Posted on 08/17/2016 7:09:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
International trade figures heavily in the presidential race. Presidential candidate Donald Trump said, "Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible trade deal after another - from NAFTA to China to South Korea." And adding, "A Trump Administration will end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people. The era of economic surrender will finally be over." He lamented, "Skilled craftsmen and tradespeople and factory workers have seen the jobs they love shipped thousands and thousands of miles away."
Hillary Clinton has offered her own condemnations of trade and globalization. Some see her stance on trade as little more than typical campaign rhetoric. Bill Watson's Reason magazine article "Hillary Clinton's Protectionist Promises Would Do Serious Economic Damage," looked at Clinton's trade agenda. Watson concluded that for "fans of free trade and globalization, Clinton is a much more appealing candidate simply by not being horrible."
It is true that the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has been in steep decline for almost a half-century, but manufacturing employment disguises the true story of American manufacturing. U.S. manufacturing output has increased by almost 40 percent. Annual value added by U.S. factories has reached a record $2.4 trillion. To put that in perspective, if our manufacturing sector were a separate nation, it would be the seventh richest nation on the globe.
Daniel Griswold's Los Angeles Times article tells the story: "Globalization isn't killing factory jobs. Trade is actually why manufacturing is up 40 percent." Griswold is senior research fellow and co-director of the Program on the American Economy and Globalization at George Mason University-based Mercatus Center. He says what has changed in recent decades is that our factories produce fewer shirts, shoes, toys and tables. Instead, America's 21st-century manufacturing sector is dominated by petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fabricated metals, machinery, computers and other electronics, motor vehicles and other transportation equipment, and aircraft and aerospace equipment.
Griswold suggests that political anger about lost manufacturing jobs should be aimed at technology, not trade. According to a recent study by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, productivity growth caused 85 percent of the job losses in manufacturing from 2000 to 2010, a period that saw 5.6 million factory jobs disappear. In that same period, international trade accounted for a mere 13 percent of job losses.
Manufacturing job loss is a worldwide phenomenon. Charles Kenny, writing in Bloomberg, "Why Factory Jobs Are Shrinking Everywhere," points out manufacturing employment has fallen in Europe and Korea and "one of the largest losers of manufacturing jobs has been China."
While job loss can be traumatic for the individual who loses his job, for the nation job loss often indicates economic progress. In 1790, farmers were 90 percent of the U.S. labor force. By 1900, about 41 percent of our labor force was employed in agriculture. Today, less than 3 percent of Americans are employed in agriculture. What would Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton have done in the face of this precipitous loss of agricultural jobs? They might have outlawed all of the technological advances in science and machinery that have made our farmers the world's most productive and capable of producing the world's cheapest food.
There's one thing to keep in mind. Losing a job due to outsourcing or losing it to technological innovation produces the same result for an individual: He's out of a job. The best thing that we can do is to have a robust economy such that he can find another job.
History suggests another alternative to those concerned about manufacturing job loss. The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers who protested against newly developed labor-saving technologies. They went about destroying machinery that threatened to replace them with less-skilled, low-wage laborers.
Free Traders are very unsophisticated people who are seemingly incapable of complex thought. I think most would sell their mothers into slavery for a buck.
No. Inflation is a rise in the general price level.
The definition of inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods.
Based on your inability to answer, it's apparent that you're the idiot.
Glad we agree, raising the price of cars via a tariff is not inflation.
You probably thing the $19T budget deficit is no big deal.
Coming from the guy who claimed a tariff on foreign goods wouldn't raise domestic prices......that's hilarious.
A $19 trillion budget deficit would be a very big deal.
The estimate for this year is about $600 billion.
$19T debt, my bad, You do not care about either. A 20% import tariff balances the budget tomorrow.
You know what? If the Free Traders weren't so greedy and actually passed some of the savings of using slave labor used to make their crapola then they might not be so hated and detested. How come NONE of the US manufactures advertise and show off that their product is made overseas. Why doesn't Ford run commercials bragging how the Focus and the F-150 is made by wet back labor? Why aren't they proud? Why isn't the iconic Daisy Red Ryder BB gun clearly marked on its packaging that it is Made in China? Why isn't that a selling point?
The best thing about a war with China is it instantaneously ends Free Trade immediately. We can then clean up the USA by properly disposing of the Free Trader crowd.
Yes, I may stupid, but then on the other hand yo may a little punch drunk from letting the Teamsters and the UAW kick you around.
And hey, can you call me a "Free Traitor™" again, just for old time's sake??
What percentage of the USA's manufacturing workforce is unionized?
About 100% too many.
You have to ask yourself this; do you so hate unions that you would be willing to de industrialize the USA to eliminate all manufacturing unions?
I don't. Unions are yesterdays battle.
Don't forget the increase in domestic prices.
If the Free Traders weren't so greedy and actually passed some of the savings
Over 100 million Americans get some of that savings every week at WalMart.
Why isn't the iconic Daisy Red Ryder BB gun clearly marked on its packaging that it is Made in China?
Last one I saw clearly said made in China.
The best thing about a war with China is it instantaneously ends Free Trade immediately.
We don't have a Free Trade agreement with China.
Of the $3.75 trillion in goods traded by the US last year, about $3.15 trillion was with countries other than China.
You post is confusing. Could you please clarify.
I already did, you’re just too dense to have understood it. But I’ll repeat it for the benefit of others.
If this was a case of automation and other efficiencies displacing workers the plants would still be in the USA but simply with fewer workers. That isn’t the case, what has been happening is the relocation of plants outside of the US to take advantage of global labor arbitrage. It is a case of absolute advantage rather than comparative advantage.
So if we get in a war with China all those container ships are just going to float by the Gook PLAN sub force without any harm being done to them?
I ask again: How come NONE of the US manufactures advertise and show off that their product is made overseas. Why doesn't Ford run commercials bragging how the Focus and the F-150 is made by wet back labor? Why aren't they proud? Why isn't that a selling point?
Free Traitors™ hardly ever answer direct questions.
You still haven’t addressed the fact that 87 percent of US manufacturing job losses this century have resulted from productivity improvements, not from plants moving to foreign countries.
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