Yeah, yeah, I know Buchanan's part neandrathal. He makes some serious sense on this issue though.

September 29, 2006
By Patrick J. Buchanan

In July, our trade deficit hit yet another all-time record, $68 billion, an annual rate of $816 billion. Imports surged to $188 billion for the month, as our dependency on foreigners for the vital necessities of our national life ever deepens.

China's trade surplus with us was $19.6 billion for July alone, moving toward an all-time record of $235 billion for 2006 – the largest trade deficit one country has ever run with another. Our deficit with Mexico is running at an annual rate of $60 billion. With Canada, it is $70 billion. So much for NAFTA. With the European Union, it is running at $160 billion.

America as the most self-sufficient republic in history is history. For decades, U.S. factories have been closing. Three million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since Bush arrived. Ford and GM are fighting for their lives.

Bu****es boast of all the new jobs created, but Business Week tells the inconvenient truth: "Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been created in the health care sector. ... Meanwhile, the number of private sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago."

"Perhaps most surprising," writes BW, "information technology, the great electronic promise of the 1990s, has turned into one of the biggest job-growth disappointments of all time. ... (B)usinesses at the core of the information economy – software, semiconductors, telecom and the whole gamut of Web companies – have lost more than 1.1 million jobs in the past five years. Those business employ fewer Americans than they did in 1998, when the Internet economy kicked into high gear."

Where did the high-tech go? China. Beijing's No. 1 export to the United States in 2005, $50 billion worth, was computers and electronics.

If Americans are the most efficient workers on earth and work longer hours than almost any other advanced nation, why are we getting our clocks cleaned? Answer: While American workers are world-class, our elites are mentally challenged. So rhapsodic are they about the Global Economy they have forgotten their own country. Europeans, Japanese, Canadians and Chinese sell us so much more than they buy from us because they have rigged the rules of world trade.

While the United States has a corporate income tax, our trade rivals use a value-added tax. At each level of production, a tax is imposed on the value added to the product. Under the rules of global trade, nations may rebate VAT levies on exports, and impose the equivalent of a VAT on imports.

Assume a VAT that adds up to 15 percent of the cost of a new car in Japan. If Toyota ships 1 million cars to the United States valued at $20,000 each, $20 billion worth of Toyotas, they can claim a rebate of the VAT of $3,000 on each car, or $3 billion – a powerful incentive to export. But each U.S. car arriving at the Yokohama docks will have 15 percent added to its sticker price to make up for Japan's VAT.

This amounts to a foreign subsidy on exports to the United States and a foreign tax on imports from America. Uncle Sam gets hit coming and going. It is as though, after firing a round of 66 in the Masters, Tiger Woods has five strokes added to his score for a 71, and five strokes are subtracted from the scores of his rivals. Even Tiger would bring home few trophies with those kind of ground rules.

The total tax disadvantage to U.S. producers – of VAT rebates and VAT equivalents imposed on U.S. products – is estimated at $294 billion.

Exported U.S services face the same double whammy. A VAT equivalent is imposed on them, while the exported services of foreign providers get the VAT rebate. Disadvantage to U.S. services: $85 billion annually.

Why do our politicians not level the playing field for U.S. companies?

First, ignorance of how world trade works. Second, ideology. These robotic free-traders recoil from any suggestion that they aid U.S. producers against unfair foreign tactics as interfering with Adam Smith's "invisible hand," which they equate with the hand of the Almighty.

Third, they are hauling water for transnational companies that want to move production overseas and shed their U.S. workers.

How could we level the playing field? Simple. Impose an "equalizing fee" on imports equal to the rebates. Take the billions raised, and cut taxes on U.S. companies, especially in production. Create a level playing field for U.S. goods and services in foreign markets, and increase the competitiveness of U.S. companies in our own home market by reducing their tax load.

U.S. trade deficits would shrivel overnight. And jobs and factories lately sent abroad would start coming home.

Isn't it time we put America first – even ahead of China?

__________________
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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

SeeCrack (sorry ), why do you always offer up an apology when you quote someone who is not on the payroll of the SFC? Some type of Berkley guilt thingy?

