Tag Archives: Trade

US – China Summit: If Trade Was Trade…

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Today the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue begins in Washington. This is the third such meeting, and it’s time for the Obama administration to get it right. China has not been engaging in “trade” with us, they have been engaging in something else entirely.
The Washington Post sets the stage, with an editorial, The U.S. must push back against China’s investment controls

…It is still holding the renminbi at about 25 or 30 percent below its probable market value. … Beijing has increasingly used government procurement rules, technical standards and tax laws to force foreign companies to transfer their technology to state-owned Chinese firms in return for access to the Chinese market. … Beijing’s objective is the mercantilist one of building up state-owned “national champion” firms that can then capture global markets from Japanese, European and U.S. competitors. No matter that the state-owned sector already receives massive official support, direct and indirect — while more efficient private-sector job- creators must scramble for resources.

Last week’s Let Trade Be Trade, explains,

Since China’s admission into the World Trade Organization we have been packing up our factories and sending them over there. We have been buying so many things made in China, but they have not been buying very many things made here, and the resulting “trade deficit” has gotten worse year after year. Everyone is afraid of what China might do with all those trillion$ in US Bonds they have accumulated. … There is a better way to solve the problem: let trade BE trade.

Time To Buy From Us
There is a simple solution: tell them to start actually trading with us,

When the meeting begins Secretaries Clinton (State) and Geithner (Treasury) and Locke (Commerce) should slide a big stack of order forms across the table and say, “Your turn. Let us take your orders now, please.”

China has been selling but not buying and it’s time for them to to start buying. That way we might be able use the word “trade” without wincing. It would also help fix our economy, our budget deficit, our unemployment rate and many other pressing problems.
China Holds $1.5 Trillion Of Our Debt
Trade by definition is a two-way street, buying from and selling to others. But China has accumulated $1.5 trillion by selling to us and not buying from us. This one-sided “trade” relationship has hurt or killed industries, companies, factories and jobs here in the United States, while forcing wages and living standards to drop. It has also placed China in an unhealthy position of power over us.
It is understandable that some American interests have benefited from this arrangement, becoming fabulously wealthy while at the same time strengthening their whip-hand by pitting China’s low-wage rights-suppressed workers against American employees who have enjoyed all the protections and benefits of democracy. But it is not clear why our own government has gone along. It is obvious now to all that the one-way arrangement with China has hurt us, closed our factories, devastated our “rust-belt” communities, created vast income disparities and created terrible imbalances in the world’s economy.
Placing Orders Here Fixes Both Economies
If China were to place orders tomorrow for $1.5 trillion in American-made goods, the effect on our economy, unemployment level, manufacturing base, budget deficit, state budget shortfalls, public-employee pensions, and a host of other problems would be immediate and dramatic.
And with our economy and wages restored, our own orders of goods from China would increase, boosting their economy, too. Their trade manipulations are costing them. Workers, facing labor-rights suppression and import restrictions from joining the world’s economy, are increasingly restless. They face inflation and a pending financial crisis. And that huge cash reserve is increasingly at risk from the worldwide imbalances it causes. If China repositioned its policies from mercantilism to trade it would fix so many problems. So why don’t they?
If Not Trade, What?
If China were using trade to build their economy they would use that $1.5 trillion dollar reserve to place orders here for American-made goods, boosting our economy, and boosting our ability to trade further with them. But they are not. They are sacrificing their own economic position to instead build their power position.
China is cleverly using the greed and power of our Chamber of Commerce, huge multinationals, Wall Street, etc, to manipulate our government into letting them to sell China the rope to hang us with. The more China continues these manipulations even at its own expense, the more we should perhaps be understanding these imbalances as a national security problem instead of a trade problem.
China isn’t trading, it is seizing the means of production. It is using manipulations of trade to gather wealth and power to itself at the expense of the rest of the world. It is vitally important for US opinion leaders and policymakers to address this. We have been hypnotized by the word “trade” and the result is we are ignoring our national security. We are not minding our business.
It is time to tell them to start trading fair or we’ll start minding our business with a big, fat tariff on imports so we can start paying down our deficits and rebuilding our manufacturing and jobs base.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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China Tells US To Mind Our Own Business – And We Should

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China’s Vice Finance Minister lectured US administration officials about our debt and told us to mind our own business when it comes to China’s currency manipulation. It is about time the United States started minding our own business by taking steps to protect our business and bring manufacturing and jobs back home.
Leading up to next week’s US-China Strategic And Economic Dialogue, China’s Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao butted into our business and told the US we should reduce our debt. He also told us to keep out of their business and not bother them about their currency manipulation. In the story China Paying ‘Close Attention’ to U.S. Debate on Increasing Debt Ceiling, Bloomberg News reports,

“We are paying close attention to the domestic discussion in the U.S. on debt and deficits,” Zhu told reporters in Beijing today. “We hope the U.S. can take effective measures toward fiscal reorganization just as President Obama suggested.”
[. . .] Zhu also said that currency policy is the “sovereign right” of every country.

China says currency manipulation is their “sovereign right.” They say we should mind our own business. But they insist that “free trade” means America does not have a right to mind our own business and protect our own workers, companies and jobs.
It’s Time To Mind Our Own Business
It is time to finally mind our business and take action. For decades the United States has refused to mind our business by pursuing “free trade” policies that allow other countries to engage in all kinds of trade schemes, while we just sit back and let them. Our leaders have not protected American workers, companies and jobs, instead sending them out of the country. We are told that the resulting “low prices” at Wal-Mart justify letting manufacturing move out of the country,
It is time for us to mind our business, and engage in our own sovereign duty to protect American companies, workers and jobs from the trade manipulations and schemes others engage in. It is time to hold countries like China and Germany accountable for the damage done to our businesses by their mercantilist trade policies. Trade barriers, currency manipulation, even outright extortion – demanding that our companies transfer proprietary technologies and processes if they want to do business selling into other countries – has cost us factory after factory, job after job and company after company.
As an example of how this has worked, in 2008 George Bush made the following argument for a trade treaty with Columbia,

In other words, the current situation is one-sided. Our markets are open to Colombia products, but barriers exist to make it harder to sell American products in Colombia.
I think it makes sense to remedy this situation.

President Bush wasn’t saying he was going to do something about the one-sided arrangement and hold Columbia accountable, he was saying that since we just let Columbia do this to us, therefore we need to reward them with a free-trade treaty that gus American jobs even more! But why not just mind our business and stop it? All we really have to do is tell Columbia we are going to do what they do, until they stop doing that, start paying workers a decent wage and protecting their safety and rights.
Why China Really Cares
The fearmeisters say China is concerned that we might not meet our debt obligations. This is not at all what China is concerned about. China holds $1.15 trillion in Treasuries, accumulated as they sell goods to us, and don’t let us sell goods to them. What they are concerned about is that our currency might drop, which will help bring factories and jobs back to America. From the Bloomberg story,

“Reduced U.S. fiscal spending may lead to a higher possibility of the U.S. dollar appreciation, therefore it helps China to maintain the value of the U.S. debt it holds,” said Li Jun, a Shanghai-based strategist at Central China Securities Holdings.

