Comment – Opinion. While we have been distracted since 911, with the Iraq War and now Afghanistan – the main stream media has pretty much ignored the real threat to U.S., (aside from our socialist President), China and it’s protectionist trade policies. The following article, WTO ruling on China is partial U.S. victory. Los Angeles Times – Business, Thursday, July 23, 2009, From the AP Wire – also reported in today’s, USA Today, Bloomberg, Forbes and other news organs, details the WTO ruling against China in favor of the U.S. regarding allegation’s of China’s protectionist restrictions on various American products. Simply put, the protectionist policies by the Chinese, are putting a crimp on American exports while China suffers no such restriction on their goods flooding our markets.
The problem began in 1980 when then President Jimmy Carter granted China “favored nation trading status.” The program was intended with the idea that the U.S. could flood the growing market in China with U.S. trade goods. Unfortunately the opposite happened and President Clinton instead of forcing tougher conditions on China, renewed the agreement in 1994 and 1997 when our trade imbalance with China was calculated to be approximately 60 billion dollars.
Despite the fact that the trade imbalance kept growing in China’s favor Clinton guaranteed China permanent favored nation status in 2000, (one might wonder if this is related to the Chinese political contributions funneled to the Democrats during the 1990s-which led to scandal-but I digress.) One would however, have to look at this as whose best interests were served? I would venture, (were I a sere), that it was those those greedy politicians who were whores to the lobbyists representing U.S. business interests, and who have now seen their greed come back to bite them. It does not take an economist but most certainly a historian to be able to see that Chinese culture and politics will never take a backseat to any other country; the end result of all this is that China is indeed “most favored” in that it has billions of U.S. dollars that they can loan to us at a price.
The current WTO ruling can be appealed. That appeal will be an opportunity for the Chinese who are master negotiators to defeat at best or alter in their favor at worst, the WTO ruling.
If this whole deal doesn’t rattle your brains then you most likely have had a lobotomy, especially if you keep buying those cheap Chinese goods sold in Wal Mart. Just my opinion.
Beaudreaux
More Clintonian 1990s national security disaster that continues to blow up in our faces. What has me deeply concerned is the Inferno in Obama’s wake. He’ll blame Bush while he’s in office then someone else when he is run out of towm. I highly recommend this book: http://books.google.com/books?id=h9JeMAL68jIC&dq=The+China+Threat&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=4shsSu7zF4vOM9OQlfkG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
There is no mystery as to our greedy as pigs politicians and business leaders allowing this disastrous state of economic affairs to continue. It’s about as mysterious as Geore Bush’s not closing down, airtight with shoot to kill orders, our southern borders on 9/12/2001. Our politicians are politicians, not statesmen; our business leaders are greedy opportunists at any cost, not business leaders. This is not a country where it’s “All for one and one for all”. This is a country of “Show me the money”. Are idealists expecting the common man to buy higher priced home made goods while jobs are lost by the hunreds of thousands forcing the jobless and part-time employed to purchase those lower priced imported goods?
Here’s a wild and crazy idea: keep the crap from China off our shelves, produce home grown goods and services, pay a fair wage, increase employment at home, business flourishes, more jobs and tax dollars are generated, China doesn’t sell, lack of demand forces the closure of their factories, since they can’t afford to produce goods below economy of scale. They are forced to buy from us with U.S. dollars. The dollars run out, the people can’t get the goods they have grown used to during the prosporous times, the government is overthrown and they establish a consumer oriented capitalist republic. Of course the pigs know better so business as usual.