Buchanan's theory is probably a little oversimplified (as they usually are) and I think his solution would discourage trade. His equalization tax may have worked in the early days of IBM (before India and China), but I think now, trading partners just have too many options to put up with such a tax. Whaddya think?

OK. But how do you explain why a US factory is not as profitable as a Jap factory just across the street?

Even if we did what they wanted, (Actually it might be a good idea) are we just keeping a brain dead patient on life support? Even if we did tax the foriegn imports, what will it do when our own workers refuse to make a profit for their company? What then? Tax the competition higher and higher?

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Hah! Jokes on you. The SFC pays Buchanan,... well pays him a little cause they carry his syndicated column.

Bot always pooh-poohs Buchanan. I was putting out some pre-emptive defensiveness. I don't see eye to eye with Pat on everything.

I saw this interesting exchange on the Leher NewsHour a few days back:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec06/globalization_09-28.html

It was Sen. Byron Dorgan debating Friedman on free trade/globalization. They both made some good points. It's a dilemma all right.

Here's the part that reminded me of this piece (it's near the end):

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: One more point. Next year, Americans will be driving some Chinese cars, because China's doing an automobile export industry. They're going to ship cars here. You know what? When their cars come to this country, they'll find a 2.5 percent tariff attached to their cars. By agreement, we've said any cars we sell in China, you can impose a 25 percent tariff.

A country with whom we have $200 billion trade deficit, we said, "You can apply a tariff that is 10 times that which we will apply." That is ignorant; it's destructive of our interest; it has nothing to do with protecting our country. And it seems to me denying those things is ignoring the obvious.

Let's decide how we raise America up. I'm not interested in building someone else's house with bricks from our foundation. Let's defend this country's interests and be a part of the global economy, yes, but defending our interests first.

You can listen to the audio or watch the video on the site or, here's the (long) transcript:

JEFFREY BROWN: "Take This Job and Ship It," that's the name of a new book that looks critically at some of the forces shaping today's global economy and its impact on American workers. One of its prime targets is another book, "The World is Flat," a bestseller with its own view of the changes brought through globalization.

Side by side now, here are the authors: Byron Dorgan, Democratic senator from North Dakota; and Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times.

Welcome to both of you.

TOM FRIEDMAN, New York Times: Thank you.

SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D), North Dakota: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: Senator Dorgan, you write, "The world is flat? That's just flat wrong." Now, what do you mean? What world do you see?

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: Well, I do. This is a new world, after a century of progress and lifting American standards, building a middle class, lifting wages, and all the things that we did to make this the country it is.

Now it's a new day, they say. It's a global economy, a flat world. Corporations should search for the lowest, cheapest labor, lowest cost labor, produce there, ship here, sell in America, run the income through the Cayman Islands.

We're up to our neck in debt, $800 billion trade deficit this year, downward pressure on wages and benefits. I'm saying this doesn't work. It's going to shrink the middle-class. It leaves us choking on debt, and we need a fair trade strategy. This free trade nonsense in which we sell out and pull the rug out from under American workers and American interests just has to stop.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you see, Tom Friedman?

TOM FRIEDMAN: Well, my book is really about the world as it is and the world that's evolved in the last two decades. And it's a world in which three things have really come together: the personal computer, which has allowed individuals to author their own content in digital form; the Internet, which has allowed them to send that content anywhere, words, photo, data, spreadsheet, video; and workflow software that's made it possible to collaborate anywhere with anyone on anything.

That's what's really flattened the world, in my view, and made so many more people potential collaborators, connectors and competitors.

Now, there's an iron rule, I would argue, Jeff, in this world, and it goes like this: Whatever can be done will be done. There's only one question: Will it be done by you or to you?

And in that world, OK, I have no doubt that Americans can compete, thrive, and succeed, if we keep our economy open so more people can do more things, competitive so we get the first signals, OK, because we face competition, all right, and we empower, and enable our workers to do it before it's done to them.

We used to have a receptionist at the New York Times Washington bureau, OK? We don't have a receptionist anymore, but that phone isn't answered in India. It's answered by a microchip.