Their concern about our debt is really just about keeping their currency low, which gives goods made in China a huge price advantage in world markets.
Let Trade Be Trade
It is time to mind our business and mind our businesses. It is time to take action on mercantilism and currency manipulation. It is time to stop China and others from flooding our markets with goods made without the wage, safety and environmental protections that democracy provides.
Let trade be trade. Trade is supposed to be about trading. It is not supposed to just be a scheme to drive wages and living standards down by packing up factories and moving them across borders. It is not supposed to be “take a pay cut and a cut in benefits or we’ll move your job.” It is not supposed to be “well, we have something called globalization now so everyone should expect to be poorer and poorer every year.”
Trade is supposed to be we buy what they make and they use the money we pay them to buy things we make. And then we use the money they paid us to buy things made there. And then they use the money we paid them to buy things made here. It is supposed to go on like that, and everyone does better and better. Better and better, not poorer and poorer.
It really is time to mind our own business and tell countries that can’t sell to us until they meet our conditions. Which is just what they do to us.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Royal Wedding Of Austerity And Trade Deficits Is Killing Our Economy

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Sometimes you can just see glimmers of something through the DC brain fog, other times it becomes so clear that you can’t ignore it. The current DC brain-fog motto is, “if it doesn’t work, do it more.” Today’s GDP-growth report shows that austerity isn’t working, so the geniuses in DC want to do it more. And they say, “government just gets in the way of business” so we send our businesses out on their own to compete with governments, and the resulting trade deficits eat our jobs.
Cutbacks Cut Growth
How long ago was it that DC was all about cutting taxes for the rich even more? And how many minutes after that was DC all about cutting budgets – “austerity” – because of the resulting budget deficits? So instead of the jobs that will fix the deficits the government gives us cutbacks — cutbacks in taxes on the rich, cutbacks in construction projects, cutbacks in teachers and police and other government functions, cutbacks in the things We, the People do for each other.
We watch as England, Greece, Ireland and other countries try cutbacks – austerity – to get out of slow growth and their growth gets slower as a result. The US tries it, too, and our growth gets slower, too.
The first quarter growth figures are out: 1.8% for the first three months of the year,

Total output grew at an annual pace of 1.8 percent from January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday, after having expanded at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

But the DC fog machine blames the weather, not austerity.

Higher commodity prices and winter blizzards that shuttered businesses and delayed construction were among the main causes of the slowdown.

Our growth slows because of austerity. So they blame the weather and insist on more austerity. Because austerity “gets government out of the way” of the wealthy few and their accumulation of the rest.
Trade Deficit
As the economy recovered a bit and people started to buy a few more things , the things came from elsewhere, and the money and jobs just left the economy. Without government policies to deal with it, our trade deficit will continue to get even worse, costing us even more jobs and growth and draining even more money out of the country.
Germany runs a trade surplus, so German unemployment is at its lowest level in 19 years. Headline: German Unemployment Declines to 19-Year Low as Export Boom Drives Demand,

German companies are hiring as they increase production to meet booming export orders, fueling domestic demand. … German factory orders and industrial production rose more than economists predicted in February. … More than a third of Germany’s medium-sized companies plan to take on staff in the second quarter …

Germany also pays workers more than we do, gives them lots and lots of vacation time, health care, pensions, rights on the job — all the things that our leaders say hurt our businesses.
Our leadership is making every effort to return to the old economy that caused the crisis. This is because those who benefited from that economy are still in control of the system, still using their great wealth to get what they want, damn the consequences for the rest of us. (Hint, the first link is to a post titled, Nine Pictures Of The Extreme Income/Wealth Gap, and the second is a post titled, Corporate Propaganda Response To Town Hall Medicare Anger.)
Contractionary Policies Cause Contraction
Conservatives say so many silly things that are proven wrong by the simplest fact-checking — cutting taxes increases revenue, taxes take money out of the economy, tax cuts grow the economy — and the silly thing they say that is hitting us now: cutting back causes expansion.
Huh?
Here is what really happens in the real world. Following are a few charts showing the effect of the “stimulus” and what has happened since the stimulus ran out.
First, manufacturing. See the plunge through 2008? That’s the collapse. See the sharp change to an upward direction through 209? That’s the stimulus. See the leveling off since? That’s the end of the stimulus.
ISMFedApril2011
Now look at the following chart of job growth. See the downward slope, when we were losing more and more jobs every month? That’s the collapse. See the upward slope, when we were losing fewer jobs every month, up to where we were actually gaining a bit? That’s the stimulus. See the leveling off, standing still through 2010, going into 2011. That’s the end of the stimulus.
chart_jobs2
You can see in front of your face what works and what doesn’t. We should be doing what works, not what doesn’t. Why did I even have to write that sentence?
Solutions
As I wrote the other day, we have to invest in rebuilding our infrastructure if we want to continue to be competitive in the world, so right there are millions of jobs that need doing. And the payoff from doing that pays for doing that.
We need to retrofit our economy to be energy efficient, so right there are millions of jobs that need doing. And the payoff from doing that pays for doing that.
We need more teachers, more police, more firefighters, more judges, more scientists, more social workers, more park rangers, more noise abatement and met and safety and environmental and other kinds of inspectors and so many other things that We, the People do for each other — so right there are millions of jobs that need doing. And the payoff from doing that pays for doing that.
So right there are millions of jobs that need doing. And the payoff from doing that pays for doing that.
But wait, there’s more:
National Manufacturing Strategy

The idea of a manufacturing strategy or industrial policy is hardly a radical concept. Alexander Hamilton constructed America’s first industrial policy in 1791. Setbacks during the War of 1812 due to a lack of domestic capacity to build naval vessels and military equipment cemented the determination of the federal government to grow manufacturing, a policy that continued until the end of World War II.

