One after another, the Republican presidential candidates have come out with strong statements that appear to show support for making things in America and revitalizing American manufacturing. This is because they can read polls and polls show that Americans overwhelmingly want American manufacturing revitalized, are tired of offshoring, understand the importance of fixing trade deficits and want to see things made here again.
Donald Trump gained a lot of traction from the appearance of taking on China. Mitt Romney also talks about how we need to take on China. Rick Santorum has his own "Made in America" plan. But do their actual proposals match up with their rhetoric?
Romney
Mitt Romney has strong words about China. For example, last week Romney visited Competitive Edge, an Iowa company that sells promotional campaign items that you can put your own brand or message on. ("We've got items for convention give-a-ways, business gifts, direct mail campaign items, fund raising, political campaigns, special events, company promotions, and more!") At this campaign stop Romney said:
"I'll clamp down on China that's been cheating," Romney said. "They've been stealing our intellectual property, our designs, our patents, our know-how, our brands, they've been hacking into our computers. That has got to stop."
"I will stop it if I'm president of the United States," Romney said.
However, in spite of Romney's words, many wonder if he is only saying this to get votes. For example, the website for Competitive Edge, the site of his Iowa appearance, says, "Competitive Edge is a major importer of specialty products from Asia and Europe." According to TPM, the president of Competitive Edge "said he doesn't think Romney's being completely serious when it comes to his tough China talk." He explained:
"I think the rhetoric of a campaign is different than the actual application," he said.
[Romney] will sit down and he will get the right people in, he will take the advice of maybe a Huntsman who will say, 'this is how to handle China.' ...When it comes to actually governing, Greenspon said he expects Romney will take a much softer approach to China at the urging of his supporters in the business community.
So much for Romney. As with so many of his campaign positions, surrogates explain behind the scenes that he is just saying what he needs to say to get votes, what he will do if he is elected might or might be completely different, there is no way to know.
Santorum
Rick "not-Romney" Santorum is now the official #2 in the GOP race. Santorum can also read polls, and is offering a "Made in America" plan. The plan begins the way Santorum always begins, "Rick Santorum believes that to have a strong national economy, we must have strong families."
Much of Santorum's plan is the usual Big Lobbyist and Wall Street-backed Republican stuff about cutting taxes on the rich and getting rid of any restraints on the wealthy and powerful as "pro-growth" policies. Items 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9 are actually all the same item: cut taxes on the rich and their big corporations.
And then Santorum diversifies. Item 13 is get rid of President Obama's health care reform, with no explanation of how this will help manufacturing. Item 15 includes, "eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood and support adoption" and "eliminate funding for United Nations organizations that undermine America's interests." Again, there is no explanation of how these will help manufacturing. These points are apparently included in a manufacturing plan to reassure the Republican base that he is certifiably nuts, to attract Michelle Bachmann voters.
Some of the items appear to be the result of selling advertising space to lobbyists from various industries.
Santorum's Item 32 is important, and I'm singling it out for attention: Strengthen our national security and national defense so that we are not dependent upon our foes or competitors for critical manufacturing, technology, energy and other security needs.
So Santorum's plan has a few good points but only barely matches the promise of its title. In reality it only offers more of the same policies that boost the 1 percent at the expense of everything else, even harming smaller manufacturers trying to compete with the multi-national giants. The plan even offers a number of items that have ravaged our manufacturing base, pushing even more disastrous "free-trade" agreements. And, the plan has the added bonus of a series of unrelated proposals apparently included only as filler and the necessary proof of insanity to qualify him in a Republican primary.
President Obama's Office of Manufacturing Policy
As one component of a set of policy initiatives to improve manufacturing President Obama recently set up a new Office of Manufacturing policy that will have cabinet-level status, reflecting the importance of the manufacturing sector to our economy. The office will coordinate the efforts of different government agencies, such as the Small Business Administration, the Department of Commerce and the Transportation Department.
Congressional Democrats' Make It in America Plan
In May Democrats in Congress brought out a "Make It in America" package of specific legislative proposals to revitalize American manufacturing. In Democrats' Plan Makes Jobs In America I described the plan:
Congressional Democrats yesterday unveiled the Make It in America plan for the 112th congress. This is a set of specific, detailed, targeted bills that clearly create jobs and restore our economic competitiveness, beginning with a national strategy for manufacturing. This is very different from the vague, sloganeering, lobbyist-written plan offered by Senate Republicans.
Yesterday House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi unveiled their Make It in America plan "to support job creation today and in the future by encouraging businesses to make products and innovate in the U.S. and sell it to the world through strengthening our infrastructure and supporting investments in key areas like education and energy innovation."This Make It in America initiative involves a series of bills that have been introduced for consideration by the 112th Congress. This initiative will create jobs here, grow the economy and reduce the trade deficit, all of which help reduce our budget deficits. Creating jobs and growing the economy reduces deficits by increasing tax revenues and decreasing spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.
Click through for details of the plan.
