Trump and Bernie are both right: ‘Free trade’ is killing us

[RiverLover]

Reuters
4/13/16



Trade has been central to the 2016 presidential political debate, from Donald Trump threatening 45 percent tariffs on Chinese imports to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pressuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to oppose President Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, the pact she earlier celebrated as the “gold standard” for trade accords.

It is becoming clear how ruinous U.S. global trade and tax policies have been. Yes, Americans have benefited from the lower prices and increasing variety of imported goods. But the nation has been running unprecedented trade deficits, now at about $500 billion a year, or 3 percent of gross domestic product.

The United States lost an estimated 2.4 million jobs to China trade alone from 1990 to 2010 while running the largest trade deficits with that country in recorded history. As companies moved good jobs to countries, like China, with low wages and scant environmental or consumer protections, entire communities in the United States were savaged. Economists estimate trade with low-wage countries has lowered blue-collar workers’ wages about $1,800 a year. Displaced workers lose incomes, homes, marriages, hope — and suffer through stunningly slow adjustments, often to lower-income jobs.

........snip...........



A thoughtful and comprehensive alternative trade policy has been put forth by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus in the House of Representatives with more than 70 members. The plan calls for a goal of more — but balanced — trade. The president could announce that the United States plans to move to roughly balanced trade by the end of five years. That would put countries with a trade surplus on notice that they must increase domestic demand and decrease reliance on export-led growth. It would also put global corporations on notice that if they want access to U.S. markets, they had better invest in the United States.....

.....snip..........

Read in full~
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/04/12/forget-free-trade-heres-what-fair-trade-looks-like/




And never forget, in that fateful last year of Bill Clinton's presidency, along with killing FDR's Glass-Steagal regulation of Wall Street & the inherent protection for citizens it provided, he also made permanent trade with China taking over 2 MILLION American jobs & devastating American communities :

In the last year of his presidency, Bill Clinton called on Congress to help him change China’s normal trade relations status with the U.S. to permanent. This would amend the Trade Act of 1974 which had the trade status of China on an annually review to determine the best course of action. The piece of legislation was introduced to the house as H.R. number 4444 on May 15, 2000 by William Reynolds Archer, a Republican Representative from Texas (he had three cosponsors). Introduce to the house the legislation referred to the Ways and Means committee in the House of Representatives to be amended and written up.[6] The legislation was introduced by saying that the bill was a top priority for the rest of the year and it was vital to the U.S. agriculture market to have access to a market that accounts for one-fifth of the world’s population.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_normal_trade_relations

He sure Got Things Done.

[restorefreedom]

1. people want to ignore this reality

but this is why we need bernie as the nom. if it is hillary, trump wins in a landslide

[Onlooker]

2. No, equal rights are hurting "us"

Fifty years ago, if you were a straight white man, you were pretty much guaranteed a construction, police, firefighter, and most other jobs because of who you were. Now, many of these men are finding they cannot compete in an even playing field, so they blame others for their plight, and are backing Trump.

Free trade is creating a lot of jobs because capitalism, according to Marx and others after him, depends on expanding marketplaces and free trade does just that. Without free trade, we lose access to markets, which costs us jobs.

Where Bernie is right, however, is that our minimum wage, our taxation structure, our funding of education, and so on, are a mess. But, free trade itself is not a problem. Our unemployment rate is very low and last month the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in 40 years. If the minimum wage was $15/hour, if college was free, if our social welfare net was strengthened, and if the US taxation policy was made more progressive, we would not have the problems that some blame on free trade.

[RiverLover]

4. Our unemployment rate is low becasue so many people have to work 2 jobs in order to survive!

And that equal rights meme is PURE RETHUG BULLSHIT.

Every American should have equal access to jobs, no matter their age, race, skin color, gender, sexual orientation.

Republicans SUCK.

[mythology]

11. The other person wasn't saying people shouldn't have those things

They are saying in the "idyllic" 1960s only straight white males did. There were fewer people allowed into that world.

The people arguing against trade are arguing effectively to go back to mercantilism and in a far more industrialized world. We can work to make trade more fair but it not only isn't going away, it shouldn't.

[Romulox]

23. And the incredibility inequality, childhood poverty, and lack of social mobility? PAYBACK!

[Jitter65]

3. Next time you go to an ATM and deposit or withdrawal cash, next time you call information for your

landline phone, next time you visit any kiosk to handle a multitude of business transactions, next time you use self-service check out at the grocery store, you make your on-line ticket reservations and book a room or book any form of transportation and lodging...stop and think about the millions and millions of jobs that people used to have providing all those services .... then think about which of those jobs were outsourced by trade agreements and which of those jobs were replaced with machines and software and computers.