To solve the trade deficit and create millions of good-paying jobs (like in Germany) we need a national manufacturing strategy — a government-sanctioned plan to ensure that U.S. manufacturers remain competitive in the global marketplace. Click this link for a few examples of countries that have national manufacturing strategies.
Following is the Alliance for American Manufacturing’s plan:

Expand American Production, Hiring, and Capital Expenditures

  • Establish a manufacturing investment facility to leverage private capital for domestic manufacturing
  • Expand and make permanent clean energy manufacturing tax credits and industrial energy efficiency grants to allow America to lead on green job creation
  • Link federal loan guarantees for new energy infrastructure projects, including nuclear, wind, solar, other renewable energy sources, as well as the smart grid, with expanding domestic supply chains
  • Adopt immediate, up-front expensing rules for plant and equipment to spur capital expenditures
  • Enforce our trade-legal Buy America and other domestic procurement requirements to prevent leakage of tax dollars overseas

    • Invest in America’s Infrastructure

  • Create a National Infrastructure Bank to finance high-value, long-term infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, high-speed rail, and other needs
  • Enact a robust, multi-year surface transportation infrastructure program of at least $500 billion financed exclusively by fuel taxes

    • Enhance Our Workforce

  • Refocus on technical and vocational education, providing a seamless program that bridges high school and post-secondary education to produce the next generation of highly skilled manufacturing workers
  • Reward companies that are investing in effective skills and training programs for their workers

    • Make Trade Work for America

  • Keep America’s trade laws strong and strictly enforced to provide a level playing field for our workers and businesses
  • Penalize and deter mercantilist nations such as China that manipulate their exchange rates and implement non-tariff barriers to gain an unfair trade advantage
  • As the Administration works to double exports, expand the goal to include balancing our trade account so that gains in exports are not overwhelmed by increased imports

    • Rebuild America’s Innovation Base

  • Make permanent the research and development tax credit and enhance it to incentivize commercialization and production in America
  • Focus federal investments in new technology and workforce training on promoting regional clusters of innovation, learning and production

    • And finally,
    It Never Hurts To Quote The Boss
    Press release

    WASHINGTON’S FIXATION WITH AUSTERITY IS HURTING THE ECONOMY
    Campaign for America’s Future Urges Lawmakers to Put Job Creation First
    Washington, DC – Campaign for America’s Future’s co-director Robert Borosage commented on today’s economic indicators. Borosage said:
    “The first quarter growth figures — 1.8% for the first three months of the year — are an ominous reminder of the reality that Washington has forgotten.
    “This economy is in trouble. For most Americans, the recession has not ended. Growth is painfully slow. Unemployment remains high. Home values are dropping; gas prices are rising; wages are not keeping up.
    “Despite this — and despite the warnings of economists — Washington, driven by the new House Republican majority, has turned prematurely to austerity. Contractionary policies cause contraction. They will impede any recovery, and slow an economy that is barely moving.
    “Washington offers no answer because it is fixated on the wrong question. The question is how do we get the economy going and put people back to work — not simply how do we balance our books? Every deficit reduction plan — from the President’s to the House Republican’s to the Congressional Budget Office projections — assumes faster growth than we saw in the first quarter.
    “The most powerful deficit reduction measure is to put people to work, turning them into consumers and taxpayers. If growth and unemployment stay at this level, deficits will rise, not fall. The White House and the Congress should turn to measures to put people to work, to stave off debilitating layoffs of teachers and police at the state and local level, instead of ignoring the reality that Americans are struggling with every day.”

    Sobotka, from The Wire:

    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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    Does Government Know Who The Boss Is?

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    In Washington state workers are allowed to organize and form unions so they can win good wages and benefits. In “right-to-work” states like South Carolina, though, the government sides with big companies against their workers. (They used to have even harsher anti-worker laws there but the North stopped rounding up the escapees…)
    Boeing workers in Washington go on strike, so Boeing sets up an assembly line in anti-union South Carolina and tells the Washington workers to take what they offer and like it. This is a standard move from companies these days, telling workers, “Take the cuts or we’ll close the plant and move your jobs somewhere where workers can’t do anything about it.”
    Illegal, But So What?
    You probably didn’t know this but retaliating against workers like that is against the law. It is even illegal to threaten workers in order to avoid a strike. It is illegal to fire or intimidate employees for organizing.
    But companies go ahead and do these things anyway, and other illegal things, because no one does anything about it. And it has been so long since anyone did anything about it – just like with banking fraud or age discrimination – that it is now standard operating procedure. No one even remembers that it is illegal. No one cares.
    Like age discrimination. Look at the faces of the employees behind President Obama when he visited Facebook and tell me if Facebook is the least bit worried about age discrimination enforcement.

    Or this picture of the President visiting Google:
    viers_mill_PS-0253
    Workers’ Rights A Thing Of The Past
    With labor-law enforcement — or even a sense that workers should have rights — seemingly a thing of the past, these anti-worker sentiments are spreading. Recently, for example Arizona and South Dakota passed anti-worker laws, forbidding the formation of a union after a majority workers sign cards asking for one. Wisconsin and other states have passed laws restricting the labor rights of public-employees and restricting the ability to collect union-membership dues.
    But THIS Time!
    But THIS time something unusual happened. The government has actually threatened to enforce the law! The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing and is suing Arizona and South Dakota for violating labor laws!
    Boardrooms across the land are rising up in indignation. How dare the government threaten giant corporations that they might enforce the law? Don’t they know who’s the boss? The Wall Street Journal explains, “Boeing management did what it judged to be best for its shareholders and customers and looked elsewhere. … As Boeing chief Jim McNerney noted on a conference call at the time, the company couldn’t have “strikes happening every three to four years.” and calls Boeing’s threats against unions a “reasonable business decision.”
    Conservative columnists and bloggers are earning their pay, writing indignant column after column about “union bosses,” some even praising Ayn Rand. Conservative astroturfers (also) and politicians are not far behind them.


    How dare We, the People (government) tell a business that it has to respect its workers and our laws!!!
    Who Is Boss?
    Do We, the People have the ability to enforce our laws? Do we have the power to tax corporations and the wealthy?
    Do we have the power to protect the protections of democracy?
    Democracy provides workers with safety protections and fair wages. We fought so hard to build and maintain this democratic society so that We, the People could share the benefits. We passed laws allowing union organizing, as a balance to the immense power of corporations and wealth. We passed laws prohibiting companies from telling workers, “Work for what we give you or don’t eat.”
    And for a time this built our prosperity. But we let the protections slip, and allowed companies to cross borders to escape the protections democracy offers — to non-democratic countries like China where workers have few rights, where pay is low, environmental protections practically non-existent. Companies locating manufacturing in places like have huge cost advantages over companies located in democracies that respect and protect the rights of citizens.
    The Threat Against Us
    Won’t companies just move out of the state/country if we try to enforce labor laws or tax them? Won’t China just stop selling to us if we apply a tariff to protect democracy, or try to enforce trade laws? Won’t the rich just pack up and move or stop working if we don’t just give them everything they want? Won’t they move even more factories out of the city/state/country if We, the People try to demand our rights?
    We Still Have The Power
    Here’s the thing. We, the People still have some power left in our hands. For one thing we still have a huge market. We still have the power to make demands on those who would like to sell into that market. And we can still choose to enforce tax laws, and wage laws, and tariffs, and labor laws, and trade laws to protect and strengthen what remains of our democracy.
    But we can only do this if we decide to stand up for ourselves and do something about what is happening. We have to put our foot down, and demand that our politicians listen to We, the People and do what we say. It is time to get organized, to talk to neighbors and relatives, to show up at town hall meetings and protests. We can demand that news media begin to cover more than just the corporate/conservative viewpoint. We can go out and register others to vote, and get them to the polls, and demand that votes be counted accurately. We can take back our democracy and put We, the People back in charge.
    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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    Why Trump Gets Traction From Trade

