Obama must initiate a radical reversal of U.S. trade policy or else he will not be reelected

[brentspeak]

There is no way around it. None. It is impossible to stem the destruction of the nation's economy -- the REAL economy, that is, concerning actual working people and families -- without also reinvigorating America's manufacturing base and changing the country back into a producer economy once again. The only way to do this is to put the stop to cheap imports flooding in from all directions. That would require giving Wall Street, the Wal-Marts, and the global financial world in general the finger they richly deserve.

Unless Obama is willing to do this, he's political history, and some Republican who'll be even worse for the economy will take over.

[OhioChick]

1. Agreed. n/t

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[boppers]

3. Obama must give chickens equal rights to humans or else he will not be reelected

[TheWraith]

13. +1.

It's amazing all the people who think they know the One and Only Path. This is how religions get started.

[cliffordu]

17. Obama must call trading partners chicken or he'll never get reelected...

[ibegurpard]

21. what a completely idiotic response

so am I to assume that you think the decay of our production capacity and trade imbalances are unimportant issues?

[boppers]

25. importance != re-elected eom

[Robb]

26. You're pissing me off

...by being succinct, correct, and funny in the same post. :D

[Armstead]

33. seperating re-election from the common good is asinine

[SoxFan]

30. WHAT ABOUT THE PHEASANTS?!?!?!?

[Armstead]

37. What about working people and the American Economy?

Laugh all you want to if you think avoiding important issues is funny.

[greendog]

4. Trade agreements go through Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee.

Good Luck.

[OHdem10]

5. If he can find a way to maintain trade in a fair process, AND at the

same time: Develop an Industrial Policy for this country
which has at least 15% to 20% manufacturing base. The
Largest Country in Developed World and no Industrial Policy.

We are in the current jobless recovery partially because
this country cannot be sustained by a Service Economy.
Turning our economy into a service economy was a serious
mistake. The intelligent thing would be for our Leaders
to recognize this and institute change.

[David Zephyr]

6. This has been going on with Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. Changing paper won't change anything.

Some estimates have our manufacturing base now at 10% of what it once was thirty years ago.

President Obama can not turn this around and changing trade agreements may sound good, but at this late point would achieve nothing.

When you lose your manufacturing base, you also lose your manufacturing know-how, your tooling expertise, your industrial engineering employee base, your design and prototyping networks. I've spent forty years in manufacturing and know just a little on this subject.

It took hundreds of years to ramp up what America has now pissed away. It is not coming back.

Paul Tsongas wrote a little book way back when it might have been helpful called "A Call to Economic Arms" and he pointed out that the first domino that holds up the others was manufacturing. None other than Ross Perot tried to point this out as well, back when it would have helped. And none other than Al Gore debated Ross Perot on this. Perot was right and Gore, representing the Clinton Administration, was wrong.

Former Governor Jerry Brown railed against Bill Clinton in 1992 during that Presidential Campaign on this very subject. Brown's union bonafides almost took the day, but in the end Wall Street and the Democratic DLC took Brown out.

I truly appreciate your concern, but just reversing trade agreements when we no longer have the manufacturing know-how and infrastructure would be an act in futility. We allowed ourselves to get into this shitty situation. I knew this day would come as far back as 1986. It's here.

There are somethings that can be done to breathe some life into the remaining manufacturing sector, but we will never be the manufacturing powerhouse we once were. Our political leadership sold the American people out and our standard of living will reflect that for generations to come.

[TheKentuckian]

7. We could impose hellish tariffs and reboot

after all we already have all the customers for whatever products and services we need for a fully closed economy, if need be.

[David Zephyr]

8. That will never happen and you know it.

It's over, Kentuckian.

Take any marketed appliance for example: the power cords, the connectors, the electrical wiring, the switches, the transformers...all of the guts that make up that "final assembly" are, with few exceptions all now made in China or overseas. Manufacturing is a very intricate and inter-related food chain from the simple to the complex and we no longer do any of it.