[RiverLover]

5. Exactly! Even Fedex now is using foreigners to handle customer service calls.

AMERICAN AT&T does too.

My local 3 state internet company does.

All those jobs going for slave wages in other countries.

New World Order is globalization of slave wages & massive obscene profits for those at the top.

[Kip Humphrey]

6. "Principles for Trade: A Model for Global Progress" - Where is Hillary on this???

nowhere I'm sure. That said, everyone else should take a few minutes to read this!

https://cpc-grijalva.house.gov/uploads/Principles%20for%20Trade%20-%20FINAL%202015.05.05.pdf

Thank you, Congressional Progressive Caucus!

[RiverLover]

7. Its just good, moral common sense trade.

Its possible, but those who are corrupt purchased politicians block the good from happening every single time.

[Kip Humphrey]

8. The revolution will take care of those grafters, no problem.

[djean111]

9. Hillary shilled for the TPP all over the world, a LOT of speeches saying how wonderful it

would be, and called it the gold standard in her most recent book.

Anything she says now that is different is just lying and pandering campaign bullshit.

[RiverLover]

10. Total campaign BS. Over 40 speeches praising the TPP.

She's running ag how she will actually be if we're cursed enough to have her back in the WH.

[BernieforPres2016]

12. Except that Bernie has always been against free trade agreements

I don't think Trump never gave them any thought. He is a demagogue who realized that criticizing free trade played to the crowd he was trying to appeal to. I read an article about Trump's preparation for this campaign. He had some political advisors who listened to right wing talk radio shows across the country to find the issues that the callers and listeners to the shows were passionate about. That's where Trump's rants about closing the borders, the anti-immigrant rhetoric and the anti "free trade" agreements come from. It is not out of principle. I just looked and found an article I read on that (I think there was another that went into more detail on the talk radio part but didn't find it). Here's a link and a short bit of it:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/inside-the-donald-trump-presidential-campaign.html

<As early as 1987, Trump talked publicly about his desire to run for president. He toyed with mounting a campaign in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket, and again in 2012 as a Republican (this was at the height of his Obama birtherism). Two years later, Trump briefly explored running for governor of New York as a springboard to the White House. “I have much bigger plans in mind — stay tuned,” he tweeted in March 2014.

Trump taped another season of The Apprentice that year, but he kept a political organization intact. His team at the time consisted of three advisers: Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg. Stone is a veteran operative, known for his gleeful use of dirty tricks and for ending Eliot Spitzer’s political career by leaking his patronage of prostitutes to the FBI. Cohen is Trump’s longtime in-house attorney. And Nunberg is a lawyer wired into right-wing politics who has long looked up to “Mr. Trump,” as he calls him. “I first met him at Wrestle­Mania when I was like 5 years old,” Nunberg told me.

Throughout 2014, the three fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core. While Jeb Bush talked about crossing the border as an “act of love,” Trump was thinking about how high to build his wall. “We either have borders or we don’t,” Trump told the faithful who flocked to the annual CPAC conference in 2014.>

Bernie's positions are based on his long standing principles. He doesn't deserve to be lumped with a hate mongering egomaniac demagogue like Trump for any reason. Hopefully there are some Trump supporters who can let go of the hate and realize that Bernie is speaking for people like them who have been left behind by the current economic system.

[pampango]

14. 'Trump "is a demagogue who realized that criticizing free trade played to the crowd he was trying to

appeal to."' Well said.

Trump "is a demagogue who realized that criticizing free trade played to the crowd he was trying to appeal to. I read an article about Trump's preparation for this campaign. He had some political advisors who listened to right wing talk radio shows across the country to find the issues that the callers and listeners to the shows were passionate about. That's where Trump's rants about closing the borders, the anti-immigrant rhetoric and the anti "free trade" agreements come from. It is not out of principle."

Trump learned that the republican base hates 'free trade' with a passion and figured he could "play to the crowd he was trying to appeal to."

The same applies to "Trump's rants about closing the borders, the anti-immigrant rhetoric", "Obamacare, and Common Core". They all come straight from right-wing talk radio, too.

[RiverLover]

15. Trump is incompetent & not capable of being an effective leader. But he's appealing to people.

Trump yard signs are EVERYWHERE in the state of Ohio.

I was told in the grocery store by some elderly man to not buy Keebler crackers & to vote for Trump.

Bernie will need to really focus on getting his message out in the backwards state, once he secures the nom.