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    Donald Trump is getting traction. He is talking about trade, jobs, China, manufacturing, China, jobs, China and China — and it is resonating with a public sick of being told to ignore what they can see in front of their faces. “Nobody, other than OPEC, is ripping off the United States like China,” he says. And he climbs in the polls.
    Why is blowhard Donald Trump getting such traction from talking about trade problems with China? Self-funded, Trump doesn’t require the support of the multi-national corporate/financial elite to be heard. He is able to use his own money to push his way into the conversation. So unlike politicians captured by the cabal that runs our politics, who have to get past the corporate-journalism gatekeepers to raise money and be heard, he is able to give voice to things that are right in front of our faces.
    Poll After Poll After Poll Shows Public Wants…
    Trump can read polls and poll after poll after poll shows that Americans are concerned about jobs, and are especially concerned about how our economy is sending the good jobs and factories out of the country. They are asking why they can’t buy things here that are made here. Whether Trump believes what he is saying or not is irrelevant, he understands what the people are thinking, and is giving voice to those sentiments.
    Polls show the public wants tax increases on the rich, a focus on jobs not deficits, and more investment in infrastructure, education, transportation and alternatives to oil.
    A recent Alliance for American Manufacturing poll found that “We have lost too many manufacturing jobs” is the top concern among independents and working-class voters.

    Other highlights from the poll include:
    • A majority believe the U.S. no longer has the world’s strongest economy—a title they want to regain
    • Voters are anxious about the economy—specifically China debt, spending and loss of manufacturing
    • 86 percent of voters want Washington to focus on manufacturing, and 63 percent feel working people who make things are being forgotten while Wall Street and banks get bailouts
    • Two-thirds of voters believe manufacturing is central to our economic strength, and 57 percent believe manufacturing is more central to our economic strength than high-tech, knowledge or financial service sectors
    • Across all demographics, voters’ economic solutions center on trade enforcement, clean energy, tax credits for U.S. manufacturing and replacing aging infrastructure using American materials, a surprising overlap between Tea Party supporters, independents, non-union households and union households.

    People are sick of their factories being packed up and sent out of the country to places where people and the environment are exploited. They understand this is done to pit them against workers with no right, in order to lower wages, benefits and rights. They want something done about it.
    Trump is giving voice to these sentiments. He is saying what people are thinking. Trump says, “We tell China, that if you don’t stop manipulating your currency, we’re going to put a 25 percent tax on your products that come into the United States.”
    But Turn On Your TV And…
    But turn on your TV or open a newspaper and you get pundit after pundit saying we need to cut taxes on the rich even more, and cut the resulting deficit by cutting back on the things We, the People (government) do for each other and for our economy.
    The Elite Are Threatened

    Here is a typical elite-media response to Trump’s message: CNN Money: How ‘The Donald’ could incite a trade war

    Donald Trump’s call for a 25% tariff on Chinese goods is winning him a lot of attention as he weighs a presidential run in 2012.
    “They have manipulated their currency so violently towards this country, it is almost impossible for our companies to compete with Chinese companies,” Trump told CNNMoney in January, during which he laid out plans for his 25% tariff.
    Trade wars could arise: Imposing a tariff on China would do little more than irritate the world’s second largest economy, economists say.
    … China could also respond by closing its increasingly important market to U.S. exporters, which would be a major blow to American jobs and manufacturing. China has become the No. 3 market for U.S. exporters, with sales jumping 31% from the previous year.
    And that doesn’t even count the goods being made in China by U.S. companies. General Motors sells more cars in China today than it does in the United States, for example.
    “The sad story is we don’t have much leverage,” said Lardy. “But a tariff certainly would not advance our interests.”

    This response to Trump shows why Trump is resonating. In a piece that appears to be an ad for the Chinese Exporters Assn, CNN worries that responding to China’s manipulations could “irritate” them, which could lead to a trade war, and says there is nothing we can do to get our jobs back so we should just accept anything China does. We have already in a trade war with China for some time and everyone can see that we are losing. But this story takes the pro-China position typical of Wall Street and DC insiders.
    Filling The Vacuum
    The media gatekeepers won’t allow the voice of working people, and working people respond when they finally hear a voice speaking up for them. When the corporate/media elites ignore issues like China and trade you get blowhards like Trump moving up in the polls. The cororate/financial gatekeepers have engineered the information channels to such an extent that blowhards like Trump can gain traction by filling the vacuum and voicing what the polls say the public is thinking.
    Examples
    Here are a few more examples of Trump on China and trade:
    Dire Warning From Donald Trump – China Will Destroy Our Country

    Conservative News Media on YouTube: “The Obama administration isn’t equipped to negotiate with and handle the Chinese. … Donald Trump said the Chinese are ripping us off and the Chinese can’t deal with it. … Donald Trump says the Chinese aren’t playing fair. … We need to trade with everybody but we need to be sure it is fair.”

    And, finally, Frank Sobotka:

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    The Deficit America Has Forgotten — And Is Eviscerating The Middle Class

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    We can service each other till the cows come home but if we don’t start making more things here and selling them there more and more jobs will be lost, more and more communities devastated and our standard of living will continue to drop. Everyone is focused on the budget deficit. But here’s the thing: the trade deficit is the jobs deficit and the jobs deficit is the budget deficit.
    The Trade Deficit
    Before “The Reagan Revolution” America made things and sold them to the rest of the world. Since Reagan America borrows money to buy things made somewhere else. And since Reagan we’ve seen the whole game play out: wages stagnate, savings plunge, debt soars, growth slows all while wealth concentrates at the very top.
    And it just goes on. The trade deficit last month was above forecasts, and a big jump from last year:

    The U.S. trade deficit with China widened to $18.8 billion in compared with $16.5 billion in the same month last year. The government also revised the deficit in January to $47 billion from $46.3 billion.

