to make it easier for people to get homes who couldn't pay for them.  That did finally hit the fan around 2008.  That was the double-whammy that sent our nation into a death spiral.

It is the gradual erosion of our economic freedom that causes the overall job losses -- not the freedom, itself.

I appreciate the argument, but the economic freedom flowed for twenty years.  Business wasn't blocked from doing what it wanted to.  As any Conservative I do believe the government screws things up, but in this instance the major problem was something being passed off as Free Trade that was anything but Free Trade.  We paid one hell of a price.

We've pretty much moved production away from the U. S.  Now R & D is taking place off our shores as well.  We are turning into 20th Century Great Britain.  Either we pull our heads out and put an end to this nonsense, or we will no longer drive global dynamics.  I'm talking five to ten years before we're dictated to.

So much for our Free Trade dividend..

And while you think I'm crazy, the corporations and businesses that moved off shore will do just fine, as our populace implodes with no jobs in sight.

[DoughtyOne]

It never ceases to amaze me that what people predicted in 1993 forward having come true, there are still some people out there who will chastise them as the enemy of our nation, and those who did whatever the hell they wanted against those folks wishes, are still respected by some no matter the amount of damage their policies wound up causing.

Democrats, union members, black separatists? Seriously? Patriotic as the Count?

And you think you really scored with that post. Damn...