Will America ever learn?
No, I guess not.
After the failed promises of NAFTA, a job-destroying trade deficit that has burgeoned despite a long series of free-trade agreements, and ever-more-aggressive foreign mercantilism, we're plowing ahead with even more of these agreements.
Fresh from passing the Colombia, Korea, and Panama free trade agreements, Obama now wants to move forward to the long-bruited but dormant proposal for a Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Not the man we voted for in 2008, is he?
The proposed agreement would embrace Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam to start. Eventually, its advocates hope, it will include every nation on the Pacific rim, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and China.
Yes, you read that right. China.
Goes without saying that it's a terrible idea, and I've made a video discussing why. See below:
Don't look for any hope from the other side, by the way.
The only Republican that I believe wouldn't do such things is self-confessed long-shot Buddy Roemer. Mitt Romney has been sounding of late like he'd get tough on China if elected (I don't know if he's sincere), but he's also committed himself to passing more trade agreements (and I must assume he means it).
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Conservatives and centrist Democrats are clamoring for the federal corporate tax rate to be UNCONDITIONALLY lowered, supposedly to stimulate domestic job growth. Alternately, I believe that the federal corporate tax rate should be CONDITIONALLY lower based on the ratio of Social Security wages a firm pays relative to its taxable corporate profits. I call this the Social Contribution Rate (SCR). Make the tax differential based on the SCR so attractive, and businesses will be strongly incentivized to (a) hire more workers in the US, and (b) pay higher wages to US workers.
The tax differential based on the SCR would need to be substantial (e.g. 0% for the highest ratio firms and the current rate, 35%, for the lowest), as well other provisions to keep firms from gaming the code, but such a corporate tax reform would be SUBSTANTIALLY better for the US middle class than unconditionally lowering the federal corporate tax rate than "job growth" advocates, including Obama, have been calling for.
However, up until this trade agreement, I would still have voted for Obama. About the only major screw-up by Obama prior to this was the Health Care bill. Really think McCain would have done any better? This trade agreement and pushing forward to seeing our country further damaged by abandoning the things which kept this country great for ~200 years is exactly what I needed to see to make my mind-up to abandon any support for Obama in 2012.
For a guy who talked about protecting American interests, Obama, with this, shows us he has no clue how to accomplish it, indeed, is doing just the opposite. However, these laws DO benefit the wealthy, international American companies, and those are the people who contribute to his campaign funding, so this move IS! news. It puts a huge stamp on Obama's head of "I've given up trying to salvage middle and lower class American interests. I'm abandoning them. Now I just want to financially enrich myself."
You know, back in (IIRC) 1764, all 13 colonies managed to get together, without the use of the world wide web and boycott English products. Isn't it about time we, as Americans, get together and try to form a boycott ourselves? Of ANYTHING imported from China?
"Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production."
There is nothing classless, moneyless, revolutionary or common about the ownership of the means of production in our political system.
A better moniker is "corporatocracy":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
The reason free trade wasn't working was because we weren't doing enough of it
isn't the definition of insanity doing the same things over and over and expecting different results?
Government gives you the choice between "same" and "even worse." -all corporately owned before the first vote is cast.
Give us our government back. Or become irrelevant as the government totally fails and no one notices.
http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/11/0930/madeintheworld.html
European Technocrats May Soon Deprive Americans Of Knowing Where Everything They Buy Is Made
"The World Trade Organization, the OECD, the International Chamber of Commerce and the European Commission are moving aggressively to eliminate "Country of Origin" labeling, claiming that it does not reflect the current structure of global trade. The Europe-based organizations instead want to adopt a "Made in the World" logo for all products on the grounds that global supply chains have rendered country of origin labeling inaccurate and obsolete.
The intent of the proposal is to reduce public pressure on politicians for protectionist trade policies. "We are going to make history on how we look at trade statistics," says Lucian Cernat, chief economist in the trade division of the European Commission. Europe, which had a $96 billion trade surplus with the United States in 2010, "is ready to act."
The WTO has been working on Made in the World since late 2007, "but in the past two or three years there has been huge momentum to get the necessary information" that would be used to rationalize elimination of country of origin labeling, says Andreas Maurer, chief of the WTO's International Trade Statistics Section..."
I'm surprised the WTO & Friends haven't proposed changing dropping the first digit of vehicle identification numbers, which tell the country of assembly.
we already have deceptive and non exisitant origin labelling. Much of what is "manufactured" in the US anymore is a final assembly point or repackaging operation of foreign made components
notice how packages of personal care products and foods will often just say "distributed by" rahter than "made in" this is a deceptive ploy to mask where the stuff really comes from
The U.S. should withdraw from the WTO while it still has some semblance of sovereignty.
Did you know in 1991 our total trade deficit was about $31 billion!
Did you know that our tade deficit with just China in 2010 about $273 billion! Our total deficit was over $500 billion!
Ever noticed how our poverty rate seems to be tied to our trade deficit?
I imagine the only People who can convince themselves that Unrestricted Free Trade is either a Wall Street Crony or a Wall Street Stooge!
Kind of explains the Republicans and our current Democrats in my book! I call this crop of Democrats Clinton Democrats, aka the old Rockefeller Republicans, you know the kinder gentler Republicans. Both parties take theor marching orders from Wall Street!
Where have all the Roosevelt Democrats gone?
You know the guys who would know on an instinctual level Unrestricted Free Trade hurts the poor and minorities disproportionately more! Sure they get cheap stuff from Wall Mart but if they don't have a job and have no money what's the point!
Ever wonder what our Federal Deficit might be if instead of 9% unemployment if we only had 5 or 6% unemployment?
Now factor in the companies that serviced and supplied those factories that they too had to either close or downsize and you could have numbers easily double that 5 million
So what if these factories had not closed - would the job growth during the Bush admin have been so anemic? would we be dealing with 9+% unemployment now? would the recovery from the 08 depression been much more robust? one has to think so
http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176
Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the
Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (American Politics and Political Economy Series
"To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and where they stand on the issues—that, in effect, Democrats and Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property Party"—has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money."
That will not happen until US voters get the message and vote out all the Congressioal puppets of high campaign contributors that benefit most from unbalanced trade.
It will take decades to recover.
Yes, Bush was a disaster. But that doesn't mean Obama isn't also a disaser.
Or is it somehow magically different when Democrats offshore jobs to dictatorships?