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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Dec 3, 2006 16:31:15 GMT -6
Should the United States withdraw from the World Trade Organization?
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 12, 2007 14:37:45 GMT -6
Here are the results of the same poll on the WTO, NAFTA, and outsourcing from Robert Chapman's site, the International Investor. These are the results as of 2/12/07 from almost 14,000 respondents. " Do you think America should continue with WTO, NAFTA and Outsourcing?... Total number of responses: 13977
["For" the WTO]: 15.32 % (2141 votes)
["Against" the WTO}: 81.03 % (11326 votes)
Undecided: 3.65 % (510 votes)" Summary: 81% of respondents oppose WTO membership, NAFTA, and Outsourcing.And this comes from an investor site, not a worker or labor union site.
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Post by Grapple on Feb 18, 2007 11:49:34 GMT -6
I have not signed onto the board but I would vote against if I did
One big reason for being against the WTO is that they are trying to come up with a world wide system of international trade with equal rules for all, the problem is that the countries involved are not equal. Trying to equalize trade between a country which pays a automaker worker $20 an hour and one that pays $5 a day will simply cause the whole industry to end up paying $5 a day. How can you make the rules of economic trade between countries the same when the rules inside those countries are different without simply reducing the standards to the lowest common denominator.
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Post by blueneck on Feb 18, 2007 12:13:48 GMT -6
Very well put Grapple. This is exactly what's happening. And this is why the majority of reasonable thinking people are against the so called "free" trade race to the bottom, and the organizations that promote it.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 19, 2007 17:13:12 GMT -6
With full "globalization" of the world's labor pool, American wages will sink to that of the lowest paid workers on the planet. Americans will be thrown into direct wage competition with Chinese workers making $2/day, and North Korean workers making even less.
No one ever seems to consider what globalization will do to global consumer purchasing power and the dollar-value of global consumer demand.
The only thing making "globalization" appealing to the One-World Global Corporatists is that the world's major market, the American consumer market, has been sustained through massive expansion of credit-financed spending. This has compensated for the loss in wage-financed spending. But credit-financed spending cannot continue to fill the gap left by declining real American wages.
I suspect the Globalists already know this. But they'll continue the upward transfer of wealth until the whole system is near collapse. As the impending collapse becomes imminent, Globalists will make a mad dash to convert their inflated "paper" wealth into tangible wealth such as gold, land, etc.
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Post by jeffolie on Feb 19, 2007 22:49:48 GMT -6
IMHO when the Democrats sweep the 2008 election, the tariffs will abound.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 20, 2007 2:46:33 GMT -6
I certainly hope so. I'm sick of the free trade mythology that claims it's good for US markets to be completely open to any foreign production, even if it's from American-owned foreign factories employing $2/day workers.
It's not just foreign governments that oppose U.S. tariffs , it's American investors who own those foreign factories who oppose those tariffs. Tariffs reduce the profits that Benedict Arnold American Corporations reap from replacing American workers with foreign workers.
The whole goal of current trade policies is to protect the profits of American investment in foreign production facilities. "Opening" minuscule foreign consumer markets to American products has little to do with current "free" trade advocacy.
