The Second Battle of NAFTA

[pisshead]

The Second Battle of NAFTA Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
If Canada and Mexico do not renegotiate NAFTA, said Hillary Clinton in the Cleveland debate, she would â??opt outâ?� of the trade treaty that was the legislative altarpiece of Bill Clintonâ??s presidency. Barack agreed. NAFTA is renegotiated, or NAFTA is gone.
Barack went further. He has denounced â??open trucking,â?� the feature of NAFTA whereby Mexican trucks are to be free to roam the United States and compete with the Teamsters of Jim Hoffaâ??s union, which just endorsed him.
The trade issue is back, big-time. For to blue-collar workers in industrial states like Ohio, NAFTA is a code word for betrayal â?? a sellout of them and their families to CEOs panting to move production out of the United States to cheap-labor countries like Mexico and China.
Our workersâ?? instincts are backed up by stats. In 2007, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico soared 16 percent to $73 billion, a record. Mexico now ships more cars to us now than we ship to the world. And where did Mexico get an auto industry?
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The U.S. trade deficit with China shot up 10 percent to $256 billion, the largest trade deficit ever between any two countries.
Charles MacMillion of MBG Services has run the numbers.
In manufactures, the United States had a trade deficit of $499 billion in 2007, a slight improvement over the $526 billion record in 2006. Yet that trade deficit in manufactured goods with the world is more than twice as large as our $224 billion bill for OPECâ??s oil.
Under Bush, the U.S. trade deficit has doubled. Three million manufacturing jobs have vanished. And America has begun to run a trade deficit in advanced technology goods of more than $50 billion.
Our trade deficit in advanced technology goods with China is $67 billion, eight times what it is with Japan.
â??Free trade is essential to the creation of high-paying quality jobs,â?� said Bush on Thursday. But if exports create jobs (and they do), imports displace them. And if we import half a trillion dollars more in manufactures than we export, is not Bush trade policy literally slaughtering industrial jobs?
Is there not a correlation between $4.3 trillion in trade deficits under Bush, the 3 million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush, the fall of the dollar by 50 percent against the euro under Bush and the resurgence of inflation, signaled by a quadrupling of the price of gold, under Bush?
Neither Hillary nor Obama has laid out a new trade-and-tax policy to deal with the de-industrialization of America and our deepening dependency on foreign technology, manufactures and the loans to pay for them. But at least they are listening to the country.
John McCain seems blind and deaf to the crisis. In Michigan, he informed autoworkers their â??jobs are not coming backâ?� and explained his philosophy: â??Iâ??m a student of history. Every time the United States has become protectionist â?¦ weâ??ve paid a very heavy price.â?�
This is ahistorical nonsense. From 1860 to 1913, the United States was the most protectionist nation on earth and produced the most awesome growth of any nation in history. In 1860, the U.S. economy was half of Britainâ??s; in 1913, more than twice Britainâ??s.
In 1920, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge won a landslide, cut income taxes from Wilsonâ??s 69 percent to 25 percent and doubled tariffs. America went on a tear. When Coolidge went home in 1929, the United States was producing 42 percent of the worldâ??s manufactured goods.
Who were Americaâ??s protectionists?
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison moved the Tariff Act of 1789 through Congress. Aided by Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, President Madison enacted the Tariff of 1816 to protect U.S. infant industries from British dumping.
Abraham Lincoln used Morrill Tariff revenue to fight the Civil War. The 11 GOP presidents who followed, from 1865 to 1929, all protectionists, made America the greatest industrial power in history, with a standard of living never before seen. Mocking protectionism, McCain is repudiating Republican history and all its achievements up to the era of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.
America rose to power behind a Republican tariff wall. What has free trade wrought? Lost sovereignty. A sinking dollar. A hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing. Stagnant wages. Wives forced into the labor market to maintain the family income. Mass indebtedness to foreign nations, and a deepening dependency on foreign goods and borrowings to pay for them. We have sacrificed our country on the altar of this Moloch, the mythical Global Economy.
It took Rip Van Republican 20 years to wake up to the disaster of open borders and five years to realize the folly of igniting wars in which no vital interest was at risk. How long before the GOP wakes up to the reality that globalism is not conservatism, never was, but is a pillar of Wilsonian liberalism, in whose vineyards our faux conservatives now daily labor.

pisshead Reviewed by pisshead on 03-04-2008. The Second Battle of NAFTA The Second Battle of NAFTA Patrick J. Buchanan Tuesday, March 4, 2008 If Canada and Mexico do not renegotiate NAFTA, said Hillary Clinton in the Cleveland debate, she would â??opt outâ?� of the trade treaty that was the legislative altarpiece of Bill Clintonâ??s presidency. Barack agreed. NAFTA is renegotiated, or NAFTA is gone. Barack went further. He has denounced â??open trucking,â?� Rating: 5

[hubrock]

"NAFTA is a code word for betrayal â?? a sellout of them and their families to CEOs panting to move production out of the United States to cheap-labor countries like Mexico and China"

what does nafta have to do with china?

anywho... we are all for scrapping it up here. we would love to regain control of our oil, and our soaring loonie is sendin work away anyway.

[fishman3811]

renengotiate NAFTA WHOLLY FUCK what more do the Americans want they have our oil they have our natural gas they have our water lets give them whats left of our clean air....NAFTA isnt what ails the economy its all the jobs that Americas companies have offshored to fucking India and China.

[hubrock]

renengotiate NAFTA WHOLLY FUCK what more do the Americans want they have our oil they have our natural gas they have our water lets give them whats left of our clean air....NAFTA isnt what ails the economy its all the jobs that Americas companies have offshored to fucking India and China.

SSHHHH!!!! if they bail on nafta, we get our oil, and natural gas back

having things done cheap isnt killing them, its spending a fortune on a "war on drugs", destroying farmers crops in afghanistan, forcing them to pay the taliban for protection, which leads right into a "war on terrorism"

when you dump massive resources into fighting one war that puts money into the hands of the enemy in your other huge war, you are bound to end up broke.

[fishman3811]

True but im sick of Americans bashing this and bashing that when they just have to look in there back yard to see why their in the situation they are now.

[Psycho4Bud]

True but im sick of Americans bashing this and bashing that when they just have to look in there back yard to see why their in the situation they are now.

You blow smoke up the U.S. collective ass everytime you get a chance and then state this? DAMN!!ostexcuseme:

Have a good one!:s4:

[fishman3811]

lol P4B the truth hurts doesnt it?

[WildFire.ca]

Fuk NAFTA.... You Americans owe Canada 2 Billion in unpaid lumber tariffs alone. So NAFTA is not working for us, we wish to cancel also. I hope you cancel it, you guys don't manufacture anything anyway, you import it from us and Mexico. Good luck with that,(:

[WildFire.ca]

when you dump massive resources into fighting one war that puts money into the hands of the enemy in your other huge war, you are bound to end up broke.

And there you have it folks "The Quote Of The Day"

[ldg420]

lol P4B the truth hurts doesnt it?

you do realize that that P4B was implying that you sir are indeed a hypocrite simply for taking every opportunity that comes your way (by that I mean cutting and pasting obscure left wing articles) to bash and bash the American policies and people.... and then have the gull to say

im sick of Americans bashing this and bashing and bashing that

so apparently you are actually right when you say...

the truth hurts doesnt it

.......................:stoned: