We don’t need any more trade agreements. I have yet to see any benefit for the American economy or the American worker from the trade agreements enacted over the past 30 years. Instead we have:
1) 55,000 closed manufacturing plants
2) Loss of millions of manufacturing and manufacturing support jobs.
3) Higher trade deficits - Where is the promised export boom?
4) Declining standard of living for the average American for the first time in our nation’s history.
5) Decimation of the middle class
6) Less tariff revenue for the treasury
7) The industrialization and rise of China as an economic an military threat to the sovereignty of the United States
Can someone provide quantitative proof of the economic and social benefits from these trade deals? TPP is supposed to be modeled on the EU. How’s that working out for the Europeans other than Germany?
“We don’t need any more trade agreements. I have yet to see any benefit for the American economy or the American worker from the trade agreements enacted over the past 30 years. Instead we have:”
I would add this: The inability of the lower, uneducated classes to move out of poverty because the stepping stones to a middle class income have been destroyed by exporting manufacturing jobs.
The government has created a permanent welfare class unable to move out of it. A college education isn’t the answer for the majority who would thrive in a manufacturing era, but fail in an academic one.
In the future (and it is already happening now), manufacturing will go to the country with the best tax environment for business. Few human jobs will be affected by manufacturing.
When you pay $400 for a little box with a CD in it in order to get a piece of software, how many jobs do you think it took to produce that? The money is going to the marketers, the developers, the management, the project managers, the attorneys, the tax accountants, etc. There isn’t much of a “factory floor” for such items, and most of that is automated.
And most of those jobs can be plopped down on any piece of real estate on the planet, even Antarctica. There is a reason Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago from Seattle. And GE is moving to Texas.
There is a simple way to keep REAL jobs in the US, and manufacturing as an ever shrinking piece of the impact of it.
Most Americans used to work in agriculture. Times change.
The incredible blitzkrieg of explanations on why Cruz’s vote is good and smart gives a new meaning to
CRUZ CONTROL.