Before leaving office, U.S. President George H. W. Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) On December 17, 1992 which Bill Clinton ratified and it became law. The era of American "free" trade had begun.
The result has been a hollowing out of American jobs, wealth, and innovation to foreign trading partners and the U.S. falling to the bottom in the 2010 CIA factbook for the worst trade account balance. There will be no long-lasting sustainable economic recovery for America until the broken trade paradigm is fixed.
So what went wrong? Trade works when it economically benefits a nation. The problem with our current "free" trade paradigm is that commercial activity is unbalanced to the point where it depletes our economy while enriching others. This has resulted in a redistribution of American jobs, wealth, and innovation which has benefited our trading partners, and those U.S. special interests that profit from it, but materially injured most Americans and the ability of the United States to maintain long-term economic, military, and political supremacy.
Our current "free" trade amounts to a unilateral abandonment of trade barriers by the U.S. to exploit cheap foreign labor and operating conditions for U.S. businesses with the justification that the developing world will grow from accessing our market to create viable markets which U.S. companies can then serve someday.
The problems with this are manifold. First, it leaves a great many Americans unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid. Secondly, foreign markets refuse to follow our lead. They continue to protect their own markets while engaging in damaging activities that range from intellectual property theft to currency manipulation.
U.S. presidents have worked hard with the G20 to try and get foreign countries to do away with their value added taxes (VAT) on American goods and truly dismantle their trade barriers but it's been a material failure. These countries benefit from maintaining a trade advantage and have no desire to negate it.
Our trade imbalance tells the story. Between 1989 and 2009, Americans bought over $6 trillion more from the world than we sold to them and just in 2010 and 2011, we added more than $1 trillion of trade deficit to that $6 trillion. -reference: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
More recently, our trading partners have begun a big push of both buying American companies and forming many new businesses to serve their own markets.
Trading partners like Ireland and Sweden simply keep their tax rates below that of the United States (no matter how low we lower the tax rate on the wealthiest investors and public corporations foreign countries will simply offer a better rate because it costs them nothing to do so and they benefit from it at U.S. expense) enticing U.S. businesses to simply abandon the U.S. and relocate and an increasing number are taking advantage because of "free" trade. The U.S. becomes a place to dump their foreign made goods and services for profit.
The result of this has hurt all but the wealthiest American investors and the multinationals who have profited short-term from the hollowing out of America to maximize their wealth and the foreign countries and workers which benefit from this unilateral unfair trade paradigm.
Initially, the consumer benefited from lower priced goods but the cost of foreign goods is rising due to foreign demand for them increasing negating the benefit of them to Americans.
Yet the most damaging aspect of the unilateral unfair trade paradigm is that U.S. companies and Americans are so undermined by the broken "free" trade paradigm that there's little incentive to build or grow business in the United States anymore while existing American small business owners continue to realize decreased profits overall.
Unfortunately, there is nothing on the horizon from either U.S. political party suggesting they even want to fix U.S. trade. They don't get paid by the special interests profiting from it to fix it. They get paid not to fix it.
As a result, the GOP solution is simply to cut off government social benefits to Americans in a Great Recession in order to decrease spending while seeking tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in order to implement "trickle-down theory" and stimulate the economy while the Democratic solution is to gain greater government control to try and reduce the costs while raising taxes. Either "solution" won't fix U.S. trade but will create more problems.
Both parties largely ignore military spending which has surged to almost $700 billion a year in 2010, before dropping slightly in 2011, enormous partisan pork earmarks (each just wants the other party to stop theirs), campaign reform to redirect political power away from special interests back to the American people, the decertification of public unions, the massive influx of insourced immigrant foreign labor and illegal immigration which continues to displace American workers, and most importantly: FIXING America's broken business trade paradigm.
It's important for voters to understand that trickle-down theory increasingly fails to benefit American workers because of the broken business trade paradigm. Before "free" trade, American companies used American workers almost exclusively. Now they increasingly use foreign workers both abroad and also insourced in large numbers on visas. Trickle-down today increasingly ends up in the pockets of foreign partners and workers and not American workers.