    The February monthly trade deficit fell, but only because the decline in exports was less than the decline in imports.
    The Big Change
    In the early 80’s conservative trade policies designed to pit American workers against low-paid, exploited workers in non-democratic countries transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then:


    Democracy vs Thugocracy
    America is supposed to be a democracy of We, the People. Democracies set up protections for their people that protect wages, rights, safety, dignity and the environment. Conservative “free trade” agreement allow companies to get around the borders of our democracy, pitting their employees against the exploited people living under thugocracies with few or no protections at all. This has created a “race to the bottom” for our wages and benefits. Of course our workers cannot compete against workers who are not able to fight for better pay and benefits. This is the reason we fought to build and preserve our democracy.
    China
    Instead of fixing our trade problems, we have gone back to the same old same old. Especially vis-a-vis China.
    Alliance for American Manufacturing Statement on Latest Monthly Trade Figures

    The monthly U.S. international trade deficit in goods and services was $45.8 billion in February. The goods trade deficit with China was $18.8 billion.
    –Year over year, the 2011 trade deficit is running far higher than 2010. January-February 2010 clocked in at $74.3 billion, while the first two months of 2011 have already reached $92.7 billion.
    –Year over year, the goods trade deficit with China is also running ahead of 2010. January-February 2010 totaled $34.8 billion, while the first two months of 2011 have already reached $42.1 billion.
    –Of particular note is that China ($18.8 billion) now accounts for 70% of our overall monthly non-oil goods deficit ($27.0 billion).
    Said Scott Paul, Executive Director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM):
    “Washington has focused a lot on budget deficits this year, but scant attention has been paid to the trade deficit. That must change. The trade deficit serves as a drag on GDP growth and requires financing, just like any other debt. While only 9.5% of our national debt is financed by China, that nation is responsible for fully 70% of our trade deficit in non-oil goods.”

    China, China, China
    Over and over our trade relationship with China demonstrates so many things we are doing wrong in the world competition. Among so many other problems:
    – We let them manipulate their currency rate which means their goods have a cost advantage of as much as 40% going out the gate, before other factors come into account.
    – Their government subsidizes and promotes key industries. We don’t have an industrial policy.
    – Their workers are not free to organize and push for better wages, benefits and working conditions. (Ours aren’t either, but are more able than theirs.)
    – They restrict and otherwise discourage imports
    – They follow “Buy China” policies, we do not have “Buy America” policies
    – Etc., etc., etc.
    The Trade Deficit Is The Jobs Deficit
    Our trade deficit is our jobs deficit. When you close the factory we can’t make a living. When you move the jobs over there the jobs aren’t here. And the people who could have those jobs are collecting unemployment instead of paying taxes and buying cars, houses, food, clothes, saving etc.
    American Prospect, The Plight of American Manufacturing,

    Since 2001, the country has lost 42,400 factories, including 36 percent of factories that employ more than 1,000 workers (which declined from 1,479 to 947), and 38 percent of factories that employ between 500 and 999 employees (from 3,198 to 1,972). An additional 90,000 manufacturing companies are now at risk of going out of business.

    Giant Sucking Sound
    So we closed our factories (trade deficit) and shipped the jobs to other countries (jobs deficit) where they pay less and don’t protect the environment. Again, from The Plight of American Manufacturing,

    Long before the banking collapse of 2008, such important U.S. industries as machine tools, consumer electronics, auto parts, appliances, furniture, telecommunications equipment, and many others that had once dominated the global marketplace suffered their own economic collapse. Manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million in October 2009, a loss of 5.5 million or 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs since October 2000. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941. In October 2009, more people were officially unemployed (15.7 million) than were working in manufacturing.

    Millions and millions of good-paying jobs. Gone.
    The Jobs Deficit IS The Budget Deficit
    People with jobs pay taxes. People with jobs don’t collect unemployment benefits. A huge component of our budget deficit is the result of unemployment, much of it caused by the trade deficit.
    Of course there is the core component of the budget deficit that was caused by tax cuts for the wealthy, the huge increase in the military budget and the interest on the borrow for these. But the big increase since the financial crisis is due to the recession and restoring our manufacturing base addresses much of this. People with good manufacturing jobs pay mortgages and buy houses and cars and shop at stores and make the economy work. And when thrry buy things made in America the money stays in America.
    What We Can Do
    This is from a year ago — yes, a year, with nothing done: It Is Time To Put Our Foot Down: Ten Steps We Can Take To Stop Closing Factories And Eliminating Jobs,

    Here are just some steps that We, the People can take to start turning this around:
    – A border tariff on imports to remove the price advantage of goods produced by exploited, underpaid workers.
    – A border tariff to remove the price advantage of goods produced in ways that harm the environment.
    – A border tariff on goods from countries that are not democracies, to remove any pricing advantage gained from not allowing people to vote and set rules that benefit themselves.
    – A border tariff on goods from countries that restrict workers from organizing to improve their wages and working conditions, to remove any pricing advantage gained from not allowing workers to bargain. (America currently doesn’t meet this standard.)
    – Remove tax benefits and instead impose tax penalties and fines on companies that close factories here. Don’t let it be profitable to do this!
    – Increase taxes on the big monopolistic companies to remove the advantages that help them destroy America’s smaller, regional and local businesses — the very job creators we need.
    – Increase income taxes on high incomes to reduce the incentive to pursue short-term windfalls instead of long-term interests. Make it take a long time to accumulate a fortune. Making a fortune is great but it should be a reward for helping our economy and society, not destroying them.
    – Break up the “too big to fail” Wall Street firms that wrecked the economy. And get the money back — all of it.
    – Explore the use of Eminent Domain to keep factories in communities and workers in the factories.
    – Formulate and follow a national economic/industrial strategy to build a new green manufacturing economy

    Those are just a few things we can do.
    And, to close, Frank Sobotka:

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    Did American Workers “Get What They Deserved?”

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    What did people expect would happen when they voted for Reagan, Bush and other conservatives, or supported their policies? In the Holland (Michigan) Sentinel community columnist Ray Buursma writes, American workers got what they deserved. Some of the things he says might resonate with many of us,

    Remember the Reagan standard? Are you better off today than you were a decade ago? Two decades? Three? Unless you make more than $380,000 a year, the answer is no. In fact, your standard of living over the last quarter century has actually decreased while millionaires have added 30 percent to their net wealth. Why? Two reasons.
    First, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs went overseas while the politicians you elected did nothing to stop them. Yet you continue to elect leaders who offer nothing but tax cuts, as if that would stem the flow of disappearing jobs.
    Did you demand your leaders address America’s trade imbalance or continuous outsourcing of jobs? Did you demand your leaders require foreign countries to buy a dollar’s worth of American goods for every dollar of goods they sell here?
    No and no. You didn’t bother.

    Buursma writes that instead of resenting people who make more because they are in a union, people should join a union and fight for your job, wages and benefits. He continues,

    Maybe you’re thinking, “I’m not a union worker, so this doesn’t affect me.”
    Stop being stupid. Union benefits provide a standard other companies have to match, or at least come close to. When those benefits are cut, yours are, too. Or do you think you operate in your own little employment vacuum?

