Posted on 09/30/2016 4:32:46 AM PDT by expat_panama
...Trump called the trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States “the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country” during the first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton. Earlier this year, Bernie Sanders leveled a similar criticism, calling it disastrous when debating the former secretary of date...
...But whether NAFTA has been good or bad for the U.S. economy depends largely on who you ask...
...NAFTA “means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement,” then-President Clinton said in 1993.
Fast forward more than two decades later and NAFTA is rallying cry for those who believe free trade has done more for other countries than for American workers...
...Trump has promised to renegotiate NAFTA’s terms “to get a better deal for our workers,” according to his campaign site. If that doesn’t work, he vows to withdraw from the agreement altogether.
Clinton doesn’t address NAFTA specifically on her campaign site, but promises to “reject trade agreements that don’t meet “her high standard...
...According to one widely cited analysis, NAFTA has been a bad deal...
...The late ‘90s was a period of strong economic growth...
...if the U.S. economy did so well after NAFTA, is there any reason to think the trade agreement was harmful?...
...The report questioned whether the gains in trade under NAFTA were enough to offset the struggles of displaced workers and recommended that future agreements include stronger provisions to protect U.S. workers exposed to foreign competition.
But it may be too late for those Americans who have already lost their jobs to overseas competition and have been unable to enjoy the fruits of the larger and more efficient economy. Those workers are the ones who may use their votes this November as a referendum on free trade.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
Where are you from? I’d rather that you not speak for the State of Michigan. Manufacturing worker, here.
Marx supported Free Trade and you support Free Trade.
You’re shining gigantic a spotlight on what is a very, very tiny part of our total economy.
Creative destruction is mostly a term made up by transnationals and globalists to try and hide the real destruction of US manufacturing companies, sometimes entire industries, and the economies of many communities as a result of the trade agreements promoted and passed that can have no result other than moving production facilities and jobs from advanced nations to cheap labor nations.
Globalist policies are the reason the top 1% has enjoyed most of the growth in income over the past several decades.
The difference between buggy whips and a factory off shoring, factories that makes valuable products is lost on you.
(Reagan) Presidential Deeds
Words are not deeds. Unfortunately, a look at the record leads to the question: With free traders like this, who needs protectionists?
Consider that the administration has done the following:
— Forced Japan to accept restraints on auto exports. The agreement set total Japanese auto exports at 1.68 million vehicles in 1981-82, 8 percent below 1980 exports. Two years later the level was permitted to rise to 1.85 million.(33) Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution found that the import limits have actually cost jobs in the U.S. auto industry by making it possible for the sheltered American automakers to raise prices and limit production. In 1984, Winston writes in Blind Intersection? Policy and the Automobile Industry, 32,000 jobs were lost, U.S. production fell by 300,000 units, and profits for U.S. firms increased $8.9 billion. The quotas have also made the Japanese firms potentially more formidable rivals because they have begun building assembly plants in the United States.(34) They also shifted production to larger cars, introducing to American firms competition they did not have before the quotas were created. In 1984, it was estimated that higher prices for domestic and imported cars cost consumers $2.2 billion a year.(35) At the height of the dollar’s exchange rate with the yen in 1984-85, the quotas were costing American consumers the equivalent of $11 billion a year.(36)
— Tightened up considerably the quotas on imported sugar. Imports fell from an annual average of 4.85 million tons in 1979-81 to an annual average of 2.86 million tons in 1982-86. Not only did this continued practice force Americans to spend more than other consumers for sugar, but it created hardships for Latin American countries and the Philippines, which depend on sugar exports for economic development. The quota program undermined President Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative and intensified the international debt crisis.(37)
— Negotiated to increase restrictiveness of the Multifiber Arrangement and extended restrictions to previously unrestricted textiles. The administration unilaterally changed the rule of origin in order to restrict textile and apparel imports further and imposed a special ceiling on textiles from the People’s Republic of China.(38) Finally, it pressured Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, the largest exporters of textiles and apparel to the United States, into highly restrictive bilateral agreements. All told, textile and apparel restrictions cost Americans more than $20 billion a year.(39) The Reagan administration has stated several times that textile and apparel imports should grow no faster than the domestic market.(40)
— Required 18 countries—including Brazil, Spain, South Korea, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Finland, and Australia, as well as the European Community—to accept “voluntary restraint agreements” to reduce steel imports, guaranteeing domestic producers a share of the American market. When 3 countries not included in the 18—Canada, Sweden, and Taiwan— increased steel exports to the United States, the administration demanded talks to check the increase. The administration also imposed tariffs and quotas on specialty steel. These policies, with their resulting shortages, have severely squeezed American steel-using firms, making them less competitive in world markets and eliminating more than 52,000 jobs.(41)
— Imposed a five-year duty, beginning at 45 percent, on Japanese motorcycles for the benefit of Harley Davidson, which admitted that superior Japanese management was the cause of its problems.(42)
— Raised tariffs on Canadian lumber and cedar shingles.