This is why the GOP strategy to implement trickle-down economics will fail to bring recovery to the average American. They are increasingly bypassed. It simply enriches the wealthy owners of the multinationals and props up foreign producer nations economies and foreign workers who increasingly make most of the products sold in the U.S. today while delivering American invention and innovation into their hands to exploit with respect to their own businesses that compete with the U.S. businesses giving them American invention/innovation!
And even here in the U.S. public corporations increasingly seek out the cream of the crop from the vast pool of low-paid foreign workers to insource
These reasons are also important factors why pumping stimulus money into our economy (a practice both the Bush and Obama administration's engaged in) hasn't brought a jobful economic recovery to most Americans and the practice of borrowing to "stimulate" the U.S. economy in this current "free" trade paradigm will eventually make things much worse rather than produce the long-lasting sustainable economic recovery to America its proponents claim. It flows in and it flows out bypassing Americans.
All the partisan politics being played in the media and by our elected representatives (and we need serious campaign reform to free our politicians from having to look to the pockets of the elitists and multinationals who are benefiting from our broken paradigm to even hold office) aren't going to solve this problem.
We can bring democide to America and balance the budget/pay off the national debt and our nation will still decline. We can turn to socialism in an effort to bring costs down to almost nothing and we'll still decline. Why? Because American jobs, capital investment, and innovation are being transferred to foreign trading partners enmasse due to our broken unilateral unfair business trade paradigm that passes as "free" trade today.
There will be no long-term sustainable economic recovery for the American people until the broken business trade paradigm is fixed.
As things stand right now, we may be looking at two futures. If the GOP "wins," we will end like Mexico. If the Democrats "win," we will end like Greece. Either way, the U.S. Gini index will continue to grow as a disparity between the wealthiest and everyone else continues. America as we know is slowly passing into history and the primary reason for it is a broken business trade paradigm.
The American people need to grasp this and demand in one voice systemic MAJOR trade reform back to a business trade paradigm that benefits Americans and the long-term U.S. national interest. It is the ONLY way to save the standard of living for Americans in the United States of America.
We have to return to an economy that out innovates, efficiently produces, and quickly supplies what the world needs and wants using American labor while protecting our innovation like we did during the Cold War so our competitors don't simply take it and use it against us. That's what made us the strongest economy in the world and what will restore us to long-term jobful sustainable prosperity.
Recommended Reading:
The result has been a hollowing out of American jobs, wealth, and innovation to foreign trading partners and the U.S. falling to the bottom in the 2010 CIA factbook for the worst trade account balance. There will be no long-lasting sustainable economic recovery for America until the broken trade paradigm is fixed.
So what went wrong? Trade works when it economically benefits a nation. The problem with our current "free" trade paradigm is that commercial activity is unbalanced to the point where it depletes our economy while enriching others. This has resulted in a redistribution of American jobs, wealth, and innovation which has benefited our trading partners, and those U.S. special interests that profit from it, but materially injured most Americans and the ability of the United States to maintain long-term economic, military, and political supremacy.
Our current "free" trade amounts to a unilateral abandonment of trade barriers by the U.S. to exploit cheap foreign labor and operating conditions for U.S. businesses with the justification that the developing world will grow from accessing our market to create viable markets which U.S. companies can then serve someday.
The problems with this are manifold. First, it leaves a great many Americans unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid. Secondly, foreign markets refuse to follow our lead. They continue to protect their own markets while engaging in damaging activities that range from intellectual property theft to currency manipulation.
U.S. presidents have worked hard with the G20 to try and get foreign countries to do away with their value added taxes (VAT) on American goods and truly dismantle their trade barriers but it's been a material failure. These countries benefit from maintaining a trade advantage and have no desire to negate it.
Our trade imbalance tells the story. Between 1989 and 2009, Americans bought over $6 trillion more from the world than we sold to them and just in 2010 and 2011, we added more than $1 trillion of trade deficit to that $6 trillion. -reference: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
More recently, our trading partners have begun a big push of both buying American companies and forming many new businesses to serve their own markets.
Trading partners like Ireland and Sweden simply keep their tax rates below that of the United States (no matter how low we lower the tax rate on the wealthiest investors and public corporations foreign countries will simply offer a better rate because it costs them nothing to do so and they benefit from it at U.S. expense) enticing U.S. businesses to simply abandon the U.S. and relocate and an increasing number are taking advantage because of "free" trade. The U.S. becomes a place to dump their foreign made goods and services for profit.
