In a quintessential cover story in the American
Conservative - Death of Manufacturing - Pat Buchanan exposes the
fraud of Free Trade. This is a must read, especially for those
Libertarians who cling to the abstract notion that intellectual
possibilities are viable and practical in the real world.
Notwithstanding their fantasies, self interest and national economic
independence is the supreme basis for economic policy that benefits
citizens. Those who strive to generate profit upon unholy alliances
are at best, befuddled accessories or worse case, greedy
traitors.
As the saying goes the devil is in the details. The
score card is the trade deficit. The burden is carried by those who
are unemployed. And the final casualty is the autonomy of the
nations economy.
Is economic primacy important to you and your
countrymen? A Free Trade Policy has regard only for the
business venture. National concerns and the best long term interests
of the average American has no stature in a game of systematic
dismantling of the self sufficiency.
The Buchanan thesis rest upon the worth of
maintaining America as a free society. It’s easy to be deluded into
thinking that freedom is enhanced with the vast array of consumer
items offered for sale at your local discount outlet. Nevertheless,
cheap prices from foreign producers only feeds the trade shortfall.
How backward does one need to be to avoid the inevitable? When
production leaves for off shore havens based upon a playing field
that is rigged to serve only the monopolists, how free can we remain
as a people?
The conclusion from this essay is clear: “Free trade
is a bright shining lie. Free trade is the Trojan Horse of world
government. Free trade is the murderer of manufacturing and the
primrose path to the loss of national sovereignty and the end of our
independence.”
The NAFTA swindle is a transparent scam. Here is
Pat’s summary, the only one you need to remember: “ NAFTA has helped
to convert California into Mexifornia and the Golden State into a
Third-World country. Ten years after its passage, Mexico’s leading
export continues to be Mexicans.”
In the end, the social cost from a conscious
dissemblance of manufacturing within our own borders means the loss
of high scale livable wage jobs. Let’s be honest and admit the
truth. Americans no longer have a work ethic of previous generations
nor does the average worker have the stomach to labor for subsistent
level pay. However, that is only a consequence of the larger issue.
The political decisions to vacate domestic manufacturing from our
own people is analogous to running a closed shop that benefits only
venture monopolists, international bankers, global money launders,
stateless managers and governmental hacks.
The flight out of California illustrates this civic
price being paid, but this same syndrome also applies to other
former bastions of industry. According to the Census Bureau Report -
State by State
Migration Flows: 1995-2000 -
California, New York and Illinois served as "a trio of gateway states that simultaneously lost migrants to other states while
gaining migrants from abroad."
The surrender of manufacturing employment as a
sacrifice to the Free Traders, has forced this mass exodus of
layed-off Americans - our own displaced persons. If you believe this
is an intrinsic result, inevitable and unalterable; your confidence
in political elites and their distortion of economic self-interest
must mean you only buy Chinese. National suicide is not natural. But
for the Free Trader mesmerized by visions of bountiful prosperity,
produced under the illusion of backwater cheap labor, just what
happens when the cash runs out because jobs left for
overseas?
The big picture is confirmed by Pat Choate and cited
by Mr Buchanan in his flagship magazine: “In the 1970s, [the United
States]mounted a decades-long deficit of $75 billion. . . . In the
1980s, the deficit soared to $843 billion as Japan began to take
away our industries. . . . In the 1990s, that trade deficit doubled
to $1.7 trillion. . . . At this pace, we’re probably going to have a
$6 trillion cumulative deficit in this decade - and that’s probably
an understated number given the pace we are losing our manufacturing
base.”
NAFTA is the conveyance upon which the outflow hits
home in the most visible way. The virtual bankruptcy of California
has a fundamental linkage to the damage done by NAFTA. The best test
of loyalty to real Americans is demonstrated by one’s attitude about
the Free Trade rip-off. Politicians need to follow the wisdom of the
economic miracle that built our country. SELF Interest in national
economic independence and self sufficiency. If you want solutions,
stop the outflow, rebuild U.S. industry and create domestic
jobs.
SARTRE - August 8, 2003
