Trump Is Right on Trade

Townhall.com ^ | February 19, 2016 | Pat Buchanan

[tumblindice]

The other day Cruz compared himself to Ronald Reagan (another disturbing parallel to our current megalomaniacal president) saying that Reagan was for `free and open trade’. Cruz has bought into the myth created by (as put by Buchanan here:) “ ... corporate elites who pay off those politicians with the big cash contributions that keep the parties flush. Politicians who play ball with Wall Street and K Street know they will be taken care of, if they are defeated or when they retire from public office, so long as they have performed.”
IOW, our cheap labor and open borders, NWO/NAU friends.

Remember Gore dragging out the photo of Smoot Hawley and using it in debates with middle Bush? Democrats think of it as some sort of talisman now: “Free and open trade, good; protecting American workers, bad!”
Reagan was for free, open and *fair* trade.
Buchanan: “Controlling the largest market on earth, we might impose on foreign producers a cover charge, an admissions fee, a tariff, to get into our market.Example: Impose a 20 percent tariff on foreign cars entering the USA.”
Reagan did this, imposing a tariff on Japanese cars, knowing that the Japanese were subsidizing their car industry just as they subsidized their electronics industry until the only American TV manufacturer was Zenith, and then one day Zenith was gone.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa107.html

We don’t need Buchanan to tell us—we don’t make things any more. We used to have a textiles industry, Reagan vetoed a tariff bill to protect our textiles industry.
So why is that we have Americans out of work, but American legislators still want to bring in foreigners to replace IT workers, even requiring them to train their replacements if they wanted their severance package?

And we don’t need another Party of the People-like president who has never made a payroll, who has produced nothing in his life but objections and reams of paperwork. Go Trump.

[Mase]

Heres a hint, bubba: dont buy foreign crap.

Then no tariff.

Exactly. Government should determine winners and losers rather than millions of free people freely making billions of purchasing decisions that are in the best interest of their families. We should increase taxes and the power of government over the economy to protect American industry from competition!

And we do have free trade...across state lines.

"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Sound familiar?

[rollo tomasi]

Bismarck's Germany was too imperialistic (Trying to play catch-up once unified) for their own good and became conceited (Vast amounts of resources to build on/excellent education but became too worldly and ran down the path of eugenics) rather than setting a moral example. Bismarck should of listened to his own advice on easing up on Germany's imperialistic expansion that ended up interfering/ticking off other powers.

In Africa, there was plenty of beneficial aspects that Germany provided, but there were several ugly events that were the exact opposite of Christian virtue.

[Will88]

However, if Lexus or Mercedes buys or makes all their parts in the USA and assembles all their cars here, no tariff.

And the opposite is true. Every time a new trade deal reduces or eliminates tariffs on goods imported into the US, that increases the incentive for US transnationals to move production to some cheap labor nation.

That's been a primary goal of many trade agreements: eliminate tariffs and make relocating US plants to cheap labor nations even more profitable because the goods they ship to the US will be tariff free.

And TPP will only continue and accelerate that practice. The usual BS about opening foreign markets for US products and creating jobs in the US is just that, BS. Agriculture and a few industries benefit from some trade deals, but that's about it. The deals always increase the incentives for US manufacturing to be relocated to cheap labor nations.

[factoryrat]

I’ve come to the conclusion that FRee trader types, meaning those whose espouse and make excuses to offshore business to communist (china, vietnam, cuba) and socialist (mexico, central-south america, europe) are no better than the people who did business with the NAZIs or the USSR.

If you want to abandon the US to deal with communist and socialsts, go right ahead. Pack up all of your US assets, shed all of your US workers, close all of your US assets, and leave. But keep this in mind: you will have NO protections under US law, anything that you want to import into the US will have a stiff tarriff against it, I.P. laws won’t apply to you, your former US patents and copyrights will be null void, and your now foreign company will be removed and not allowed to be listed on any US stock exchange.

If the FRee trader globalists want to continue, this is what will happen.

This is 30+ years of outsourcing/offshoring rearing its ugly head. People are truly pissed of, and they want blood.

[Will88]

Conservatives are right to point out that taxes are ultimately paid by the consumer. Tariffs are no different. Higher prices are not in the interest of the consumer.