A Warning
There is a warning here for President Obama and all other candidates of either party running for office in 2012: The public wants to see plans to bring back American manufacturing. The public understands what the NAFTA-style trade deals have done to our wages, jobs, factories, industries, trade deficit and economy. They hate Wall Street's quick-buck outsourcing schemes and the trade deals that enabled them, and want American manufacturing revitalized. Supporting Wall Street and trade deals and the quick-buck, offshoring economy harms the country and for that reason is political suicide.
The public wants to go into stores and see "Made in America" again.
Frank Sobatka explains:
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Those guys don't give a rat's butt about us or this country.
It may take another 100 years to gain back the lost ground we gave away in our ignorance of what politicians were doing to us while laughing all the way to the bank. I hope not.
Democrats won't help us because every time they try they get thrown out of office and called socialist communists, etc... We truly are now on our own. We spit in the faces of those who try to help the middle class and poor.
In our history, we have never witnessed a period of such reckless and selfish leadership that has corruption as its calling card. We must revive citizenship and selflessness.
I agree 100% with everyone on this. I problem, by definition, does not have an answer. . there IS an answer to this one. . .but are you all willing to end your love affair with the Japanese automobile?
Driving to any U.S. store, or manufacturing plant in an automobile “made somewhere elseâ€, means that this won’t work. This was an industrialized nation, built primarily on the shoulders of the auto industry. Many car companies, widdled-down to “the big three†through competition, with that same spirit driving enovation, made the industrial revolution possible.
U.S. productivity is shot. When 80% of all U.S. profit is made “without†producing a product – are you sure we even want to produce goods? We’ve run out of people to work in manufacturing.
IN SOME WAYS, IT'S OUR OWN FAULT:
We, as consumers, spend billions on entertainment - making Rap artists, movie star, and software CEO's rich. We we do this, we send a false message to big business, telling them that "we don't know what to do with our money", and that "times are not THAT hard" because we've got disposable income (to spend on all kinds of crap, imported or otherwise (most of which is "pre-garage sale" junk)). We, as consumers, no longer have the power to dictate the direction of big business - it will be difficult to turn around.
end the tax break for sending jobs overseas
================================>>Let's not forget Rick Santorum's role as 'avid enabler'>>"In 2009, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, declared that his greatest legislative priority was -- jobs for Americans? Rescuing the financial system? Solving the housing collapse? -- no, none of those things. His top priority was to ensure that Obama should be a one-term president. Evidently Senator McConnell hates Obama more than he loves his country." -- Michael Lofgren
The solution is already in the hands of the public: just pay more to buy American made products when they go shopping. They can pay three to four times more for American grown Kona coffee when they shop or buy cheaper imported coffee.
end the tax break to companies to send jobs overseas
btw --- coffee is not a manufactured product
btw - retail coffee is a manufactured product. Do you eat coffee raw like lettuce? Coffee is roasted, ground, blended, decaffeinated, brewed - these are manufacturing processes applied to a raw material resulting in a manufactured product. Coffee is turned into a manufactured product in a similar manner to logs being manufactured into lumber. Google "coffee manufacturing company" and you will get 131 thousand hits.
How is it that conservatives who have always stood strong for nationalism and American sovereignty and against ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT are now supporting just the opposite. Republican operatives hoodwinked their party beginning back in the 80's and converted Republican brand loyalty to blind faith in FREE MARKETS. It wasn't long until the pollster-led Clintons jumped on the same bandwagon.
And what are free markets other than "ONE WORLD ECONOMY", which is the essence of one world government. Rather than self determination, we have given China, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Europe and the WTC power over our decisions.
American values of self reliance, and the capitalist virtue of "self interest" are crushed by the corporate mantra of "free markets". Americans should not produce what they consume. No, they should consume for the sake of the economy and production jobs should go to the most needy workers (low priced) in the world economy.
These are not American or Capitalist ideals, but more Marxist or socialist with their agenda of redistributing wealth-creating production from the developed to the third world countries.
Leading people to act against their own self interest is the tonic that has inspired authoritarian dictators, Kings, Sheiks, Ayatollahs and Priests for centuries, but somewhere out there in the heavens, are the ghosts of dead heroes and martyrs who in retrospect, might rather teach the importance of SELF INTEREST; taking care of you and your own.
What do we want? 1. ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT and a world economy of free markets that reward the poorest low priced laborers with jobs at the expense of mortgage paying union laborers or 2. A world of individual countries with their own thriving independent economies, governments, cultures and characteristics?
I prefer to be an American.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/us-bill-aims-to-choke-call-centres-in-india/213811-7.html
US bill aims to choke call centres in India - Business News - IBNLive
"Houston: A bipartisan bill has been tabled in the US House of Representatives to make companies that move call centres overseas ineligible for grants or guaranteed loans from the federal government, a move aimed at stemming the tide of jobs heading to nations like India.
Introduced by Rep Tim Bishop and Rep David McKinley, the US Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act would also put some aggressive mandates on call-centre operations.
"Outsourcing is one of the scourges of our economy and why we are struggling so to knock down the unemployment rate," said Bishop..."
The industrial policy of the U.S. comes from the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, which should be renamed to the Chamber of Commerce of the World Trade Organization. It should be required to register as a foreign lobbyist.
That policy calls for the outsourcing of blue-collar AND white-collar jobs to the cheapest labor markets available.