And worse than all of that, even worse than the loss of our manufacturing infrastructure, we've lost our manufacturing know-how. As much as we wish, we simply can't turn that on a dime and just get it back. We can reverse trade agreements all day long, we can impose tarriffs all day long, but that will not bring back manufacturing. And if we did this now, at this late date and with no good cards anymore in our hand except for a lousy poker face, the punished would not be foreign manufacturers, but the American People who would pay higher prices for their daily ration of Soylent.

Many of the small manufacturers left here in the U.S. are actually doing well now as they have learned to lay low, seek out niche markets that are non-commodity oriented and highly specialized and where high volume production is not needed, where proximity to the customer (as opposed to being across the ocean) has value, and where personal customer service is a critical. I know. I'm one in that basket along with others, who saw this day coming decades ago and moved my boat to markets where we'd survive. We did.

I applaud the brilliance of the Chinese government who saw opportunity to make the standard of living for their people better and who had a national industrial policy while our leadership played politics for decades and thought it more important to meddle through militarism around the world than to buck up and support our manufacturing base. And, of course, the Americans that sat on the boards of our uber-corporations made out like the bandits that they are by transferring our manufactuing base to cheaper labor, and lifting their personal fortunes as they did so.

The PRC is now, not only our supplier, but our banker as well. They deserve a lot of credit and admiration. They certainly have mine.

[TheKentuckian]

9. I don't expect it but I don't pretend it can't be either David

I think the skills could be rekindled since most of the people with expertise are still with us and many are looking for meaningful work. We'd regress at first but after biting the bullet for 10-15 years we could have a strong base again.

Of course what we'll do is exactly what we've been doing.

[David Zephyr]

11. I'm with you and with brentspeak on this issue. You are both sounding the only trumpet that matters.

I wish that someone like Robert Reich could be at Obama's ear. Hell, I'd like to have it myself. I know a lot about manufacturing. There's a lot we can do to change some of the dynamic, but we will never be the manufacturing, and consequently the economic powerhouse we once were.

And therein lies yet another problem, the voice of small manufacturers no longer has a microphone or even a megaphone to be heard. And then there's the phony, corporate toadie Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers who love the current status quo and who benefit from it.

That's the real story: This all happened because of some very greedy, fellow Americans really profited from the great hurt that they have caused to the working class. I hope that they lost a lot of their ill-gotten, quick money when the financial stocks and banks collapsed. Let's hope so.

[brentspeak]

10. You "admire" an authoritarian gov't that enforces merciless working conditions?

As well as imposing the artificial currency exchange-rate and mile-high tariff borders that have helped wreck/impoverish the U.S. economy?

I can credit, from a distance, the Chinese gov't for their shrewd dealings, but I don't "admire" them for it.

[David Zephyr]

12. How most intellectually dishonest of you.

You know better than that. Or maybe you don't.

I made clear what I "admired". You trying to morph what I wrote reflects poorly on you.

Respond to what I wrote.

As to the "artificial currency exchange", we'd best be all on our knees on prayer rugs that they do not let the Yuan rise unartificially because nearly everything we consume now would cost more and there would be no competitive choice.

Their national leadership was smarter than ours. Period.

Now carry on with your babbling about Obama changing trade agreements as if that would really help the situation.

Edit to respond to your self-edit: Raising the economic standard of living of the Chinese people is admirable. Permitting the lowering of our standard of living by our collective governmental and corporate leadership is reprehensible.

[brentspeak]

14. I am responding exactly to what you wrote.

If you were being facetious, I didn't catch it as I probably should have.

As to letting the Yuan appreciate to market value -- there's no other way. It has to come to an end at some time or else we'll be slaves to the situation in perpetuity.

And China does not produce "everything we consume" anyway. Are we going to die if a Chinese-made plastic Christmas tree rises in price a few dollars? There is very little of their goods we absolutely need. Also, if a plastic Chinese-made good rises in price by a few dollars, then an American-made plastic good is made more competitive -- at least to retailers who decide whose products to sell. Chinese-made goods are already overpriced compared to their cost-of-production anyway: why aren't Apple i-Pods priced 70% less, as they should?

