Free Trade – Destined to Lead to America’s Collapse
Too many Americans are blissfully or blatantly unaware of the true nature of America’s economic condition. Americans can see the U.S. is hurting, but few know the root causes of our pain.
Americans are saddled with debt, both personal and national. However, many Americans do not feel the pain and economic destruction this debt is causing to its full extent. Our lifestyle is being temporarily supported by debt and imports. When the money from our creditor nations stops, so will the imports – we will become a bankrupt nation.
- We have sold 16,613 of our best companies in just 30 years.
This means our wealth, our technology and our jobs have been moving to other nations, replacing high paying jobs with service sector jobs. With the absence of these companies we no longer have the means to provide for ourselves – we have sold off our self-sufficiency.
- We are borrowing more and more money from the same foreign countries that we are getting our imports from.
Not only are we losing $600 billion every year due to our trade deficit, we are $14 trillion in debt! This is the highest recorded debt in U.S. history. Taxing the trillions of dollars in imports we receive every year would go a long way toward bringing jobs and financial stability back to America.
- We are encouraging outsourcing at almost every level, not just manufacturing – we are outsourcing our phone support, customer service, R&D, and more.
How can we support ourselves as a nation, if we cannot provide for ourselves? Our government needs to implement policies that support and encourage homegrown industries. Companies that outsource American jobs should pay higher taxes and those that keep jobs at home should get tax breaks and other incentives.
- With agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and our treaty with the World Trade Organization our domestic companies do not stand a chance.
If we cannot be in control of our own laws and future, we will never break free from our present troubles. They will continue to spiral down until there is nothing left and the United States becomes a hollow shell of its former glory.
- Without reform to our tax structure we can’t compete with the foreign value-added tax (VAT) we must get our own and lower the income tax if we do not or cannot offset it domestically. Our tax disadvantages are too great to compete internationally. Our tax system no longer works for us – it works against us. This must change.
We need to wake up and let our leaders in Washington know that these issues are important to us – our economy and our national security.
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Dear Thomas;
Thanks much for another reminder of what “free trade” has done to America. But it’s notas impossible to fix as you imply. All we need to do is put Americans back to work making more of the things we need instead of
importing them. And how would we get that production
returned to the U.s.? By enacting and enforcing balanced
trade legislation modeled on Warren Buffett’s idea from
a few years ago, but improved to make administration
much easier and effective. My group has prepared a
full plan for this. We’ve tried to present it to the Obama Administration, but have been turned away.
We’ve also tried present it to Economy in Crisis, but have been turned away there as well.Sometimes I think
you folks would rather complain about how bad things
are than to offer bold and realistic solutions. There
seems to be a game going on rather than committed work
to rescue our badly-damaged nation. We’d like to join
with Economy in Crisis under your strong leadership.
K.N. Davis, Jr. Former U.S. Ass’t Secretary of Commerce
Thomas: Re our discussion on too many imports hurting
America, note this excerpt in a letter from 1940 by I.W. Abel,President of the AFL-CIO Industrial Unions:
“There is a too easy assumption in many quarters that the imposition ofsome restraints on imports is a retreat to the world of the early 1900’s. Thisis a misreading of reality. The plain hard fact is that world trade has, since the revival of Western Europe and Japan, moved away from the concept of so-called “free trade” (whatever that term means).
“The current world of international trade includes country after country with every conceivable hedge
set up to give preference to their own products
and to prejudice foreign imports. It just doesn’t
make common sense for us to countenance these arrangements while we do little or nothing to
protect the viability of our own economy.”
The exact same letter could be written today –
we’ve done nothing to stop the damage by too many
imports over the past 40 years! A shocking national failure to save our own and our childrens’ future.
Ken Davi
It isn’t free trade, if your trading partner is not practicing free trade. One could argue, however, that China is getting a free lunch, and that we are paying for it.
China is practicing mercantilism — which is the opposite of free trade. We allow almost all of their goods to enter our market. They allow almost none of our goods to enter their market. If it were free trade, the Chinese would allow MOST of our goods to enter their market.
Of course, there’s that little detail about China being a COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP. They are allowing a few entrepreneurs to become wealthy because that is the only way to generate the kind of wealth they need to become a superpower. Their people, for the most part, are still living in abject poverty. If China were a FREE country, like the U.S., there would be a much stronger demand for our goods.
It’s interesting to hear the “progressive” left continually bashing “free trade,” while ignoring those “passionate concerns” about human rights, worker safety, slave labor, sweatshops, intellectual property, environmental destruction and the depletion of resources. It’s like those problems don’t exist any more.
Here’s a deal: I will stop complaining about your calling our one-sided trade arrangement with China free trade, if you will gin up some outrage toward China for any of the abuses I mentioned above.
I suspect that many on the left think they have discovered the perfect application of Marxism that might even be applied here. With China as our model, we could switch to, what do you call it(?) — “market capitalism.”
Otherwise, I am in total agreement with Mr. Davis’ recommendation that we adopt some version of Warren Buffett’s “balanced trade” idea.