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Post by jeffolie on Feb 20, 2007 10:49:27 GMT -6
The WTO represents the intersts of those that want to reduce tariffs. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff (or Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act)[1] was signed into law on June 17, 1930 and raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels, and, in the opinion of many economists, worsened the Great Depression. Many countries retaliated and American exports and imports plunged by more than half. The tariff was replaced by lower bilateral agreements in the mid 1930s. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act "imposed an effective tax rate of 60% on more than 3,200 products and materials imported into the US," quadrupling previous tariff rates. Although the tariff act was passed after the stock-market Crash of 1929, many economic historians consider it a factor in deepening the Great Depression. Unemployment was at a troublesome 9% in 1930 when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was passed, but it jumped to 16% the next year and 25% two years after that. The annual rate of unemployment in the United States never fell below 9% during the entire decade of the 1930s. As countries resorted to protectionism, the general amount of international trade radically decreased, causing the world economy to slow. In part as a result of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff and other countries' responses to it, the post-World War II world saw a push towards multilateral trading agreements that would prevent a similar situation from unfolding. This led in part to the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in the 1950s. There is still some historical debate as to how harmful the tariff was to the US domestic economy. Those who view trade as a zero sum game maintain that tariffs can be beneficial to a domestic economy if other countries do not retaliate with tariffs of their own. However, the economist David Ricardo proposed that free trade is a positive sum game and protectionism inevitably harms a domestic economy, as was the case with the British corn laws. Also, various schools of economic thought including classical, Austrian, and neoclassical support the general concept that tariffs inevitably lower revenue, harm trade, and reduce the general welfare of the economy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot-Hawley_Tariff_ActI understand the classic arguments made above in wikipedia about the downside to tariffs. Still, 'free trade' is not reality because of massive advantages in tax law and outright government sponsorship in our trading partners. What is the true story? How do tariffs result in high cost of living? We have close to full employment. Raising tariffs will raise capacity utilization and inflation. The wage arbitrage that is hurting workers and causing dislocations may be a good thing because it causes creative destruction. I have mixed opinions on tariffs. I think high tariffs are probably wrong. I think sometimes protectionism is justified when other nations use preditory dumping and near slave wages.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 20, 2007 16:22:40 GMT -6
The WTO represents the intersts of those that want to reduce tariffs. Yes indeed. Although the tariff act was passed after the stock-market Crash of 1929, many economic historians consider it a factor in deepening the Great Depression. From my reading of history, I think that's true. Actually, upon further reading, this no longer appears to be true. The contribution to our GDP from trade was very small prior to Smoot-Hawley's passage, was small after its passage, and remained small after it was repealed. (I have elaborated on this in another post, including the actual numbers from the US Dept. of Commerce.) The numbers indicate Smoot-Hawley had almost no effect on our trade balance, or on the Depression overall. This is simply a myth perpetuated by Corporatist economists, who hope no one will ever see the actual numbers. Those numbers prove them entirely wrong. In addition, our trade balance was the opposite of what it is now. We had trade surpluses during the 20's. Export sales were creating more jobs than were being lost from imports. During that time, reducing overall trade by increasing tariffs, causing retaliatory tariffs to be imposed by other countries, resulted in a reduction in foreign demand for U.S. production. Since foreign demand for U.S. export production was greater than U.S. demand for imports, the result of decreased overall trade would have been a net loss for the U.S. (Once again, however, economic statistics from 1929 through 1940 indicate Smoot-Hawley had almost 0 effect on our economy or on the Depression.) This is not the case today. With a $760 billion trade deficit, we are losing more from imports than we are gaining from exports. Our trade deficit is decreasing demand for domestic production by $760 billion. This reduces American labor demand as well, thus reducing American employment AND wages. For trade to truly work for the U.S. as a whole, we should at least have a 0 trade balance (a surplus would be better.) Better still, if we truly could apply the doctrine of comparative advantage, employment, GDP, and wealth creation would increase in both the United States and its trading partners. Clearly that's not happening, as a $760 billion trade deficit subtracts from our GDP, and substitution of foreign workers for American workers causes employment loss, average wage declines, and aggregate labor income loss. Also important to remember is that very