You mentioned that Robert Reich should "be at Obama's ear"? Why? Robert Reich was the same offshoring/outsourcing pied-piper who whispered in Bill Clinton's ear that the floodgates of trade liberalization should be opened as wide as possible: http://workinglife.typepad.com/daily_blog/2006/04/robert_reich_ca.html

[David Zephyr]

16. Why do you have to resort to dishonesty when you paraphrase or quote someone?

I clearly wrote "nearly everything we consume" and you chose to omit the word "nearly". What's up with that part of your character? You should look into that aspect of yourself.

Leaving your blinding pride aside, if you can, you might see that I am actually on your side here. The importance of a vibrant and healthy American manufacturing base can not be overstated anymore. It will never be what it was, but there are significant steps that President Obama could do immediately to truly stimulate what's left of that manufacturing base and to stimulate new job creation there and within the growing, newer green economy.

Reversing the trade agreements now, which should have never been allowed to have been signed in the first place, is closing the barn after the horses are gone. We need to learn how to raise horses again pretty much from scrap.

[brentspeak]

18. Reversing some of the trade agreements now is imperative

How else are we supposed to prevent more manufacturing existing here from simply emigrating to Mexico or where ever? That part of NAFTA dealing with Canada doesn't need to be renegotiated, but the part dealing with Mexico absolutely does. Fortunately, we don't need to worry about abrogating any trade agreement with, say, China since there isn't one to begin with, but we do need to reverse the unofficial trade policy we have with them.

Agreed that we do need to create a green economy, but that is quickly proving impossible due to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7641343&mesg_id=7641343">firms simply setting up operations elsewhere, even with government tax subsidies.

[David Zephyr]

20. Your question and observations.

You ask: "How else are we supposed to prevent more manufacturing existing here from simply emigrating to Mexico or where ever?"

As I said earlier, the horses have already left the barn. With few exceptions, most high-volume, commodity manufacturing has already long left.

And Mexico is not the lure anymore, if corporations are looking for cheap labor. Take a ride through the border towns and ask: what happened to the maquiladora boom of the 1980's and 1990's? Where did it all go? It's gone, primarily, to Asia. So much so, that the Government of Mexico now has fees/tariffs on American companies who use Maquiladoras to assemble if a certain percentage of the components are from China. In other words, Mexico is now victim of the never-ending 'race to the bottom' for cheap labor.

The textile and manufacturing that left New England for the Carolinas and the South at the end of the 19th Century -- in what James Wilbur Cash described so well in his epic "The Mind of the South" written in 1940 -- was finding its way to the Maquiladoras along the border in Mexico in the 1980's...that is until Deng Xiaoping began opening up "Enterprise Zones" in China which became the fever of all fevers for cheap labor to large U.S.corporate executives.

You also wrote: "Agreed that we do need to create a green economy, but that is quickly proving impossible due to firms simply setting up operations elsewhere, even with government tax subsidies."

This is not proving impossible, but you are almost making my earlier case for me. There really is little we can do to ever change that dynamic, as the link you provided underscores.

That said, the green economies that apparently we agree on, because of the great size and scope these projects, with gigantic wind turbines and huge solar farms, much of which is custom designed for the terrain (not off the rack) feeds into local opportunities. Green is pregnant with great opportunity for local, not foreign manufacturing because of their proximity to the targeted market:
freight for those behemoths, especially with new technologies is just punitive for off-shore manufacturers. Also, because a large portion of this sort of new construction (and also rebuilding our national electrical grid) is not high-volume or commodity production, it is less attractive to the high volume production powerhouses in Asia. The great thing about "new technology" is its "newness" which means it is evolving and changes quickly and that is something that is anathema to high volume production.

With a catalyst to kick off the green economies, to build high speed rail and to rebuild our low speed rail, we will once again be employing our engineers, our highly skilled along with our lower skilled and even the unskilled. It will jump-start new, albeit, smaller manufacturing and re-invigorating that "intricate food chain" I spoke about above.

The American Government, in a New Deal manner, can breathe some life back into our paltry manufacturing sector and, at the same time, produce cleaner transportation and reduce our dependence on foreign energy and stop some of the bleeding of our capital overseas (primarily to the Mid-East for oil/gas).