Harmful loss vs. inevitable change

JEFFREY BROWN: Potential benefits for everyone, you see.

You see loss of jobs, lower wages?

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: There's no question about that. I mean, I don't disagree with the advent of the Internet. The world isn't flat; the world clearly is smaller because of the information technology revolution. I don't deny the benefits of all of that.

The question is: Who will receive those benefits? Will we in this country? The fact is, the world "as it is," as Tom says, it's about what kind of world we want to live in. What kind of trade agreements do we want to engage in with other countries?

Tom takes a look at Bangalore and says, "Isn't this wonderful?" Well, if American jobs are gone to Bangalore, no, it's not so wonderful.

I tell in the book a short story about Natasha Humphries. She did everything right. She went to Stanford, got a degree, an African-American young lady, went to work for Palm Pilot. By the way, her last job at Palm Pilot was to train her successor, an engineer from India who will work for one-fifth the cost. Is that good?

No, it's not good for this country. It wasn't good for Natasha, and it's going on around all this country. And some leading economists say there are 40 million to 50 million tradable jobs, and even those that aren't gone from this country will face downward pressure on wages. That's what most families are now facing in this country; that's what the facts are.

JEFFREY BROWN: What's the response to the story of that woman?

TOM FRIEDMAN: Well, I'd like to know what she's doing today, whether she's found a job, number one, because I bet dollars to doughnuts, if she has the skills that the senator suggests, that she has found a job.

Number two, I'd say this, Jeff. I happen to believe that capitalism is the most brutal, high-pressure, intense economic system in the world, except all the others. Capitalism makes people unequally rich. Socialism was a great system for making people equally poor. There was no other better system than that, and so this is the world we live in.

JEFFREY BROWN: You're saying dislocation is inevitable?

TOM FRIEDMAN: Not just dislocation. First of all, most jobs are not outsourced to Bangalore, and they aren't outsourced to Mexico. They're outsourced to the past. We used to have a receptionist at the New York Times Washington bureau, OK? We don't have a receptionist anymore, but that phone isn't answered in India. It's answered by a microchip.

So let's start with the fact that most of the job churn happens because of technological change. They aren't shipped abroad.

Secondly, OK, you've got -- if you look at companies that outsource today -- and I'm sure there's exceptions either way -- companies that outsource, outsource to win. They outsource to beat their competition so they can grow and actually offer more better jobs here.

If the world were as ugly and as bad, I think as the senator suggests, for us as Americans, how could our unemployment rate be only 5 percent, OK? So something is going on here.

It is not capitalism when we decide that we're going to have a product produced in China, with people living 100 to a room, in big, cinder brick rooms, and then working for $50 a month.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
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More; Dorgan and Friedman:

Using exploitative capitalism?

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, what's the answer?

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: Well, let me tell you what's going on. Let me tell you what's going on. Wages and salaries, as a percent of our GDP, is at its lowest level since they started measuring in 1947. That's probably not true for journalists or politicians; it's true for American families.

And this notion all these statistics people use -- I know the story about the nine guys sitting on a barstool, and Bill Gates walks in. On average, they're all now wealthy.

The fact is: There's a lot of trouble in this economy. You can't escape the fact that $2 billion a day in trade deficit we're ringing up every single day, the highest in history. It is not capitalism when we decide that we're going to have a product produced in China, with people living 100 to a room, in big, cinder brick rooms, and then working for $50 a month.

And, by the way, that's what's happening for the production of the iPod. We engineered iPod in this country; now, it's being produced for $50-a-month labor in rooms that house 100 people to sleep at night.

That's not capitalism; that's labor exploitation. And it's going on, not just with respect to textiles, not just manufacturing, it's going on in high tech. And that is not, in my judgment, what we fought for a century in this country to create.

JEFFREY BROWN: Tom Friedman says it's brutal, capitalism is brutal, except for everything else. OK, but what are you suggesting?

TOM FRIEDMAN: What's the alternative?

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: But exploiting foreign labor is not capitalism. That's about fattening the treasury of a corporation at the expense of workers.

And so let me -- in my book, aside from this exploitation, fattening the treasury is also about running the income through the Cayman Islands. There's one little piece in my book about a five-story white building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands that is home to 12,748 corporations. They're not there, of course. It's illegal fiction so they can avoid paying taxes.

Aside from that, what we need to do is to say free trade agreements don't mean anything. I know Tom has said he's written in support of free trade agreements just because it said "free" without knowing what the agreement meant. I could talk for hours about how unfair those free trade agreements are to our country and to our workers. And we have to stand up for the interests of this country. We just have to stand up for its interests.

The best jobs are here, OK, not the jobs over there. The best jobs are here, all the senior executive jobs.

Stories of job loss and gain

JEFFREY BROWN: Tom Friedman?

TOM FRIEDMAN: You know, what the senator talks about, there's a lot you see you. You see people getting laid off, OK? And when the unemployment rate -- when you're unemployed, the unemployment rate isn't 5 percent. It's 100 percent. And we hear from those people.

But what we don't see is the 10 people being hired here, the 30 people hired there. I just spoke at New Jersey a few months ago at a development board meeting. I met a New Jersey entrepreneur. I said, "What do you do?" He said, "Well, I have an open-source database company. Our headquarters here is in Iceland, New Jersey. It's based on open source database. We use 50 programmers in Islamabad, and we communicate by Skype Internet teleconferencing."

Now, you think about that guy's business. That guy's business -- there isn't an element of that guy's business that existed, OK, 10 years ago. But what did he do? He was smart. He was on top of it. He put together a company because we have a free, open, and competitive society. He used people in Pakistan. He used people here.

The best jobs are here, OK, not the jobs over there. The best jobs are here, all the senior executive jobs. But he did that because we have a free, open and competitive society.

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: Well, let me describe with a story this kind of progress. I have it in the book, Huffy Bicycles. It's a manufacturing company. They manufactured Huffy bicycles in Ohio. All those workers got fired. They made $11 an hour plus benefits. They all got fired.

Huffy Bicycles moved to China. They're now in China, 33 cents an hour, 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. And, by the way, the last job they took, they took the decal of the American flag off the bicycle, replaced it with a globe.

And a worker told me, when they left the parking lot, the last time when they got fired, they left a pair of empty shoes in their parking space to say to that company, "You can ship our jobs to China, but you're never going to fill our shoes."

Now, incidentally, replacing Huffy on that very spot is now a brand new Wal-Mart. It's almost a perfect metaphor for what I think is wrong. After lifting this country's standards up for a century, to suggest we should compete even with exploited labor around the world at 20 and 30 cents an hour is to inevitably push down standards in this country. Inevitably, it will diminish wages, diminish opportunities in this country.

Next year... [China is] going to ship cars here... When their cars come to this country, they'll find a 2.5 percent tariff attached to their cars. By agreement, we've said any cars we sell in China, you can impose a 25 percent tariff.

America's path for the future

JEFFREY BROWN: Having laid out the problems, are you hopeful for the future about the American economy, and the American jobs, and the American worker?

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: I am. I couldn't go to work in the morning if I didn't have a lot of hope, but we need to fix this. You can't choke on $800 billion a year.

I read something yesterday, somebody said, "Well, that's a sign of economic health." A sign of economic health for us to be in the red $800 billion a year? We're selling part of our country everyday. Plus, we're diminishing standards in this country.

I want to lift America up. I want to raise America's hopes. And I hope with this kind of discussion that perhaps we can find the best of what everyone has to offer, and bring this country back to where it can be, and describe the kind of global economy we want to participate in.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, Tom Friedman, you've laid out the churning of the economy. Are you hopeful as you look forward?

TOM FRIEDMAN: I'm very hopeful. Look, if horses could vote, we never would have had cars, all right? I'm sure that there are bicycle jobs and furniture jobs that are lost everyday. That's in the nature of the churn of capitalism. It's called creative destruction.

It's government's job to cushion those workers and enable those workers to have a progressive tax system, OK, that allows us to take care of those people. I'm a big believer in that. I'm not for, you know, some wild market economy where government has no place. I believe that government has a huge role, even more in this economy.

I've heard the diagnosis from the senator, but I haven't heard the prescription, OK, because I'm telling you, you put up walls -- we tried that before. It's called Smoot-Hawley, OK? That led to World War I.

We tried that prescription. In a flat world, OK, you try to put up walls, you will impoverish this country. Yes, capitalism is tough. We're all going to have to run faster and get smarter. The job of the American government is to enable and empower our workers to do that. If we do that, we are going to do fine.

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: And let me just...

JEFFREY BROWN: Senator, I'm going to give you the last word.

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: One more point.

JEFFREY BROWN: Last word.

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: One more point. Next year, Americans will be driving some Chinese cars, because China's doing an automobile export industry. They're going to ship cars here. You know what? When their cars come to this country, they'll find a 2.5 percent tariff attached to their cars. By agreement, we've said any cars we sell in China, you can impose a 25 percent tariff.

A country with whom we have $200 billion trade deficit, we said, "You can apply a tariff that is 10 times that which we will apply." That is ignorant; it's destructive of our interest; it has nothing to do with protecting our country. And it seems to me denying those things is ignoring the obvious.

Let's decide how we raise America up. I'm not interested in building someone else's house with bricks from our foundation. Let's defend this country's interests and be a part of the global economy, yes, but defending our interests first.

JEFFREY BROWN: OK. The argument continues in the books. Senator Byron Dorgan's book is "Take This Job and Ship It." Tom Friedman's, "The World is Flat." Thank you both very much.

TOM FRIEDMAN: Thank you.

SEN. BYRON DORGAN: Thank you.

__________________
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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Yep, but it's almost too late. This countries future is in BIG BIG trouble and the party won't go on forever under the current conditions. People are in denial about what's been happening over the last 20 years, and I'm sure there's a whole choir just waiting to sing a song to disagree.

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Question Authority before it Questions you.

Buchanan is right. He's a neanderthal, and back in 1992, I thought he was the devil incarnate. I was 16 at the time, and even more liberal than I am now, but he's dead-on. Never thought I'd say that.

As for you, aklim, I need you to repeat after me.

"I sell widgets."

Your jaded cynical attitude won't do anything for you but lose the standard of living which bought you a juiced up 'Vette, a Mercedes-Benz, and a three ton *****box... so why do you keep banging your drum?

There isn't *anything* the Chinese can't do better than us. It's easy to succeed if you have no morals and no qualms. For those of us who *do* have at least a sense, however imperfect, of right and wrong, we have a harder time. A question for you:

Do you see anything wrong with buying products produced in a prison camp by inmates at gunpoint? Perhaps not. In which case, go on telling us that America is dead and we need to get off life support, since some of us think that, as in the case of the past 1000+ years of recorded history, locally produced goods are a Good Thing...

As for myself, I see Chicoms as a version of the prison camp described above, and I consider it a moral imperative *NOT* to invest my money there.

So he wants us to TAX other countries? Doesn't he know from Economics 101 that taxes ALWAYS come back to bite us in the butt via higher prices somewhere down the line? He's setting up barriers to trade

Whatever happened to Free Trade without barriers?

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Audi TT

You meanie.

I'm sure you're partly right about prison labor in China but they're also kicking our behinds with factories that treat people more or less equitably. The much reviled Nike factories are sought after jobs I hear, cause they pay about double that of other work.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Foreign goods are cheaper than American goods. The results can be (a) the gov stays out of business and releases Adam's Smith's cold hand OR (b) the gov gets involved in business.

Just for fun, lets choose (b). Now the choices get more complex. The gov can take measures that (1) make foreign products more expensive than native products or (2) reduce the cost of native products.

For a bit more fun, let's choose 1. We create a tariff, which is a special tax aimed at a (a) certain product or (b) against products from some targeted foreign country. Since the tax is against a foreign entity it can be imposed fairly or not, depending on how much heat from the foreign community we wish to accept.