little American capital flowed out of the United States into foreign production facilities during those earlier times. Thus American workers were never competing with foreign workers for American capital. They were competing, together with American capital, for foreign and domestic consumer markets. Today American workers alone are competing with foreign workers for American capital. Unlike the 20's and 30's, that capital is flowing freely out of the United States and into cheaper foreign labor markets. Meanwhile, American consumer markets are wide open to the products of American investment in foreign production facilities, utilizing cheaper foreign labor. There's no way American workers can win the competition for American capital when it can be invested in foreign labor markets where workers make only $2/day. The only way to level the field is to raise tariffs and/or put enforceable wage floors for foreign workers in our trade agreements. Since the latter seems almost impossible to do, tariffs are the only realistic option. In my opinion, we should levy tariffs to levels that produce a 0 trade balance. If possible, those tariffs should target American-owned foreign production facilities over foreign-owned ones. The goal is to make it less profitable for American investors to invest in foreign production facilities instead of American facilities. To me, the word "protectionist" is a compliment. It is the duty of the U.S. government to protect ALL Americans, not just American investors. That means not only militarily, but economically as well. Protecting American workers from direct wage competition with 3rd world semi-slave labor seems not only reasonable, but patriotic as well. However, the economist David Ricardo proposed that free trade is a positive sum game and protectionism inevitably harms a domestic economy There's actually a lot more nuance to what Ricardo said. He advocated free trade as long as it fulfilled the basic requirements of his doctrine of comparative advantage. And if the requirements of comparative advantage were not met, free trade was not a "positive sum game." (I've discussed this in another post on this forum called the Free Trader's Blindspot, where I've quoted Ricardo.) Still, 'free trade' is not reality because of massive advantages in tax law and outright government sponsorship in our trading partners.... I certainly agree with you here. However, even without tax advantages to outsourcing, and government sponsorship of our trading partners, we'd still have to deal with global labor wage arbitrage. As long as Corporate America and American investors can freely invest in foreign production facilities using cheap foreign labor, we're going to lose jobs to American-owned foreign facilities. The only way to curtail this is to raise tariffs on goods so produced. We have close to full employment. That's only according to the Bush administration. However, much of this so-called "full employment" is the result of reclassifying truly unemployed workers as "not-in-labor-force". Since workers classified as "not-in-labor-force" are not included in the unemployment count, this reduces the calculated unemployment rate. During the 6 years of the Bush administration, over 2 times as many people have entered the "not-in-labor-force-category" as did during Clinton's last 6 years. The result is that 4.3 million more workers have entered this category than under Clinton, reducing the total number of officially "unemployed" workers by 4.3 million. Adding this 4.3 million excess back to the "official" unemployment number of roughly 7 million gives a total unemployment number of 11.3 million, and raises the unemployment rate to 7.2%, instead of 4.6%. Another way to look at the employment picture is the change in the employment-to-population ratio. That ratio has declined 1% under Bush, from 64.4% in December 2000 down to 63.4% in December 2006. This can be seen in the chart below from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I do not think we are "near full employment." The statistics have simply been manipulated to support that claim. I think sometimes protectionism is justified when other nations use preditory dumping and near slave wages. I agree. If we don't take action, we're going to lose all of our manufacturing. As per one source I've previously cited, 50% of American-owned production output occurs in foreign countries. And that percent is increasing This is a trend that we cannot allow to continue.
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Post by phantom on Jul 3, 2007 3:47:43 GMT -6
Should the United States withdraw from the World Trade Organization? Yes.
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Morty
Contributor
No replastering, the structure is rotten.
Posts: 26
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Post by Morty on Jul 9, 2007 15:14:20 GMT -6
I think we should withdraw from the WTO, and even a true free trade advocate would as well. As Ron Paul and many others have pointed out, the WTO, NAFTA, etc is not free trade, it is managed trade.
Currently, I support tariffs due to the great disadvantages the United States has inflicted upon itself with its economic policy. If we were to return to the economic policy of laissez-faire with miniscule to no taxes, no regulations beyond those inherent in the property rights system, and sound money, then I would support free trade because we could compete. But we put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage with our corporativist economy and welfare-state, so unless we are willing to end that, we must do something to prevent the flight of industry.
