Replies

I had an email exchange with the John Batchelor Show executive producer, Lee Mason. Here’s what he wrote, and I’ve never seen it put better:

“What galls is the cavalier attitude of those who made megabucks from shifting American income to Chinese robbers, among others. Twenty-five years ago most Chinese people were barely hanging on, slopping pigs, and praying for good farming weather. It’s phenomenal that hundreds of millions of almost-starving people now have satisfactory homes (for as long as they can hold on to them) and a good meal a day. However, today there are more billionaires in China than in the US, and I think most of them are in the national parliament.

Most Americans haven’t figured out how to make a billion dollars legally within two decades or so, and I doubt others have, either. So our work was handed to the cheapest - heavily government-subsidized - manufacturers across the Pacific; they responded by pricing us out of the market, channeling income to their wickedest, creating a vast economic chasm there, and now we see the capital flight ($1 trillion PA) that pours stolen dollars into US real estate and prices New Yorkers out of their homes.

People making over $100K don’t seem to grasp the logic here.”

... and now we see the capital flight ($1 trillion PA) that pours stolen dollars into US real estate and prices New Yorkers out of their homes.

And that is where the whole "fair trade" argument falls apart.

China doesn't conduct trade with the U.S. in yuan (their currency). The trade is conducted in U.S. dollars, and since the Chinese can't eat dollars they have to use them to buy assets that are priced in dollars.

So the money ends up back here anyway. It's just a question of who gets it and how it impacts the U.S. economy.

Here's an interesting little anecdote ... wealthy Chinese families are considered a prime source of enrollments at exorbitantly overpriced U.S. colleges.

Fairly put, Trump does a better job of explaining however. We have taxed our employers, heaviest in the world, regulated to death, allow other nations to put in impediments to importing our exports, and have devalued their currency to the point where our employers have been forced to go overseas for relief and a chance to survive. It is a real cluster F@#$k of mismanagement. We just need to rework these things to restore opportunity and fairness so that we can truly achieve a free trade status.

So called free traders refuse to consider these impediments to American employers and the American public. They always spout the “cheap products” line when they cannot understand that we will need ever cheaper products as our aggregate purchasing power by individuals continues to remain stagnant or lower for the common man. It is literally a cycle of certain failure economically.