5/8/2015 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com
In the first quarter of 2015,
in the sixth year of the historic Obama recovery, the U.S. economy grew by
two-tenths of 1 percent. And that
probably sugarcoats it. For trade deficits
subtract from the growth of GDP, and the U.S. trade deficit that just came in
was a monster.
As the AP's Martin Crutsinger writes, "The
U.S. trade deficit in March swelled to the highest level in more than six
years, propelled by a flood of imports that may have sapped the U.S. economy of
any growth in the first quarter."
The March deficit was $51.2 billion, largest of
any month since 2008. In goods alone, the trade deficit hit $64 billion. As
Crutsinger writes, a surge in imports to $239 billion in March, "reflected
greater shipments of foreign-made industrial machinery, autos, mobile phones,
clothing and furniture."
What does this flood of imports of things we
once made here mean for a city like, say, Baltimore? Writes columnist Allan
Brownfeld: "Baltimore was once a
city where tens of thousands of blue collar employees earned a good living in
industries building cars, airplanes and making steel. ... In 1970, about a
third of the labor force in Baltimore was employed in manufacturing. By 2000,
only 7 percent of city residents had manufacturing jobs."
Put down blue-collar Baltimore alongside Motor
City, Detroit, as another fatality of free-trade fanaticism. For as imports
substitute for U.S. production and kill U.S. jobs, trade deficits reduce a
nation's GDP. And since Bill Clinton took office, the U.S. trade deficits have
totaled $11.2 trillion. An astronomical figure.
It translates not only into millions of
manufacturing jobs lost and tens of thousands of factories closed, but also
millions of manufacturing jobs that were never created, and tens of thousands
of factories that did not open here, but did open in Mexico, China and other
Asian countries.
In importing all those trillions in foreign-made
goods, we exported the future of America's young. Our political and corporate
elites sold out working- and middle-class America -- to enrich the monied
class. And they sure succeeded.
Yet, remarkably, Republicans who wail over
Obama's budget deficits ignore the more ruinous trade deficits that leech away
the industrial base upon which America's self-reliance and military might have
always depended. Last month, the U.S. trade deficit with the People's Republic
of China reached $31.2 billion, the largest in history between two nations.
Over 25 years, China has amassed $4 trillion in
trade surpluses at our expense. And where are the Republicans? Talking tough
about building new fleets of planes and ships and carriers to defend Asia from
the rising threat of China, which those same Republicans did more than anyone
else to create.
Now this GOP Congress is preparing to vote for
"fast track" and surrender its right to amend any Trans-Pacific Partnership
trade deal that Obama brings home. But consider that TPP. While the propaganda
is all about a deal to cover 40 percent of world trade, what are we really
talking about?
First, TPP will cover 37 percent of world trade.
But 80 percent of that is trade between the U.S. and nations with which we
already have trade deals. As for the last 20 percent, our new partners will be
New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Japan.
Query: Who benefits more if we get access to
Vietnam's market, which is 1 percent of ours, while Hanoi gets access to a U.S.
market that is 100 times the size of theirs?
The core of the TPP is the deal with Japan. But
do decades of Japanese trade surpluses at our expense, achieved through the
manipulation of Japan's currency and hidden restrictions on U.S. imports,
justify a Congressional surrender to Barack Obama of all rights to amend any
Japan deal he produces?
Columnist Robert Samuelson writes that a TPP
failure "could produce a historic watershed. ... rejection could mean the
end of an era. ... So, when opponents criticize the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
they need to answer a simple question: Compared to what?" Valid points,
and a fair question.
And yes, an era is ending, a post-Cold War era
where the United States threw open her markets to nations all over the world,
as they sheltered their own. The end of an era where America volunteered to
defend nations and fight wars having nothing to do with her own vital interests
or national security.
The bankruptcy of a U.S. trade and foreign
policy, which has led to the transparent decline of the United States and the
astonishing rise of China, is apparent now virtually everywhere. And America is
not immune to the rising tide of nationalism.
Though, like the alcoholic who does not realize
his condition until he is lying face down in the gutter, it may be a while
before we get out of the empire business and start looking out again, as our
fathers did, for the American Republic first. But that day is coming.
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