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Post by Cactus Jack on May 30, 2008 13:18:09 GMT -6
..and while we're at it, let's get the U.N out of the U.S
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Post by Grapple on Jul 27, 2008 14:28:05 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 27, 2008 15:07:04 GMT -6
What possible reason is there to allow more foreign professionals into this country than we already have. There have been massive lay-offs in the financial services industry this year, and there has been a net loss of American jobs of over 400,000 in 2008. What kind of idiot thinks the US needs more workers, especially in professional services like banking, when layoffs & unemployment are in those areas, and overall employment in most sectors is . Is somebody claiming that we have a "labor shortage" in those areas? Tell that to the thousands who've already been fired this year. Scumbags like Susan Schwab should be thrown in jail. We need more jobs in this country, not more workers to take the shrinking number of jobs we have left. Our country has been taken over by plutocratic corporatists, who have no concern whatsoever about the interests of the American people. "1 person, 1 vote" has been replaced with "1 dollar, 1 vote." The phrase "We, the people...." is now "We, the richest people...." Welcome to the Corporatist States of America.
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Post by bariffsterrier on Dec 22, 2008 15:24:21 GMT -6
The Hawley-Smoot Tariff (or Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act)[1] was signed into law on June 17, 1930 and raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels, and, in the opinion of many economists, worsened the Great Depression. Many countries retaliated and American exports and imports plunged by more than half. The tariff was replaced by lower bilateral agreements in the mid 1930s. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act "imposed an effective tax rate of 60% on more than 3,200 products and materials imported into the US," quadrupling previous tariff rates... Smoot Hawley did not raise the rates that high, it was not an ad valorem tax but rather a tariff assessed at a fixed sum per each item. As price deflation set in each article subject to the tariff dropped in value relative to the tariff, thus raising the effective rate. Had Smoot Hawley never been passed, tariff rates as a percentage of each items cost would have risen due to that same price deflation. That being said, the US was in a different position in 1930 than we are today. A nation running a trade surplus is going to lose a trade war, while a nation running a trade deficit will gain. Britain abandoned free trade in the thirties and went to Imperial Preference, she was able to exceed her 1929 GDP in 1934, the US did not achieve that until 1941 due to war spending. Our trade deficit represents a stimulus package waiting to happen, a stimulus package that brings in revenue. Tariffs would allow us preferential access to market of 300 million people, we could "Export to America." Instead of a free trade deal with Columbia, let's do a trade deal with America!
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Post by judes on Dec 22, 2008 18:06:40 GMT -6
Very well put barrifsterrier!! I completely agree, and welcome to the forum.
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Post by fredorbob on Aug 17, 2009 17:17:46 GMT -6
With full "globalization" of the world's labor pool, American wages will sink to that of the lowest paid workers on the planet. Americans will be thrown into direct wage competition with Chinese workers making $2/day, and North Korean workers making even less. No one ever seems to consider what globalization will do to global consumer purchasing power and the dollar-value of global consumer demand. The only thing making "globalization" appealing to the One-World Global Corporatists is that the world's major market, the American consumer market, has been sustained through massive expansion of credit-financed spending. This has compensated for the loss in wage-financed spending. But credit-financed spending cannot continue to fill the gap left by declining real American wages. I suspect the Globalists already know this. But they'll continue the upward transfer of wealth until the whole system is near collapse. As the impending collapse becomes imminent, Globalists will make a mad dash to convert their inflated "paper" wealth into tangible wealth such as gold, land, etc. ...and I hope they get robbed when that happens.
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Post by nailbender on Aug 19, 2009 22:46:32 GMT -6
I cannot think of (1) reason for any country that is not experiencing FULL, 100% utilized, employment to import ANYTHING that it can mine, manufacture, or grow domestically. This is BASIC economics.
End ALL "Free Trade" agreements/policies now.
What we are now experiencing is the collapse of the "Mask", a pyramid of un-repayable debt, that has concealed the destruction/dismantling of America's economic foundation over the last 20 years by the insatiable greed of Government Sachs and Corprakrats that "own" DC.
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