    Agree or disagree, please click through and read his entire piece.
    Whose Fault?
    There is no question that things are not going the way they should be going. We see decline all around us — all pointing back to the changes made after the election of Ronald Reagan. Tax cuts led to massive debt. Deregulation led to mine, oil and financial disasters that cost us more than deregulation ever saved. The infrastructure is crumbling. It seems like we are entering third-world status.
    So is it the fault of American workers that their wages and benefits have declined as jobs are shipped overseas?
    I don’t blame working people. After all, they’re working! So they’re busy, and stressed, and focused on work. They can’t be expected to keep up with the little details and facts and nuances — especially when they are attacked daily with a barrage of well-funded and professionally crafted corporate/conservative propaganda!
    This assault on information and truth has been going on for decades. Under Reagan there was a dramatic shift toward “market” — one-dollar-one-vote — sources of information and away from objective, citizen-oriented democratic — one-person-one-vote — sources. This market-sourced information necessarily reflects a conservative/corporate view because it is driven by money and profit instead of humanity and humanity’s needs.
    Information for Democracy!
    How do we counter the corporate/conservative assault on truth? One answer to the problem of getting accurate, objective information is to use (and support) alternative sources that are not offered by the conservative/corporate machine. Here is a list of a few links to alternative news sources. Please send these to relatives, friends, and even post them to conservative forums.

    PLEASE suggest more progressive information and news sources in the comments! And forward this to others.
    Added suggestions, not necessarily just news:
    AFL-CIO Now Blog
    Manufacture This
    Scholars & Rogues
    Crooks And Liars
    Firedoglake
    Black Agenda Report
    Washington Monthly
    Eschaton
    AMERICAblog
    The Raw Story
    Agonist
    Today’s Workplace
    Republic of T
    Democrats.com
    Hullabaloo
    Jack and Jill Politics
    Liberal Oasis
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    Why Move Jobs From Democracies To Thugocracies?

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    “Free trade” treaties like NAFTA have wiped out entire regions of our country and left entire segments of our population without good-paying jobs — or in so many cases with no jobs at all. And they have had similar results with our trade “partners.” We can see that now. So why are we even talking about doing more of these treaties?
    Democracy vs Thugocracy
    Democracies set up protections for their people. Democracies protect wages, rights, safety, dignity and the environment. The so-called “free trade” agreements we have been getting into allow companies to get around the borders of our democracy, pitting their employees against the exploited people living under thugocracies with few or no protections at all.
    But these treaties have brought vast wealth to a very few, and maybe that was the point all along. Now with the NAFTA and China trade record clear, the DC/corporate elite and Wall Street/Chamber of Commerce multinationals are pushing new trade treaties with South Korea, Columbia, Oman and Panama. Their goal seems to be to make the rich even richer while making things even worse for the rest of us.
    NAFTA – “Case Study In Failure”
    Ian Fletcher writing at Huffington Post in, More Free Trade Agreements? When NAFTA Failed?,

    How have our past trade agreements worked out? Above all, how’s the grand-daddy of them all, NAFTA, doing?
    Unfortunately, NAFTA is a veritable case study in failure.

    How is NAFTA working out for us?

    For the four years prior to NAFTA’s implementation in 1994, America’s annual deficit with Canada averaged a modest $8.1 billion. Twelve years later, it was up to $71 billion.
    Our trade with Mexico showed a $1.6 billion surplus in 1993 but by 2010, our deficit had reached $61.6 billion.

    Fletcher cites the Economic Policy Institute to detail the dramatic loss of jobs we have suffered. But not just jobs, also wages.

    NAFTA has eliminated some 766,000 job opportunities–primarily for non-college-educated workers in manufacturing. Contrary to what the American promoters of NAFTA promised U.S. workers, the agreement did not result in an increased trade surplus with Mexico, but the reverse. As manufacturing jobs disappeared, workers were down-scaled to lower-paying, less-secure services jobs. Within manufacturing, the threat of employers to move production to Mexico proved a powerful weapon for undercutting workers’ bargaining power.

    And how is NAFTA working out for Mexican workers? It turned low-wage workers into even-lower-wage workers.

    In reality, the income gap between the United States and Mexico grew (by over 10 percent) in the first decade of the agreement. This doesn’t mean America boomed; we didn’t. But Mexico slumped terribly.
    In NAFTA’s first decade, the Mexican economy averaged 1.8 percent real growth per capita. By contrast, under the protectionist economic policies of 1948-73, Mexico had averaged 3.2 percent growth.
    … Mexican workers can often be hired for less than the taxes on American workers; the average maquiladora wage is $1.82/hr. The maquiladora sector is deliberately isolated from the rest of the Mexican economy and contributes little to it. Workers’ rights, wages, and benefits are deliberately suppressed. Environmental laws are frequently just ignored.
    Mexican agriculture hasn’t benefited either: NAFTA turned Mexico from a food exporter to a food importer overnight and over a million farm jobs were wiped out by cheap American food exports, massively subsidized by our various farm programs.
    [. . .] Between 1990 and 1999, Mexican manufacturing wages fell 21 percent.

    How have our other free-trade agreements worked out? Fletcher again, (please go read his entire post, and take a look at his book, Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why, as well)

    FTA is not America’s only free trade agreement, of course. But our other agreements tell similar tales. We have signed 11 since 2000: with Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Korea, Oman, Morocco, Singapore, Panama, and Peru. (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic were lumped together in the Central America Free Trade Agreement or CAFTA.) Every agreement but one has coincided with greater American deficits.

    Not such a great record. Let’s not do more of this.
    A Better Way
    Trade doesn’t have to be used to pit people against each other. It can be used to lift each other up. We can instead negotiate treaties to demand that the thugocracies offer better wages and protections, or they can’t sell to us. Or if they do sell to us as add a tariff that undoes any advantage they get from mistreating their people, and use the money to strengthen our infrastructure and competitiveness in world markets. We can use trade to lift the world for the benefit of all instead of to exploit the world for the benefit of a few.
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    When You Close The Factory We Can’t Make A Living

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    In a signal of change in elite attitudes, Steven Pearlstein wrote a Washington Post op-ed, Chinese follow same old script (and they get the punch line), describing the cost-to-us of the business-as-usual game we have been playing with China. Pearlstein has seen the light: China has an industrial policy and it is working for them as a nation. We do not. We have a lassez-faire ideology that enables a few at the top of “Multinational Corp.” to get really rich moving manufacturing infrastructure to China, leaving the rest of us with no way to make a living. Next week President Obama can announce that he is changing that.
    “Enough!”
    Pearlstein writes about China’s bullying mercantilism, how it benefits China, the cost to us, and says “Enough!” He makes a startling suggestion to address the problem: do unto them as they are doing unto us. He writes,

    “The right response to these challenges would be for the president this week to laud China for the success of its economic policies and announce that the administration will begin forthwith to apply each and every one of them to Chinese exports into the United States. Subsidies and directed credit for local companies, buy-American provisions for government agencies and government contractors, currency manipulation, the rules on “conditional market access” and “indigenous innovation” – surely China could hardly complain if we were to pay them the highest compliment by embracing their economic model.”