[BernieforPres2016]

17. I didn't say Trump isn't appealing to them

I said Trump figured out what they wanted to hear and played it back to them because that's what demagogues do. Bernie was giving speeches against NAFTA on the floor of the House over 20 years ago while Donald Trump was buying off government officials and using eminent domain to steal the property of the kind of people who are now supporting him.

[RiverLover]

25. Preaching to the choir. Geesh, I didn't write the headline for the OP article. /nt

[MisterP]

19. that little Keebler incident's actually massively dangerous, since there's nothing

angrier than a middle class--upper as well as lower--that feels economically precarious, culturally threatened, politically vulnerable; it happened several times before ...

Trump IS the Reddit/4Chan alt-right, and under the Clintons the Dems have cut the South loose, chased the GOP forever right, mocked anyone who worked for a living as racist buggy-whip makers whose jobs and votes we'd be better off without in the New Economy; meanwhile race and ethnicity are boiled down to campaign issues and taken over by the Marcottes and Valentis and Bonita Tindles of the world, because that helps segment voters down into targetable blocs (that's why animation was designed as "kids only" since that made a more valuable market) so Clinton can be the hardworking white candidate one morning and a Farrakhoid at lunch

Trump has the political instincts of a shark (specifically, a dead week-old beached shark), but he's bent not just on winning the WH but on knocking the GOP down and rebuilding it in his image: he's a know-nothing in every sense of the word, and if he can Harper the party by revealing that Reaganomics has been a decades-long scam to get poor whites to vote to make themselves poorer, he's going to
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-trump-big-government-20160301-story.html

[RiverLover]

26. Really interesting LAT article, change is in the air & the masses are waking up.

Thanks for the link, MisterP! If Bernie can run against this clown in the GE, he'll wipe the floor with him. Bernie's change is real & doable & his authenticity shines through.

[MisterP]

29. this election's exposing the neoliberal hornswoggle that both parties have used to keep

power not just from the shriveling number of mooks pulling the lever but maintain their position with the owners of the country

candidates who call Reaganomics a passel of lies and interventionism a profitable cycle of death is almost shocking--but perhaps even inevitable; I shudder to think where we'd be if Sanders had just stayed at home or entered just a month later

[pampango]

13. Sweden and Germany import much more than we do, yet both have a trade surplus. Why don't we?

They pay their workers as much or more than in the US. How is it that they export so much more than we do?

... he also made permanent trade ...

PNTR with China was necessary in order for it to join the WTO. What makes you think that keeping China out of the WTO would have changed anything in our trade relationship with China?

China was coming out of its self-imposed isolation and poverty no matter what the US did or did not do. There is no way to isolate ourselves from the industrialization of 1.3 billion people. They were not going to 'boot-strap' themselves out of poverty so the rest of the world was bound to be affected.

[RiverLover]

16. It was annual approval. We could have not allowed any trade with China that year instead of

permanently allowing it.

They're a communist country. And they've taken our jobs. So corporations can profit from crappy low wages & no unions for working people.

USA!!!

[pampango]

18. "We could have not allowed any trade with China that year instead of permanently allowing it."

I agree 'we could have'. I somehow doubt that we would have gone forward with a Cuba-style trade embargo with the largest country in the world.

BTW, Russia did not join the WTO until 2012. Our trade balance with them deteriorated even more from 2001 to 2012 (in percentage terms) than it did with China during that period after China joined the WTO in December 2001.

They're a communist country. ... USA!!!

Yes. "Make America Great Again". Except liberals go Trump one better. Not just a 45% tariff on imports from China. We ban trade with China altogether.That will teach those commies in Cuba - I mean in China - a lesson. If a trade embargo impoverishes people in China, just as it did in Cuba, so be it. They are "communists" after all.

[Romulox]

22. Of course your claim is nonsense (as per usual, for you.) We have the largest trade deficit

in the history of humanity.

[pampango]

24. Imports are 29% of Sweden's economy; 37% of Germany's economy; 12% of the US economy.

Imports are 29% of Sweden's economy; 37% of Germany's economy; 12% of the US economy.

My "claim" is that Sweden and Germany import a much larger share of their economies than we do. Is that claim nonsense?

... yet both have a trade surplus.

Exports are 33% of Sweden's economy; 43% of Germany's economy; and 9% of the US economy. Is that claim nonsense?

They pay their workers as much or more than in the US.

Is that claim nonsense?

I did not make any claim about our trade deficit. I posted: "How is it that they export so much more than we do? "

[Romulox]

30. Right, but those economies EXPORT more as a percentage of GDP than we do. Much more.

That's what "trade deficit" means.

[pampango]

31. I agree. I gave the percentages that show how "much more" they export than we do.

Exports are 33% of Sweden's economy; 43% of Germany's economy; and 9% of the US economy.