Now that we're on the floor overcome with giggles already, let's add to the mirth by choosing a tariff against a product, say ... cars. Let's add a $1,000 import duty on each car and call it a "processing fee," thereby perhaps avoiding death by GATT (or maybe not). The immediate beneficiary is the native car mfr. They get to maintain the existing pricing or even raise prices a bit, increasing profits that investors always favor. The Board of Directors gets a bonus for increasing profits and the union demands "fairness", putting pressure on the company for an improved compensation package for employees. Notice that there is NO INCENTIVE for engineering innovation or cost savings.

What happened to the foreign competition? They must either reduce mfr costs or increase the product value such that the $1,000 price differential is reasonable to the consumer. How do they do that? Cutting mfr costs and innovation. They produce a better car, cheaper.

In 10 years, which car would you prefer to buy, a native one or a foreign one? Does any of this sound familiar?

Bot

And how do you reduce mfg. costs? You cut the wages and benefits of your employees or you reduce the size of your workforce.

Cost's for product components are sourced competitivly and efficently, many parts are outsourced from offshore suppliers. There is not alot to room reduce costs there.

Assembly lines are engineered for high productivity to eliminate needless motions. Maybe some tweeking can help, but the results are minimal.

Inventories are tightly controlled by MRP software and practices, vastly reducing overstocking of components and finished goods, thus freeing up stagnant capital and reducing overhead costs.

Very easy to say reduce mfg. costs, but almost impossible to do when your business is running at 95% efficency already. There always room for some improvement, but not enough to make a huge difference.

Too use the example of Huffy bikes, the domestic employess were making
$11/hr, barely enought to support a single individual, and certainly not overly compensated. How can we Americans compete against the China labor market paying .30 cents hour? Reducing mfg. costs would only be a drop in a bucket compared to the cost of labor savings in China.

Sure the company see a windfall in profits for the execs. and shareholders, but they don't really manufacture a good damn thing, and are basicly just a import, design and marketing company.

Unless the American worker is willing to work for .50 cents an hour, we will never be able to compete competivley with 3rd world labor markets, no matter how much you reduce costs.

__________________
Question Authority before it Questions you.

Dunno. Maybe I got jaded and cynical after seeing the world in all it's splendor. Deny it all you want but the heydays of American manufacturing are over and done with. The torch has been assigned to somebody else and they are prying it out of our fingers. We need to move on to something that prison labor and what not cannot achieve yet before it is too late. Why waste resources on something that is already dead?

The Chinese did choose communism. It had tons of popular support. So, what business is it of mine if it bites them in the butt? Just as we have chosen capitalism. Do the Chinese sympathise with us if it bites us?

Not my problem as to what goes on there. I did not say the US is on life support. I said manufacturing is on life support. I don't know what you are reading but are you trying to say that most of the products are prison made? I don't think so. Never been to China but I doubt it. I know for sure that most of the products in Vietnam are not prison made since I do trade with that place and people I know who do trade in China don't find most of the stuff made in prisons. Yes, it makes a bigger splash but most of them are not that way. A few low tech items like baskets, simple products maybe.

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Amen, brother. Amen. I've been beating my "China is the biggest threat currently facing the world" drum for the past year. I wish more people would take the time to educate themselves about China, how they conduct business, and just how much of a grip they have on the economies of the Western world.

Low-level manufacturing was the thin end of the wedge. Then it was complex manufacturing. Now it is R&D. What else do we need to lose before we wake up? It wont be too long before there just aren't any jobs that allow a decent standard of living, let alone the luxuries. First we become a society of people who buy the things that we used to make. The next step will be not being able to afford those things any more because our service-industry jobs pay minimum wage, aren't full time, and don't have benefits. I know this is bigger picture thinking than some business owners are capable of, but its there. Too many business owners are focused on reporting results for next quarter. But who will their customer base be in 10 years?

Low-level is over for us. I don't think they are that deeply entrenched in complex manufacturing and certainly not entrenched in R&D. Like I said before, forget the low level and concentrate on R&D then move on to say complex manufacturing. No point beating a dead horse. Lets go where we have the best chance of success.

__________________
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