The result of this has hurt all but the wealthiest American investors and the multinationals who have profited short-term from the hollowing out of America to maximize their wealth and the foreign countries and workers which benefit from this unilateral unfair trade paradigm.
Initially, the consumer benefited from lower priced goods but the cost of foreign goods is rising due to foreign demand for them increasing negating the benefit of them to Americans.
Yet the most damaging aspect of the unilateral unfair trade paradigm is that U.S. companies and Americans are so undermined by the broken "free" trade paradigm that there's little incentive to build or grow business in the United States anymore while existing American small business owners continue to realize decreased profits overall.
Unfortunately, there is nothing on the horizon from either U.S. political party suggesting they even want to fix U.S. trade. They don't get paid by the special interests profiting from it to fix it. They get paid not to fix it.
As a result, the GOP solution is simply to cut off government social benefits to Americans in a Great Recession in order to decrease spending while seeking tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in order to implement "trickle-down theory" and stimulate the economy while the Democratic solution is to gain greater government control to try and reduce the costs while raising taxes. Either "solution" won't fix U.S. trade but will create more problems.
Both parties largely ignore military spending which has surged to almost $700 billion a year in 2010, before dropping slightly in 2011, enormous partisan pork earmarks (each just wants the other party to stop theirs), campaign reform to redirect political power away from special interests back to the American people, the decertification of public unions, the massive influx of insourced immigrant foreign labor and illegal immigration which continues to displace American workers, and most importantly: FIXING America's broken business trade paradigm.
It's important for voters to understand that trickle-down theory increasingly fails to benefit American workers because of the broken business trade paradigm. Before "free" trade, American companies used American workers almost exclusively. Now they increasingly use foreign workers both abroad and also insourced in large numbers on visas. Trickle-down today increasingly ends up in the pockets of foreign partners and workers and not American workers.
This is why the GOP strategy to implement trickle-down economics will fail to bring recovery to the average American. They are increasingly bypassed. It simply enriches the wealthy owners of the multinationals and props up foreign producer nations economies and foreign workers who increasingly make most of the products sold in the U.S. today while delivering American invention and innovation into their hands to exploit with respect to their own businesses that compete with the U.S. businesses giving them American invention/innovation!
And even here in the U.S. public corporations increasingly seek out the cream of the crop from the vast pool of low-paid foreign workers to insource
These reasons are also important factors why pumping stimulus money into our economy (a practice both the Bush and Obama administration's engaged in) hasn't brought a jobful economic recovery to most Americans and the practice of borrowing to "stimulate" the U.S. economy in this current "free" trade paradigm will eventually make things much worse rather than produce the long-lasting sustainable economic recovery to America its proponents claim. It flows in and it flows out bypassing Americans.
All the partisan politics being played in the media and by our elected representatives (and we need serious campaign reform to free our politicians from having to look to the pockets of the elitists and multinationals who are benefiting from our broken paradigm to even hold office) aren't going to solve this problem.
We can bring democide to America and balance the budget/pay off the national debt and our nation will still decline. We can turn to socialism in an effort to bring costs down to almost nothing and we'll still decline. Why? Because American jobs, capital investment, and innovation are being transferred to foreign trading partners enmasse due to our broken unilateral unfair business trade paradigm that passes as "free" trade today.
There will be no long-term sustainable economic recovery for the American people until the broken business trade paradigm is fixed.
As things stand right now, we may be looking at two futures. If the GOP "wins," we will end like Mexico. If the Democrats "win," we will end like Greece. Either way, the U.S. Gini index will continue to grow as a disparity between the wealthiest and everyone else continues. America as we know is slowly passing into history and the primary reason for it is a broken business trade paradigm.
The American people need to grasp this and demand in one voice systemic MAJOR trade reform back to a business trade paradigm that benefits Americans and the long-term U.S. national interest. It is the ONLY way to save the standard of living for Americans in the United States of America.
We have to return to an economy that out innovates, efficiently produces, and quickly supplies what the world needs and wants using American labor while protecting our innovation like we did during the Cold War so our competitors don't simply take it and use it against us. That's what made us the strongest economy in the world and what will restore us to long-term jobful sustainable prosperity.
Recommended Reading:
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