    Read that paragraph again.
    Pearlstein goes on to describe how a national industrial policy brings advantages to China, while our everyone-in-it-for-themselves ideology hampers us,

    “…China can strike deals that may provide short-term profits to one company and its shareholders but in the long run undermine the competitiveness of [our] economy. What’s good for GE or Honeywell or Rockwell is, in this case, almost certainly not good for America and American workers.”

    The Establishment
    This column is significant because Pearlstein is part of what you might call “the establishment,” a DC opinion leader, not part of the labor movement or a social-justice non-profit or, worse yet, an advocate for the unemployed. But here he is joining with us on the “far left” to say that we can’t keep going down this road — that it is time to see ourselves as a country of people who are in this together, with common interests. He actually makes the far-left argument that, “What’s good for GE or Honeywell or Rockwell is, in this case, almost certainly not good for America and American workers.”
    Will he keep his job? Or will others join him and begin to see that this is all of a piece. Our trade deficit is part and parcel of our budget deficit and our terrible unemployment problem and our bank bailouts and our deteriorating infrastructure and our deregulation and our tax-cuts-for-the-rich and our on-your-own ideology and our corporate-financed elections and our slow economic growth.
    Evergreen Solar
    To illustrate the difference a national industrial policy makes Pearlstein uses the instructive example of Evergreen Solar, a solar panel manufacturer that made waves this month announcing it is closing down its US manufacturing and moving it to China. Solar panel prices are plunging because of Chinese-subsidized manufacturing, and “Evergreen can still make money in China because of the lower costs and considerable government subsidies offered by the government there.” But not here.
    The NY Times covered the Evergreen Solar story last week, in Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China. These snippets tall the story,

    … But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China.
    . . . Chinese manufacturers, Mr. El-Hillow said in the statement, have been able to push prices down sharply because they receive considerable help from the Chinese government and state-owned banks, and because manufacturing costs are generally lower in China.
    . . . In addition to solar energy, China just passed the United States as the world’s largest builder and installer of wind turbines.

    The article includes a reminder that we are, after all, talking about China,

    … Evergreen’s joint-venture factory in Wuhan occupies a long, warehouselike concrete building in an industrial park located in an inauspicious neighborhood. A local employee said the municipal police had used the site for mass executions into the 1980s.

    Business As Usual
    China cheats. We don’t stop them. They manipulate currency. They restrict imports. They subsidize exports. They subsidize companies. They steal intellectual property. They coerce companies to give up proprietary technology. They do what it takes to win key strategic industries, regardless of treaties and laws. And why should they if we won’t stand up to this cheating and stop them? They watch out for themselves, and we do not.
    Yesterday, describing China’s currency manipulation as part of an industrial policy, I wrote that China looks at the overall, longer-term picture, seeing themselves as a country of people with a common interest. We do not. They understand that attracting industries to China is good for China and its people in the long term. We do not.
    We follow a corporate/conservative greed-is-good ideology that says that the interests of individual companies and a few wealthy people are the interests of the country-at-large, and if companies can make larger profits in the short term and a few people can get wealthy closing factories and moving them to China that’s just fine, even if it means a loss of jobs and of the country’s overall ability to make a living in the long term. This just doesn’t work for us as a nation. Or, as Pearlstein put it, “What’s good for GE or Honeywell or Rockwell is, in this case, almost certainly not good for America and American workers.”
    Obama’s State Of The Union Opportunity
    Next week the President delivers his State Of The Union speech. This is an opportunity to announce a new direction. He can lead us in a transition back to a nation that sees itself in this together as a people watching out and taking care of each other. He can reject the conservative vision of each of us on our own, following a greed-is-good ideology that enriches a few but just doesn’t work for We, the People. He can announce the formation of a bold national industrial/economic policy where we again lead the world toward greater prosperity. And he can announce that we are going to, as Pearlstein writes, “pay [China] the highest compliment by embracing their economic model” — meaning do unto China as China is doing unto us. Enough!
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    Does It Matter What The Public Wants Or Needs?

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    Does it even matter what the public wants anymore?
    I guess that’s a rhetorical question these days because more and more obviously the answer is no. It matters what the plutocrats want, and they know how to get what they want. Public opinion is “engineered” or at least “managed.” When it can’t be managed it is ignored and the effort shifts to our elected officials, who are led to believe the public wants what the plutocrats want using elite opinion leaders, astroturf, front groups or flat out cash.
    According to polls (and most of these by overwhelming margins):
    Things the public doesn’t want:

  • Tax cuts for the rich. For example, this morning’s Progressive Breakfast hilited:

    Another poll shows support for ending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. McClatchy:”…51 percent want to extend the tax cuts only for households making less than $250,000 a year, and 45 percent want to extend the tax cuts for all … Those who want to extend all of the tax cuts, including for the wealthy, include Republicans, tea party supporters, conservatives, Southerners and Westerners, Independents were closely divided, with 49 percent for extending only the ‘middle class’ tax cuts, and 48 percent for extending all of them.”

    P.S. Campaign for America’s Future and CREDO Action have a petition, Tell Congress: Don’t extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Click the link, and add your voice.

  • Cuts in social security. Isaiah Poole wrote last week, Nobody’s Buying The Cut-Social-Security Line,

    A whopping 82% of respondents in the poll oppose Social Security cuts for the purpose of deficit reduction, while only 15% support cuts. What’s particularly telling is the striking uniformity of opinion across the political spectrum: 83% of Democrats, 82% of Republicans, 78% of independents and 74% of Tea Party supporters.

    P.S. Campaign for America’s Future has a petition, Tell President Obama to Reject Social Security Cuts. Click the link and add your voice.
    P.S. Strengthen Social Security is holding a National Call Congress Day on November 30. Click for details.

  • Cuts in Medicare. Republicans figured this out, and ran ad after ad after ad (after ad after ad) telling voters that Democrats should be thrown out of office because they cut $500 billion from Medicare. You saw the ads. (and saw them and saw them and saw them.)
  • Cuts in anything. (Actually, polls show that the public wants cuts in foreign aid.)
  • Corporate-written “free trade” schemes. As Leo Gerard points out in Corporate Rewards: Controlling U.S. Trade Policy,

    In a September poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 53 percent of Americans said so-called free trade agreements have injured the country. Only 17 percent said those trade schemes benefited the United States. Disgust with these deals spans party lines, including Tea Partiers, 61 percent of whom said they’re bad for America.

    Things the public wants:

  • Jobs. The official unemployment rate is 9.6%. The total including “underemployed” is 15.9%.
  • Unemployment benefits extended. Poll: Majority of voters support another extension of unemployment benefits,

    In a poll released Monday, 73 percent of voters say it’s too early to cut back benefits for those who are struggling to find work as unemployment rate hovers at 9.6 percent….

