Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 21, 2016 22:06:09 GMT -6
from John Tasini's Working Life
www.workinglife.org/2015/03/23/tpp-exports-smoke-and-mirrors-or-are-those-lies/
by Jonathan Tasini
Back in the day when I, reluctantly, took statistics (barely passing, is my recollection), the favorite cliche making the rounds was, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” (as an aside, there is some dispute about whether Mark Twain correctly attributed the saying to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli but whatever). This comes to mind when reading, time after time, the weak arguments for the Trans Pacific Partnership–which perhaps warrants an updated version of the cliche: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and rubbish from the U.S. Trade Representative/White House”.
I previously wrote about the Four Pinocchios awarded the president for his fibbing about the wondrous job benefits of the TPP and the ten biggest White House lies about the TPP.
In fairness to this president, fibbing on trade deals has a long history: every rancid NAFTA-type so-called “free trade” agreement that gets served up by Republican and Democratic Administrations has to be sold with a hefty pile of lies–or, in the case of NAFTA, Bill Clinton had to actually go out and seduce members of Congress with a variety of promises of goodies he’d deliver to their respective districts. Otherwise, people don’t want to buy the smoldering pile of dung a NAFTA-style deal represents.
Today, it’s exports. Oh my god, this is like hitting a softball off a tee (in a bow to the sweet arrival of spring training). Courtesy of Global Trade Watch, we have a sometimes funny litany of the way in which the White House, via the United States Trade Representative Michael Froman, is trying to sell the TPP–with, uh, fibbing on the benefits TPP will bring via increased exports.
GTW, in an email:
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman says that the United States has a trade surplus with its 20 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partner countries. This claim is at the center of the administration’s efforts to convince Congress to delegate Fast Track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is modeled on the past FTAs. Yet, if one reviews the U.S. government trade data available to all on the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) website, in fact in 2014 we had a $177.5 billion goods trade deficit with the FTA nations. Typically our services surplus with FTA partners is in the $75-80 billion range. That means we have a large overall trade deficit with our FTA partners. So, how can the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) claim we have a surplus? To make the data support their political message, USTR either cobbles together broad sectors in which we have trade deficits (e.g. what they call “energy”) and simply excludes them, and/or artificially inflates export levels by counting foreign-made goods as U.S. exports.[emphasis added]
My favorite:
USTR Claim: “If you buy something from Canada for 100 dollars and sell it to Mexico for 200 dollars, you aren’t losing a 100 dollars”[sic]FACT: USTR tries to explain why it counts foreign-made products as “U.S exports,” which is how USTR artificially inflates U.S. export figures and deflates U.S. trade deficits with FTA partners. “Foreign exports” (also known as “re-exports”) are goods made abroad, imported into the United States, and then re-exported again without undergoing any alteration in the United States. (That is the U.S. Census Bureau definition.) USTR’s numbers count as “U.S. exports,” for example, goods manufactured entirely in China that enter the San Diego port and do nothing but sit in a warehouse before being trucked 18 miles south and re-exported to Mexico. In order to get the numbers necessary to support its claim that we have a trade surplus with our FTA partners, USTR counts these as U.S. exports even though the goods were not produced here, nor did they support a single U.S. production job. While USTR is correct that a firm – say, Walmart – does not lose money by landing cases of Canadian grown and processed canola oil at a southern California port, and then shipping it by truck for sale in Mexico at a marked up price – this is unrelated to the fact that these Canadian goods should not be counted as U.S. exports.
So, be clear: this is cooking the books. The president and his minions want people to think that manufacturing jobs will increase in any significant way–and increased manufacturing jobs is what these jokers are arguing TPP will bring–because we act, essentially, as a way station for something coming from China on a ship and ending up in Mexico via a truck.This is the strategy used each time–even when the evidence piles up that none of these so-called “Free trade” deals increase exports. Most of the nonsense about the Korean Free Trade Agreement was claptrap, and TPP marketing promises rolled out by this White House are a continuation of the NAFTA-era promises made by the first President Bush and pushed forward enthusiastically by Bill Clinton and Robert Reich.
They were false back then and are false now. And in the same way that the lies about NAFTA (I use the word “lies” here because some of the bogus claims were so outlandish that they had to be just plain lies) were exposed by people who were, then, dismissed as “protectionists” who were just afraid to embrace the wondrous future promised by a great global era of trade, so, too, the people who are exposing the nonsense and danger of the TPP are being branded as anti-trade. Except for…reality when the anniversary of the Korean deal rolled around and, opppssss, the promises proved to be bogus in the real world.
