Laura Flanders: Trade is NOT the Answer!

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:




Published on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 by Grit TV
Trade is NOT the Answer!

by Laura Flanders


President Barack Obama delivered his take on the State of the Union tonight and while Congress has bragged about bipartisan seating, it doesn't matter where anyone sat because the profiteers who define what’s possible in our politics have already barred any serious solution to what ails us.

We know what the problem is: Jobs. 15 million still unemployed. A National Journal piece last week noted that the Great Recession wiped out what amounts to every U.S. job created in the 21st century. And jobs had already been leaving -- for three decades.

That's a bipartisan problem—remember who passed NAFTA, which first opened the floodgates. As a commentator with the hardly radical Hoover Institute told the Journal -- Instead of reinvesting the gains of globalization in improved plants or a higher quality of life work in the US, private companies privatized the profits and hired abroad. Driving down wages.

Now as cheap production’s boosting profits again, as Heidi Shierholz reminded GRITtv yesterday, while CEOs are smiling, communities are frozen, cold as ice. And again big business is promoting trade. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/26-2

[randr]

1. Trade is a two way street

My impression was that Obama wants to level the playing field so that American companies can sell goods on an equal trade basis. I, for one, think we need to look at a marketing strategy for American made goods in China and India.

[saras]

2. What goods?

"American companies can sell goods on an equal trade basis"

We don't produce goods anymore - what are we going to trade? This is why many think the global elites are aiming to make America a third-world country, so we can sell off the rest of our resources to corporations under the same conditions the rest of the third world has been forced to.

[BobbyBoring]

3. We Make

DEBT. We seem to be able to export that~