And the means tested government poverty programs that already exceed a trillion annually are ultimately paid by the present and future taxpayers. The thousands of factories and millions of jobs exported to cheap labor nations are a major reason we have seen the drastic increases in beneficiaries accessing these programs.

And "free" traders think the one-sided deals provide cheaper products to consumers? Add in that annual trillion in poverty programs and see what the savings from free trade look like.

[Rusty0604]

You are correct, but also a lot of the trade imbalance comes from currency manipulation.

[Socon-Econ]

I expect to get flamed on this, but Trump is NOT right on trade. If he starts a trade war with the rest of the world, the American economy will tank. Our economic problems are due to socialism, faulty bank regulation, and radical environmentalism. We need to stop blaming the Chinese for our economic folly.

[Will88]

The Bismarck model didn’t work out too well for Germany in the end.

Depends on what measures one uses. Their policies gave them the industrial might to start and fight two world wars against several of the largest and most prosperous nations on earth. And they had the knowledge to quickly recover from WWII and become an exporting powerhouse, selling some of the most high quality and highly sought products produced anywhere in the world.

And they remain a major exporter and a one of the sounder nations financially.

[Kaslin]

You’re not getting flamed from me.

[Will88]

Here's a little info on what Germany's policies have given them. Decades of trade surpluses, and the soundest financial standing in the EU.:

Germany Balance of Trade 1950-2016

[datura]

Thanks for posting this Kaslin.

The crux of the biscuit is currency manipulation. If we allow China to peg the yuan to the dollar artificially in the world system, they have a built in advantage for trade. The ONLY lever we have to make them stop manipulating their currency is by threatening (and following thru with if necessary) huge tariffs to compensate.

Those who say this hurts consumers are profiting from the current system and don’t want their fortunes to change. Consumers will benefit by once again having real jobs instead of having to ask “do you want fries with that?”.

I’ve been to China a lot. My wife is from Xiamen, just across from Taiwan on the mainland. We have exported our entire middle class over there, and they are spending like trailer court tweakers that just won the lottery. It’s time to bring our economy back from the NWO.

[riverdawg]

“And they had the knowledge to quickly recover from WWII and become an exporting powerhouse, selling some of the most high quality and highly sought products produced anywhere in the world.

And they [Germany] remain a major exporter and a one of the sounder nations financially.”

True, but the post-war Germany “miracle,” especially in the critical first ten years, was accomplished by embracing the free market principles of Ludwig Erhard, not the protectionist proposals of Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump.

[odawg]

The main thing wrong with your logic is that there are no jobs. And the foreign goods are not any cheaper. Watch and see how much Ford discounts vehicles made in Mexico with cheap labor. Free trade did not build the American economy, it is destroying it (in case you haven’t noticed).

[datura]

Post war Germany was made possible by the Marshall Plan and American tax dollars rebuilding the nation from scratch. It was our first real effort at “nation building”. Same with Japan.

[DugwayDuke]

“...However, if Lexus or Mercedes buys or makes all their parts in the USA and assembles all their cars here, no tariff. Their cars could still sell for $50,000. This would be a powerful incentive to shift production here...”

“That would negate your complaint.”

That’s ‘pie in the sky’. You can make statements like “could sell for $50,000” all you want. The real question is what would they sell for.

People who want tariffs only want to increase their wages at the expense of their fellow Americans. While that sounds good, the victims are those who are forced to pay higher prices for the tariffs.

[DugwayDuke]

“And the means tested government poverty programs that already exceed a trillion annually are ultimately paid by the present and future taxpayers. The thousands of factories and millions of jobs exported to cheap labor nations are a major reason we have seen the drastic increases in beneficiaries accessing these programs.”

OK, fine. Get rid of the welfare programs. But don’t force your fellow Americans to pay for the inflated price of your goods.

[Grampa Dave]

Amen! The poll that counts in South Carolina is the one tomorrow when the voters vote, not what the pollsters say! We will know Saturday night until the polls start on other states.

[Grampa Dave]

Drastically reduce regulations and corporate taxes. Make the UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, and the EU pay for defense, or we get out. What else?

[pgkdan]

After a thirty year test drive, I think most voters agree.

Amen. Enough of this ideologically driven national suicide. Free Trade is killing this country by impoverishing her workers thereby destroying the greatest middle class the world has ever seen.