We Need to Rescind Permanent Normal Trade Relations With China

In view of poor records in each and every field of trade and business practices, US should muster courage to rescind permanent normal trade relations, and send a message to the Chinese that will be heard loud and clear, before it hampers US beyond repairs.

It has same chance as getting out of Afghanistan.

Senator Dorgan is 100% correct in everything he says here, but I would add one extra sliver of truth: By the year 2000, whole industries and millions of American jobs had already gone to China.

There is an old saying, "It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism when the wolf is of a different opinion."

The sheep, in this case, are the nice people who finally discovered this issue fifteen years too late. The "wolf," is the Progressive movement in this country that has quietly engineered the dismantling of our manufacturing base and our middle-class.

The folks in Washington, D.C. who supposedly represent us are not stupid. They are ignoring, and have ignored this issue for the past fifteen years for a good reason: It finally eliminates the greatest barrier to a complete Progressive (socialist/collectivist/statist/big government/centralized planning) takeover of our country.

The best hope we have of preserving our freedom, (which must include economic freedom) lies in that beleaguered group of concerned citizens known as the "Tea-Partiers." The "wolf" fears nothing in this country except for the "Tea-Partiers." The mainstream media is doing its best to discredit these folks by portraying them as rowdy racist reactionaries.

George Orwell said that "Liberals are power lovers without power." Of course, the Liberals changed their name back to Progressives when enough people began to figure out what they were all about. Who can argue with "progress," right? It depends. As G.K. Chesterton said, "Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative." The progress we are making is a headlong end run around the Constitution toward the abyss. Only the Progressives expect to land on their feet when this is all over. They will have the power, and we will have the "change."

Bruce Bishop

Three Reasons Why Rescinding Normal Trading Relations with China Probably Won’t Happen

Summary of Comments from Economy In Crisis Readers

1. There are many very influential American business-people with self-serving special interests that make millions of dollars outsourcing their manufacturing to China. These people do not want the status-quo to change.

2. China is in a very strong negotiating position with $1.2 trillion in currency reserves that they earned in their trading relations with us. With these reserves they could buy most any American companies they want to own or even whole industries, as most of our companies are for sale on our open stock market.

3. The United States has negative negotiating leverage with China because they are our bankers and have loaned us $349.6 billion to help finance our government’s ballooning budget deficit. If they don’t like our policies or issues in negotiations they could pull their loan, which could cause our economy to suffer.

Senator Dorgan is absolutely correct that China is playing the U.S. for a sucker and that we as a nation should change how China is gaining control over our country. No issue is more important at the moment.

However, we must be sly as a fox in how we approach this issue. The three comments above are realistic. China has some high cards.

There are very good reasons for dealing with China by including several other nations in the restrictions we place on China. First, we do not want to upset China any more than necessary. Making them a part of a group is less of a challege directly to them. Second, China is not our only problem. Many nations are exploiting the open door we have extended to the world. We need to include other nations in our solution so that all nations can be warned that the U.S. has adopted a new trade policy.

We should announce that the U.S. policy now is equal trade not free trade. No more an open door to all imports from everywhere. Instead, our policy is to reduce our trade deficit. That requires restrictions on imports. These restrictions should be applied first to the nations that are most responsible for the size of the U.S. trade deficit.

A full discussion of the rationale for this proposal and the details of how it would work are being conveyed on this website by the contribution of W. Raymond Mills titled "Managing Foreign Trade". Three of the first 7 chapters have been presented. The solution toward which the preliminary chapters are aimed will be presented in two chapters, titled, "Pitfalls to be avoided" and "How to balance exports and imports".

Full disclosure. ReformerRay and W. Raymond Mills are the same person.