I mean, really, you do think we’re stupid, don’t you? It’s more than that: it’s pathetically cynical–you have many workers still not being able to find decent work and what you are trying to do is sell them hope by making this shit up? Shame on the president.
www.workinglife.org/2015/03/23/tpp-exports-smoke-and-mirrors-or-are-those-lies/
by Jonathan Tasini
Back in the day when I, reluctantly, took statistics (barely passing, is my recollection), the favorite cliche making the rounds was, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” (as an aside, there is some dispute about whether Mark Twain correctly attributed the saying to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli but whatever). This comes to mind when reading, time after time, the weak arguments for the Trans Pacific Partnership–which perhaps warrants an updated version of the cliche: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and rubbish from the U.S. Trade Representative/White House”.
I previously wrote about the Four Pinocchios awarded the president for his fibbing about the wondrous job benefits of the TPP and the ten biggest White House lies about the TPP.
In fairness to this president, fibbing on trade deals has a long history: every rancid NAFTA-type so-called “free trade” agreement that gets served up by Republican and Democratic Administrations has to be sold with a hefty pile of lies–or, in the case of NAFTA, Bill Clinton had to actually go out and seduce members of Congress with a variety of promises of goodies he’d deliver to their respective districts. Otherwise, people don’t want to buy the smoldering pile of dung a NAFTA-style deal represents.
Today, it’s exports. Oh my god, this is like hitting a softball off a tee (in a bow to the sweet arrival of spring training). Courtesy of Global Trade Watch, we have a sometimes funny litany of the way in which the White House, via the United States Trade Representative Michael Froman, is trying to sell the TPP–with, uh, fibbing on the benefits TPP will bring via increased exports.
GTW, in an email:
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman says that the United States has a trade surplus with its 20 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partner countries. This claim is at the center of the administration’s efforts to convince Congress to delegate Fast Track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is modeled on the past FTAs. Yet, if one reviews the U.S. government trade data available to all on the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) website, in fact in 2014 we had a $177.5 billion goods trade deficit with the FTA nations. Typically our services surplus with FTA partners is in the $75-80 billion range. That means we have a large overall trade deficit with our FTA partners. So, how can the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) claim we have a surplus? To make the data support their political message, USTR either cobbles together broad sectors in which we have trade deficits (e.g. what they call “energy”) and simply excludes them, and/or artificially inflates export levels by counting foreign-made goods as U.S. exports.[emphasis added]
My favorite:
USTR Claim: “If you buy something from Canada for 100 dollars and sell it to Mexico for 200 dollars, you aren’t losing a 100 dollars”[sic]FACT: USTR tries to explain why it counts foreign-made products as “U.S exports,” which is how USTR artificially inflates U.S. export figures and deflates U.S. trade deficits with FTA partners. “Foreign exports” (also known as “re-exports”) are goods made abroad, imported into the United States, and then re-exported again without undergoing any alteration in the United States. (That is the U.S. Census Bureau definition.) USTR’s numbers count as “U.S. exports,” for example, goods manufactured entirely in China that enter the San Diego port and do nothing but sit in a warehouse before being trucked 18 miles south and re-exported to Mexico. In order to get the numbers necessary to support its claim that we have a trade surplus with our FTA partners, USTR counts these as U.S. exports even though the goods were not produced here, nor did they support a single U.S. production job. While USTR is correct that a firm – say, Walmart – does not lose money by landing cases of Canadian grown and processed canola oil at a southern California port, and then shipping it by truck for sale in Mexico at a marked up price – this is unrelated to the fact that these Canadian goods should not be counted as U.S. exports.
So, be clear: this is cooking the books. The president and his minions want people to think that manufacturing jobs will increase in any significant way–and increased manufacturing jobs is what these jokers are arguing TPP will bring–because we act, essentially, as a way station for something coming from China on a ship and ending up in Mexico via a truck.This is the strategy used each time–even when the evidence piles up that none of these so-called “Free trade” deals increase exports. Most of the nonsense about the Korean Free Trade Agreement was claptrap, and TPP marketing promises rolled out by this White House are a continuation of the NAFTA-era promises made by the first President Bush and pushed forward enthusiastically by Bill Clinton and Robert Reich.
They were false back then and are false now. And in the same way that the lies about NAFTA (I use the word “lies” here because some of the bogus claims were so outlandish that they had to be just plain lies) were exposed by people who were, then, dismissed as “protectionists” who were just afraid to embrace the wondrous future promised by a great global era of trade, so, too, the people who are exposing the nonsense and danger of the TPP are being branded as anti-trade. Except for…reality when the anniversary of the Korean deal rolled around and, opppssss, the promises proved to be bogus in the real world.
I mean, really, you do think we’re stupid, don’t you? It’s more than that: it’s pathetically cynical–you have many workers still not being able to find decent work and what you are trying to do is sell them hope by making this shit up? Shame on the president.