  • A plan to revive American manufacturing. Election Day Poll: Voters Weren’t Backing Extreme Right Agenda,

    Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement that “America is falling behind” in the global economy and that “we need a clear strategy to make things in America, make our economy competitive, and revive America’s middle class.”

  • Rebuild America’s Infrastructure. From the poll cited above,

    Significant majorities in the poll also supported new investments in infrastructure through a national infrastructure bank, and a five-year strategy for reviving manufacturing in America

    So there are things the public clearly wants and doesn’t want. These things are significantly at odds with the things the plutocrats want. If we are still a democracy we will get the things the public wants. If we have completed the transformation to a plutocracy we will get the things the plutocrats want. That’s the definition of the terms.
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    • Tea Party Test: Korea Free Trade Agreement

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    The “Tea Party” will face many tests when the new Congress convenes next year. Everyone is asking, how long will it take before the Tea Party officeholders are co-opted by the big money insiders? “Free Trade” is one of those tests.
    Tea Party members absolutely despise “free trade” agreements that have forced companies to close factories and ship jobs out of the country. They want to see “Made In America” in stores again. But the D.C. insiders, backed by big money from the big, monopolist, multinational corporations, insist on even more of these agreements. Which way will the Tea Party officeholders go?
    Next up: the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement. The D.C. insiders want this one bad. Tea Party supporters do not want any more of these job-sucking one-sided agreements. Who will win? Negotiated by Bush, this is another one-sided agreement, letting Korea export like crazy to the U.S., but not addressing non-tariff barriers that Korea places on bringing U.S.-made goods into their country. (Korea places regulatory and tax barriers to limit imports along with tariff barriers that the trade agreement addresses. So in effect we would be removing our tariff barriers on Korean imports, while they keep their other barriers to our exports.)
    The Ford Motor Company placed an ad in Washington news outlets today, opposing the Korea agreement:

    Ford’s concern is autos, but there are many other concerns as well. Take a look at what American beef producers say about this agreement.
    This is one more one-sided trade agreement designed to let Wall Street-dominated firms outsource manufacturing and jobs, so they can further squeeze American workers and make short-term profits and bonuses from selling off American capacities and technologies. They are selling off our country’s and our people’s ability to make a living, to put a few quick bucks in their own pockets.
    Trade is good. Honest, free and fair trade brings prosperity to everyone involved. Unfortunately, the kind of one-sided, exploitative trade deals that have been negotiated in the past might have made a few elites very rich in the short term but are impoverishing everyone else. The trick is negotiating better “We, the People” outcomes rather than the “shut up and take it or we’ll move your job out of the country” outcomes that have allowed the wealthy elite to set working people here against working people there.
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    What Will Tea Party Members Do When Their Politicians Betray Them?

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture I am a Fellow with CAF.
    Tea Party members hate Wall Street bailouts, trade deals like NAFTA, job outsourcing, giant corporations buying laws, government spending, and elites telling the rest of us what to do. But there is no question that their candidates – many of them wealthy corporatists themselves – are funded by big corporations (even foreign oil companies) and Wall Street. So the question is, once in Congress will they vote with their base or their owners? And when they vote with the people who bought them, what will Tea Party members do about it?
    Trade
    Tea Party members want to be able to buy things that are “Made In America” in stores again. I have yet to meet a Tea Party supporter who doesn’t absolutely hate NAFTA, WTO and other one-sided “free trade” agreements. They say these treaties “violate our sovereignty.” But Tea Party candidates are funded by groups like the Chamber of Commerce and others who are the drivers of these “free trade” policies that close American factories and send jobs out of the country. This does not bode well for these candidates voting the way Tea Party members expect them to if they are elected.
    Outsourcing
    Tea Party members are astonished when they learn that the government gives companies tax breaks that encourage companies to send jobs away. But just a month ago a bill to do something about this was filibustered in the Senate by a unanimous Republican caucus. One thing about Tea Party candidates – they’re also unanimously Republicans. Does anyone other than Tea Party members really think the Tea Part candidates are going to go against the now-unanimous Republican support for these outsourcing incentives if elected? Tea Party candidate Scott Brown didn’t after he was elected.
    Bailouts
    If there is one thing that unites all Tea Party members, it is hatred of the Bush Bank Bailouts (except they think these passed under Obama.) But this is an area where their leaders will almost certainly stand with the banks, because that’s where the money is — their campaign money to be precise. The other day I wrote about In Oregon one Wall Street hedge fund manager is spending up to $1 million (pocket change) on a front group to elect a Tea Party candidate and unseat a Congressman who sponsored a couple of Wall Street reform bills.
    Government Spending
    Will Tea Party politicians vote to balance the budget? Really? Their members certainly expect them to. But like so many misinformed Americans, Tea Party members think the government spends most of its money on welfare and foreign aid. This is why Tea Party candidates refuse to specify just what spending they will cut to balance the budget. (Also see here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, etc.)
    So when they get into office will they really cut spending — where the spending really is? There are plenty of reasons to think they won’t. The first and foremost reason is they are funded by people like the Chamber of Commerce who really, really want that spending to keep flowing. This is why Republicans increased government spending and deficits so much the last time they were in charge. In fact, there are reasons to think they’ll incresase spending. For example, they hate health care reform, but if they really vote to repeal it they will increase the deficit, because the reform cuts the projected deficits by at least $138 billion.
    But the bloated, huge, vast, overwhelming military budget might be worth a look. We spend more on military than every other country combined. (Total military-related spending actually pretty closely matched the deficit this year.) What do you think the odds are that the Tea Party politicians will cut the military budget?
    Foreign Oil
    Tea Party members understand that our addiction to foreign oil is harmful. We spend more than $300 billion a year on foreign oil — much of it sent to the Middle East (MUSLIMS!) — and need to find alternative sources of energy. But Koch Oil is the primary organizer, supporter, funder, and everything of the Tea Party, as well as much of the so-called “conservative movement.” But Koch Oil is mostly about oil, not representative government. This is why they directly fund or set up front groups to support climate denial or oppose transit projects, alternative energy, even energy conservation. So don’t expect Tea Party leaders to do anything — anything — that Koch Oil doesn’t want them to do.
    What Happens When Tea Party Members Are Betrayed?
    It’s pretty clear that the Tea Party members are being set up for a big disappointment. There is little chance that the politicians they are supporting are going to do what the members think they’re going to do once in office. The members might supply the votes, but the big corporations behind so many of the things that the Tea Party members hate are the ones supplying the money and organization. These politicians, once in office, will understand that the big money can go after them just as well is it went for them this time, if they don’t do what they’re told by their big corporate funders. But on the other hand, there will be lucrative lobbying jobs waiting for them if they play along. They are going to disappoint the Tea Party members, no question. What will Tea Party members do then?
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