— Forced the Japanese into an agreement to control the price of computer memory-chip exports and increase Japanese purchases of American-made chips. When the agreement was allegedly broken, the administration imposed a 100 percent tariff on $300 million worth of electronics goods. This episode teaches a classic lesson in how protectionism comes back to haunt a country’s producers. The quotas established as a result of the agreement have created a severe shortage of memory chips and higher prices for American computer makers, putting them at a disadvantage with foreign competitors. Only two American firms are still making these chips, accounting for a small percentage of the world market.(43)
— Removed Third World countries from the duty-free import program for developing nations on several occasions.
— Pressed Japan to force its automakers to buy more American-made parts.(44)
— Demanded that Taiwan, West Germany, Japan, and Switzerland restrain their exports of machine tools, with some market shares rolled back to 1981 levels. Other countries were warned not to increase their shares of the U.S. market.
— Accused the Japanese of dumping roller bearings, because the price did not rise to cover a fall in the value of the yen. The U.S. Customs Service was ordered to collect duties equal to the so-called dumping margins.(45)
— Accused the Japanese of dumping forklift trucks and color picture tubes.(46)
— Failed to ask Congress to end the ban on the export of Alaskan oil and of timber cut from federal lands, a measure that could substantially increase U.S. exports to Japan.
— Redefined “dumping” in order “to make it easier to bring charges of unfair trade practices against certain competitors.”(47)
— Beefed up the Export-Import Bank, an institution dedicated to promoting the exports of a handful of large companies at the expense of everyone else.(48)
US job losses, lower production, higher prices for cars, but at least the firms saw a benefit.
More trade restrictions, for HIGHER FIRM PROFITS!!!
Ok to prove how wrong you are about tariffs if we had a complete trade embargo on imports would we no longer have flat screen TV's? Or would an electronics factory or 100 of them pop up in the USA?
And somehow, in spite of all that, Reagan brought us NAFTA and the WTO. Read and weep, you protectionist commies.
Hey now, I’m for higher profits for my auto/truck/APC/tank firm, but at least I’m man enough to admit that if the gubmint dictates those profits for me, someone else is paying.
Not at all. In fact I would go on to say that the jobs that were sent out SHOULD have been replaced with BETTER jobs but they weren’t because the resources that should have been invested in creating those new, better jobs was stolen by frauds like McAwful and his golf carts and Solyndra. Again, the system is rigged.
Saying brought us NAFTA is a stretch. Reagan spoke about agreements. Big deal.
Most of the people that man assembly lines have IQ at or below average(100). Not many are going to retrain for higher intellect type of work. The only thing that most of the “displaced” workers had was a work ethic. Now we have destroyed that and we are also $19T in debt and a debtor nations. Globalist are worse than Communists...
NAFTA is not the Boogeyman. Labor costs fell like a rock due to robotics and women entering the workforce.
Tariffs isn’t going to fix that. Point is, nobody wants to hire a person when a robot can do the job. Robots don’t show up drunk, threaten to sue for discrimination, or require vacations.
BS. Reagan enacted a FTA with Canada, and declared that he would expand it to Mexico. Stop it with the Marxist revisionism.
My two closest co-workers are robots, and my IQ is greater than 100. Perhaps the solution to all of this is something other than the government artificially raising prices we humans pay.
Reagan had nothing to d with NAFTA. I’ve already posted one reference for your benefit. Do your own research you lazy butt.
NAFTA was Reagan’s idea. Go ahead and try to spin it.
Certainly not going to defend globalists. Just another, higher level of the systemic corruption that is a drag on our national economy.
Laziness and stupidity go hand in hand. Your lack of intellectual curiosity in concerning this issue shows you are excelling at both.
Says the guy who thinks Karl Marx was a free-trader. Gimme a break.
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