Protectionism or Free Trade?

This is more of a question than anything else. I have been bothered for a while about the decline of the United States and in particular the loss of manufacturing/industry, agriculture, and now even high-tech and research jobs to overseas. I do not understand the United States economic "plan" of promoting free-trade which is causing the vast export of jobs overseas and lowering of quality of life among the middle-class. I understand the benefits of free-trade but the costs seem to be unbearable at the moment.

I don't understand why there isn't a caveat to free-trade that requires all workers involved to be above the poverty line and conform to US standards of equality and fairness. How is it better that we have large numbers of unemployed people in the US because it is cheaper to employ a person doing the same job in Vietnam for 2% of the cost? I understand the benefit to the corporation involved, but how can the government and the people of the United States view this as acceptable?

I'm not anti-corporate but it seems like we're ensuring our own decline and fall by ignoring reality. A country that is not self-sufficient seems destined to fall.

Can anyone explain the current economic theory which help me out of this doom and gloom outlook?

reply to post by ararisq


well I cant point out that the NAFTA plan was set up to create a north american union but so much BS was added in the fine print that it now looks like expansionism at its finest... Throw in NORCOM and you see Mexico and Canada being made into one huge nation state where we just shut off the rest of the world...

I dont know man I can see there is a plan in place but damned if I know what it is????

Originally posted by DaddyBare
Well I cant point out that the NAFTA plan was set up to create a north american union but so much BS was added in the fine print that it now looks like expansionism at its finest... Throw in NORCOM and you see Mexico and Canada being made into one huge nation state where we just shut off the rest of the world...

At some point we have to have enough resources to sustain ourselves but try and find a US company which manufactures computers, laptops, or tablets. The only thing I have been able to find are companies which assemble the parts manufactured overseas. I find that ludicrous for this nation. The promise I think was that we'd have higher-tech jobs in the United States but its failed. With foreign workers making up a majority of researches in US labs and now US labs moving overseas due to limiting visas it seems that promise never even materialized. The middle-class is falling below the poverty line.

The only outcome I see of free-trade is that the US worker will soon either become the Chinese worker due to worker protection laws being repealed or will remain jobless because the worker protection laws remain enforce. The idea that free-trade balances the world economy only works if China, Korea, Brazil and so on start giving more prosperity to their own workers and pass worker protection laws. I don't think it will happen. The workers in those countries will remain dominated, we'll join them, the elites will stay in power and reap the rewards.

My belief is that it has everything to do with corporate profit and exploitation. Who benefits most from free trade? Is it the workers? Is it the country? Or is it the corporations and their stockholders bottomline? The concentration of wealth has been taken from the middle class in given to the pockets of the elite, for one reason and one reason only, greed.

Originally posted by Chewingonmushrooms
My belief is that it has everything to do with corporate profit and exploitation. Who benefits most from free trade? Is it the workers? Is it the country? Or is it the corporations and their stockholders bottomline? The concentration of wealth has been taken from the middle class in given to the pockets of the elite, for one reason and one reason only, greed.

That would imply that the government is controlled by corporate boards and not politicians of the people. Who did Obama just name his Corporate Competitiveness Czar - the guy that oversaw jobs at GE fleeing the United States for Mexico and overseas.

I know you are right but you aren't helping me feel better.

Originally posted by ararisq

Originally posted by Chewingonmushrooms
My belief is that it has everything to do with corporate profit and exploitation. Who benefits most from free trade? Is it the workers? Is it the country? Or is it the corporations and their stockholders bottomline? The concentration of wealth has been taken from the middle class in given to the pockets of the elite, for one reason and one reason only, greed.

That would imply that the government is controlled by corporate boards and not politicians of the people. Who did Obama just name his Corporate Competitiveness Czar - the guy that oversaw jobs at GE fleeing the United States for Mexico and overseas.

I know you are right but you aren't helping me feel better.

Yes thats the sad unfortunate truth. That's why I don't get into partisan bickering because in essence it really doesn't matter. Both parties are for "free trade", and they have to be as long as corporations (Big business) lobby and pay for campaign contributions. One look at most posts meant for regulation of a particular industry would find many conflict of interests. The books are cooked any way you look at it whether Clintion, Bush, or Obama is at the head. Revolving door indeed.

Free trade is a myth, so there is no reference to compare too.


Six Reasons for U.S. to Abandon Free-Trade Myth

Ever since I first came across the American School (Economics) I have been hooked. It is what led me to the admiration of the great Alexander Hamilton. Did you know that between 1860 and 1930 the American School, well Hamiltonian Economics, was the chief economic guide in this country? In that 70 years period we went from a small nation to a superpower producing upwards of 42% of the entire worlds goods. Our economy was thriving, the Japanese in the 1880 (give or take a few years) sent high members of their government here to study our businesses and learn how they became so infamous.

The visiting Japanese took home a copy of Alexander Hamilton's 'Report on Manufacturers' to study it back home so that Japan could soon become a global manufacturer and competitor. German leader Otto van Bismarck also had a copy and pursued policies in line with Hamilton Economics. And now much of China's policies towards business and manufacturing is in line with Hamilton's 'Report on Manufacturers', actually I would not be surprised at all if a copy was sitting on Hu Jintao's desk.

Overall the American School believed in several key principles:

Tariffs used to:
• protect infant American industry for a short term until it could compete;
• raise revenue to pay the expenses of government;
• raise revenue to directly support manufacturing through bounties (subsidies)
Subsidies used to:
• encourage the spirit of enterprise, innovation, and invention within the nation;
• support the building of roads and canals to encourage internal trade;
• grow the infant United States into a manufacturing power independent of control by foreign powers through reliance on their goods for domestic and especially defense supplies.

That is why it quite truly bothers me to my core that American policies are strictly in line with Free-trade and globalization. We used to care about our country, our independence, our self-reliance, but now apparently it is a lot easier to send our businesses to China, take oil from Saudi Arabia, and tax businesses at home to death to prop up a bureaucratic managerial state which is collapsing under the weight of immense debt, bloated welfare state, and a military state dedicated to policing the world to defend the resources we foolishly rely on foreign nations to provide.