They have stronger unions than we have and their wages are as high or higher than ours, yet they are able to export "much more" than we do.

[Romulox]

32. So, your initial point is a deflection, if not outright misleading. Quelle surprise!

[pampango]

33. My initial point was "Sweden and Germany import much more than we do, yet both have a trade surplus.

"Why don't we?

They pay their workers as much or more than in the US. How is it that they export so much more than we do?"

How is that a deflection?

You and I agree that Sweden and Germany import goods at much higher levels than the US does, yet both maintain a trade surplus due to the fact that they export much, much more than the US does. And we agree that the US exports so much less than Sweden and Germany do that we end up with a massive trade deficit.

If that is your definition of a "deflection", so be it.

[Romulox]

34. But they also EXPORT several times what we do. Hence, their workers have power where ours have none.

The rest of your blah blah blah is an attempt to explain away this inconvenient truth. After all, if you cared a whit about U.S. workers, you'd demand protections for them BEFORE advocating for more job obliterating "free trade".

But I guess you just forgot to mention anything about that in any of your 22,875 posts.

[pampango]

35. "More protections" like a repeal of Taft-Hartley, higher progressive taxes for a stronger safety net

more effective regulation of business - IOW all the things that FDR did back in the day and Sweden and Germany do today - you may not have noticed in reading my 22,875 posts that I have pushed for these continuously. If you have not noticed, so be it.

I know that more trade is not going to make our middle class well off. I also know that less trade is not going to make our middle class well off. FDR saw that did not work when Coolidge and Hoover did the whole "no trade/no protections" policy.

The only thing that will do that are the "protections' you and I speak of. FDR did not view it as EITHER protections OR trade. He promoted both.

[Romulox]

36. Anyone who cares care to can click on your name and see what you've been "pushing for".

You are a single issue poster in favor of job-obliterating "free trade". The only mentions you make of union protections, progressive taxation, etc. are in defense of the former.

As anyone who cares to exam can clearly see.

[RiverLover]

37. Romulox.

Just wanted to say Thanks for your posts here. They've been informative & fantastic rebuttals to our single issue free "trade" loving friend.

Its appreciated greatly!

(Here's to "Made In The USA" coming around again!!)

[Romulox]

38. Thank you for the comment. It is much appreciated! nt

[pampango]

39. They certainly can do that. As Bernie said "Why can't we be more like Scandinavia?"

Like FDR (and Scandinavian countries) I think trade is good and multilateral control of trading rules (like his ITO and their EU) is even better. Like FDR (and Scandinavian countries) I support strong union protections, high progressive taxation, strict business regulation and a strong safety net.

Mr. Trump will be happy to deal with the "job-obliterating 'free trade'" with his unilateral tariffs on Mexico, China, Japan and any other country that crosses his path. His plans will require the US to kill NAFTA and withdraw from the WTO, so "job-obliterating" will be largely eliminated. Meanwhile, of course, Mr. Trump mentions nothing about "union protections" (indeed he wants to spread 'right-to-work' nationwide), progressive taxation (he proposes more 'trickle-down' tax cuts for the rich) or anything else that FDR did or Scandinavian countries do support.

If cutting trade will solve our problems, Mr. Trump is the solution to our problems. If the solution lies in stronger union protections, progressive taxes, etc. then Bernie is the solution and Trump will make things much worse. And that is why he is a modern version of the pre-FDR republicans who tried the same thing in the 1920's.

[AzDar]

20. K & R

[HughLefty1]

21. We have jobs in this country

but they are of the crappy minimum wage service variety which doesn't help when you are $250,000 in debt coming out of college. The H1B visa program is equally bad when it comes to this problem.

That last photo stings as it was taken in N.E Ohio where I was born and raised. That part of the country, known as the rust belt, along with Western PA, and Upstate NY has been absolutely decimated by factories and manufacturing jobs leaving this country. It is so sad.

With automation some of it was to be expected but the amount of companies leaving the U.S. for China, Japan, Mexico and other countries has just about wiped out our entire middle class. The problems started with NAFTA and will be worse with TPP. To make matters worse countries like China manipulate their currency so that our US companies cannot compete. Our middle class has taken it with a double barrel for two decades.

[Fresh_Start]

27. The rust belt began when jobs moved to the sunbelt

not out of the country but to other states which happily poached companies,industries and jobs from the rust belt.
Companies jumping to lower cost of labor areas (with tax incentives to boot) was begun in the US.

[RiverLover]

28. Yep, that about sums it up.

Two decades has been long enough, we're fed up.