Finally, if the Government would do what former Governor Jerry Brown said to do 18 years ago, it would be a great thing, too: Permit a 100% full depreciation the first year of the purchase to any U.S. company that will buy capital equipment that is 1.) manufactured in the U.S.A. and 2.) must remain in the U.S. for at least ten years. That would be a great incentive to even the crooks that hold the levers at large American corporations because it would pencil out for them. And...an American-made robot can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at less than the 23 cents per hour that a Chinese assembly worker makes in Shenzhen.

We'll never be number one in manufacturing. That day is done. But, with the right leadership, with a focus on what we can do, there's a lot we can do to stop the lowering of our standard of living and to maintain a better place fore all Americans to work and live in.

And if that happened, that would be American leadership that I would "admire".

[brentspeak]

23. A lot of good info in your post

I didn't know much about the maquiladora boom, which means I've got some reading/catching-up to do.

[David Zephyr]

24. We are on the same side.

Last year I was angry with President Obama because he was not focusing on new job creation and going green fast.

This year, he seems to be starting out on a better footing. It is better late than never.

[Armstead]

34. You are correct, but fatalism is not a friend

Many of us have seen this coming for decades.

And I absolutely agree that -- partially because the "centrist" Democrats chose to ignore the problems and suppported awful conservative policies -- trade and other issues (monopolization of the economy) have become so embedded that thay may not be competely fixable.

However we have to try to do whatever we can to dismantle the edifice and replace it with something better.

[branders seine]

15. truth has an anti-DC bias.

(to paraphrase Stephen Colbert)

Obama will *never* *ever* do this. Not in a million terms. He is a "free" trader.

[vaberella]

19. The most an average person knows about US Trade policy, is illegal immigrants.

So I don't even know what you're on about.

[Armstead]

32. They should be told the f'ing truth and we should be trying to fix it

Jeezsus, if politics is not about leadership and issues, why bother?

[vaberella]

35. Uh hello...the information is out there. But people aren't seeking it.

This is not about transparency. Why don't you just admit that society, by and large, is complacent, lazy, ignorant, and uncaring if they don't feel the concrete pain of being affected?! This is not about a lack of leadership. This is about people not taking the initiative to find out and fight. End of story.

You're argument is silly and ridiculous. You're implying the government is intentionally misleading them when in actuality we know about this. So the government is not keeping this a secret. And imagine the cost to sit there and school adults when google is rather handy. You end up blaming the government for something that is entirely the fault of people.

[Armstead]

36. No it is about the unwillingness of many Democrats to lead

You are right that most people don't pay really close attention. And trade is a complicated issue.

But if something as important as this -- WHICH AFFECTS THEM DIRECTLY -- has been swept under the rug, it is largely the fault of politicians who failed to address it and explain it.

And when Democratic politicians take the wrong side on an issue, and push a bad point of view, that is a worse failure of leadership.

There are many Democrats who fought against this crap along the line, but they got muscled out by the so-called centrists.

[hollowdweller]

22. How badly would that affect inflation?

I mean when I was a kid most things were made in the USA but stuff like clothes and stuff were a LOT more expensive. Appliances. Mattresses.

All that stuff has gone down in price.

Meanwhile most of the stuff like houses, medical care and skilled service jobs have gone up.

Now I agree our trade policies have screwed us, but if we start making stuff here again and have to charge more for it how do we get their wages up enough to compensate for the higher prices?

[Bullet1987]

27. Changing our trade policy would get to the heart of the problem

But I'm afraid most Americans don't know enough about it to determine Obama's reelection.

[dionysus]

28. despite your burning desire for him to lose brent.. he'll do just fine.

:eyes:

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Armstead]

31. TO THE TRUTH-DENIERS...Maybe Obama won't lose, but the US will

Denial is not a river in Europe.

A large reason for our economic problems are the "free trade" policies with terms dictated by transnational corporations that don't give two shits about this country or the developing nations they are exploiting.

You want to deny that because Obama seems wedded to the same policies that Clinton inflicted on us?

Go ahead. But it is going to get real uncomfortable keeping your heads in the sand.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

38. I think Obama will win in 2012

because the Republicans still suck, and hey, who else are we going to vote for?

But I'm not real encouraged about the possibility of change. Just more wins for corporations.

:hi: