Is CAFTA Un-American?

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: RickSp Bizarre. You want to believe this whining Ross Perot populist wholly unsupported by the facts crap, fine. You might however show enough intellectual honesty to stop claiming that you support "free trade" while espousing typical protectionist clap-trap.

Since you are so adept at spotting the protectionist claptrap, why don't you quote the part in my post that makes you infer that I am protectionist.


Straighten me out Rick.

[RickSp]

Quote by: Milton Bradley Since you are so adept at spotting the protectionist claptrap, why don't you quote the part in my post that makes you infer that I am protectionist. Straighten me out Rick.

Quote by: Milton Bradley I believe that to be one of the true functions of the Federal government. To protect me from foreign aggressors, combative, or economic. .

(emphasis added)

Without rehashing all your posts, this seems like as good an example as any. You seem to want nanny government to protect you from cheap electronics. Oh, horror of horrors.

Your attack on GATT and NAFTA as being the direct cause of the loss of manufacturing jobs is both factually wrong and pretty typically protectionist as is your praise of Perot. Your rant " I want my manufacturing base back" is just odd. You claim to be a supporter of free trade, but you argue against it.

[Milton Bradley]

No, you miss the point.


When American business moved its factories overseas, the violated the signed "free trade" agreements. That negated any good effect for the average American, and but Billions of dollars into the hands of a few select stock holders. The rich robbing from the poor.


What is the point of drawing up contracts when one side can break the contract without any penalty?


Obviously, you are not aware that virtually the entire manufacturing base has been destroyed by this bogus legislation. I heard on C-SPAN the other day that right now, 11% of Americans work in manufacturing. You would literally have to go back to the Civil War to find such a low percentage of American working in manufacturing.


If that is not reason enough to be upset, I mest be a real jerk.

[RickSp]

Quote by: Milton Bradley Obviously, you are not aware that virtually the entire manufacturing base has been destroyed by this bogus legislation. I heard on C-SPAN the other day that right now, 11% of Americans work in manufacturing. You would literally have to go back to the Civil War to find such a low percentage of American working in manufacturing.

I am not aware of it because it isn't true. I do not believe that you are blaming CAFTA for the destruction of " virtually the entire manufacturing base." If you are talking about trade agreements in general, you are still wrong.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: RickSp I am not aware of it because it isn't true. I do not believe that you are blaming CAFTA for the destruction of " virtually the entire manufacturing base." If you are talking about trade agreements in general, you are still wrong.

Of course CAFTA has yet to affect us, but there can be no denying that NAFTA, and GATT have affected the manufacturing base, as well as the tax base, the unemployment rate, and the disenfranchising of citizens of the US. It allows the rich to rob from the poor. Which I'm sure is badly needed in the present economic environment.


So basically, corporate welfare was not enough, paying the corporate taxes on top of corporate welfare was not enough, now they resort to bogus agreements which have no penalty for violations.


If you cannot see this, you are not looking.

[RickSp]

Quote by: Milton Bradley Of course CAFTA has yet to affect us, but there can be no denying that NAFTA, and GATT have affected the manufacturing base, as well as the tax base, the unemployment rate, and the disenfranchising of citizens of the US. It allows the rich to rob from the poor. Which I'm sure is badly needed in the present economic environment.

There can be no denying? I know this is a waste of time. You seem to enjoy wallowing in populist self-pity wholly unsupported by fact.

NAFTA has been a blessing for many U.S. manufacturers. Our domestic automobile industry, for example, now produces about the same number of cars and light trucks in the United States as it did before the agreement, but it assembles those vehicles more cost-effectively by spreading out its sourcing among the three NAFTA countries -- the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Total manufacturing output in the United States has risen 41 percent during the past ten years, compared to 34 percent in the preceding 10 years. In the first five years of NAFTA, the U.S. economy added a net half million manufacturing jobs. By allowing American manufacturers to more efficiently allocate their production, NAFTA deserves a share of the credit for the healthy uptick in U.S. worker productivity since the mid-1990s.

And I know that you aren't actually interested in facts but CAFTA will have almost no impact on tariffs on Central American imports to the US. They have already been done away with by the Caribbean Basin Initiative. Tariffs on US exports to Central America will be reduced making US good more attractive helping to create more US jobs. As I said, I'm sure you are not interested.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: RickSp There can be no denying? I know this is a waste of time. You seem to enjoy wallowing in populist self-pity wholly unsupported by fact. And I know that you aren't actually interested in facts but CAFTA will have almost no impact on tariffs on Central American imports to the US. They have already been done away with by the Caribbean Basin Initiative. Tariffs on US exports to Central America will be reduced making US good more attractive helping to create more US jobs. As I said, I'm sure you are not interested.

This proves you do not even understand the arguement I am making.


The problems arise when the factories move out of the US. That negates the intended benefit, violates the treaty, and the only penalty the corporations suffer is added profit.


The average American then loses his/her job, and is forced into low paying service industry jobs, or going back to school to be a part of the high tech, high paid workforce that inspired the outsourcing to begin with.


This goes right back to Osborn's observation about the cost of employing the highly skilled workforce that corporate America wanted 25 years ago. Now they have that high tech workforce, but its too costly, so they move operations out of the country, and look for ways around the rules.


But hey, its all in the best interest of the stock holder.

[Logjam]

Latest polls say that CAFTA will probably pass.

That's good. I just love to watch Democrats squirm.

[northtexan]

Quote by: RickSp Your definition of "free trade" is a fantasy used to argue for protectionism. It will never be achieved. The classic (given how overused the term is on these boards I hate to use it, but here goes) strawman. Free trade involves a willing buying and a willing seller, nothing more. Over time markets tend to level "playing fields" but your "equal playing field" is just protectionist fiction.

And your 'markets tend to level playing fields' is just as much of a fantasy, more so. Especially with today's corporate domination, unregulated playing fields are made the sole property of corporations, to be despoiled at their direction. Any humans, and environments, who happen to get in the way are mere 'collateral damage.' Without specific protections for workers, for the environment, and for fair market practices, crimes like CAFTA promise to impoverish, despoil, and environmentally endanger both Americans and Central Americans -- as NAFTA has already done to both Americans and Mexicans.

[northtexan]

Quote by: Logjam Latest polls say that CAFTA will probably pass. That's good. I just love to watch Democrats squirm.

I like to see both Democrats and Republicans squirm. When the bill comes due for CAFTA, it is my hope that we will see those politicians of both parties who voted for this abomination squirm right out of office. That goes double for the North Carolina Republican who "turned," thus creating the two-vote passage of CAFTA in the House. And, by the way, that result was so close that the 'latest polls' did not say that CAFTA would pass -- in fact, they said the opposite, before the full-court press that managed to 'turn' that last necessary vote.

[RickSp]

Quote by: northtexan And your 'markets tend to level playing fields' is just as much of a fantasy, more so. Especially with today's corporate domination, unregulated playing fields are made the sole property of corporations, to be despoiled at their direction. Any humans, and environments, who happen to get in the way are mere 'collateral damage.' Without specific protections for workers, for the environment, and for fair market practices, crimes like CAFTA promise to impoverish, despoil, and environmentally endanger both Americans and Central Americans -- as NAFTA has already done to both Americans and Mexicans.

Never let reality interfere with ideology.

NAFTA has created jobs on both sides of the border. And the horrendous effects of CAFTA you predict are already in effect under the Caribbean Basin Initiative . The CBI has been in place, by the way, since 1984. Most of the real tariff reductions will be directed toward US exports. The claims about jobs flowing South are ridiculous. The short terms effects are likely to be the creation of US jobs.

The biggest losers in CAFTA will be the highly taxpayer subsidized sugar industry, which includes fat cats who are some of the largest donors to both political parties and also some of the biggest polluters of the Everglades. The likely winners will be U.S. farmers and manufacturers hope to gain new sales in the region, particularly through exports of textiles and clothing, machinery, autos and wheat and other grains.

But none of this fits into the knee-jerk protectionist viewpoint, so please do ignore it all.

[SteveA]

Free trade isn't created by adding more beaurocracies, it's created by removing existing ones.

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: SteveA Free trade isn't created by adding more beaurocracies, it's created by removing existing ones.

Which isn't going to happen any time soon.

So, in leau of that, this creates a freer market.

[bishop]

studies have shown that jobs lost due to nafta are around 700,000.. in the same time, however, some 20 million new jobs have been created nationwide. and, something that my second chart shows is that while jobs some manufacturing jobs were lost due to nafta, more were created resulting in a net gain of manufacturing jobs.



if you want to look solely at manufacturing, those jobs increased during nafta and were growing until the recession. nafta was ratified in 1994 i believe - show me the loss in manufacturing jobs due to nafta, please....

you said:

Quote by: milton Obviously, you are not aware that virtually the entire manufacturing base has been destroyed by this bogus legislation.

let's see the facts:



seems you don't have a clue what you're talking about. the "entire manufacturing base has been decimated"... riiiiight. facts are a whole lot more persuasive than some testimony made by a politician or partisan with an agenda to push. you, milton, seem to have an aversion to facts. so be it. cling to whatever perot told you as if it was the word of god. someone once said that ignorance was bliss.



btw, i'm curious - what clauses of our trade agreements have u.s. corporations violated? i've seen you toss this out repeatedly in this thread, but i haven't seen one single example. could this be another example of you talking about something that you clearly know little about?

[RickSp]

Quote by: bishop let's see the facts:

Come on protectionists don't want no stinkin' facts. This isn't about facts. It is about dirty foreigners and evil corporations. Facts just get in the way.

All sarcasm aside, the problem with free trade is that the costs and dislocations can be evident while the benefits may be too wide spread to be as clear. Look at Adam Smith's idea of the "invisible hand" that guides the markets. It is a powerful metaphor for the way free markets benefit everyone yet by definition isn't immediately visible. It is not surprising that many call for the mailled fist of the state to solve any and all problems.

Education is difficult. I was pleasently surprised to see not long ago that the New York Times, not historically a cheerleader for free markets, used the phrase "comparative advantage." I wonder how many of their readers had any idea what they were referring to.

[Milton Bradley]

I made the point earlier that it would be difficult to produce a lot of numbers supporting my side of the discussion. Here is a little piece by people who share my concerns for not only the numbers, but the way the game is played.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases...ng.rpt.lm.html

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicl...cing_jobs.html


I also mentioned the lack of oversight, or a mechanism to track these types of statistics, and the above link confirms that point.


When the US government lets corporations keep two sets of books for their finacial dealings, and tax reporting, it would be little surprise to find they are not required to produce accurate numbers for their outsourcing either. (yes, it a big conspiracy, but who can deny the facts)


So, think for a minute, about what you are asking me to produce.


However, here is another attempt to track such behavior, but it really only helps to implicate both the Democrats, and NAFTA, along with the Republicans, as integral parts of the problem.

http://www.factcheck.org/article234.html


An attempt to look from both sides of the debate.


http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/outsourcedebate.html


No doubt, this is a very tough topic for me to produce documents that support my side of the arguement. I maintain the best source for facts about this topic to be the floor of Congress where the best numbers are produced. However this only occurs before it becomes law.


Having watched the NAFTA debates at the time, I can tell you the situation is worse than it appears.


It probably also helps that I live in the Mid-West, where a lot of manufacturing had been done in the past. Now the empty buildings stand quiet, except for the the critters, and the criminals who exploit the now empty space.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: bishop studies have shown that jobs lost due to nafta are around 700,000.. in the same time, however, some 20 million new jobs have been created nationwide. and, something that my second chart shows is that while jobs some manufacturing jobs were lost due to nafta, more were created resulting in a net gain of manufacturing jobs. if you want to look solely at manufacturing, those jobs increased during nafta and were growing until the recession. nafta was ratified in 1994 i believe - show me the loss in manufacturing jobs due to nafta, please....

Name one newly created manufacturing, or service industry job that pays what the lost manufacturing job payed.

Quote by: bishop let's see the facts: seems you don't have a clue what you're talking about. the "entire manufacturing base has been decimated"... riiiiight. facts are a whole lot more persuasive than some testimony made by a politician or partisan with an agenda to push. you, milton, seem to have an aversion to facts. so be it. cling to whatever perot told you as if it was the word of god. someone once said that ignorance was bliss.

It seems you think that corporations are required to implicate themselves of their own free will. You as well as I know who owns the media, and that they are often not forthcoming with information that would hurt their profit margin.


So tell me where I can get the actual facts, without the corporate spin, and I will gladly come to terms with the truth.

Quote by: bishop btw, i'm curious - what clauses of our trade agreements have u.s. corporations violated? i've seen you toss this out repeatedly in this thread, but i haven't seen one single example. could this be another example of you talking about something that you clearly know little about?

I posted in the first post I made in this thread, and I have reitterated again, and again.


When the American company relocates its factories overseas, it violates the free trade agreement, which specifically states, that the product produced must be more mobile than the facility that creates it.


You would know that if you investigated the link. Perhaps its a reading comprehension problem, I don' know.

P.S. Since when are American companies located overseas shipping goods to American consumers considered foreign imports?

[Milton Bradley]

When American companies violate the trade agreements. They violate these treaties without penalty, and all of the profit goes into the pockets of the shareholders.


This is the motivation for outsoucing, and the companies who do outsource outperform those that do not, almost forcing the more ethical companies to compromise their moral position, or close down.

[bishop]

Quote by: milton So, think for a minute, about what you are asking me to produce.

what i gave you in the charts was raw data. the information you provided is inherently biased. depending on the source you use, they'll tell you give you different figures for the number of jobs lost/gained due to outsourcing.

so, to bypass that collosal waste of time (speeches by pundits/politicians and numbers by think tanks), i simply took a look at the raw data - where jobs gained or lost during those time periods? i do not attempt to attribute job creation/loss to any specific reason because with the data that are available, it is nearly impossible to do this. if a source is against globalization, you're virtually guaranteed to see information talking about job losses - and vice versa.

i humored you and pulled information regarding manufacturing jobs. were manufacturing jobs gained or lost because of nafta? the facts are painfully clear - manufacturing jobs increased immediately following nafta's creation. manufacturing employement, like all other sectors rises and falls. manufacturing has been in continuous decline since the 70's - which represented an unsustainable level of manufacturing employment.

also, you ought to be very careful when talking about the labor movements due to nafta post-2000... i don't believe many jobs are moving to mexico right now. for the most part, they're moving to asia - and asia isn't a member of the nafta agreement. in fact, mexican jobs have been moving to asia.

Quote by: milton Name one newly created manufacturing, or service industry job that pays what the lost manufacturing job payed.

you seem to think that new jobs are created to replace old/lost jobs.. that isn't how it works. increased trade creates what's called "churn". churn involves relocating old jobs and creating new ones to take advantage of the changed business environment. jobs aren't lost, they are relocated. are new jobs paying more? yup. income isn't so hot due to inflation, but wages are definitely up. and, nafta isn't responsible for inflation, our fiscal and monetary policies are.




if you want to focus solely on manufacturing, here are some more examples for you to chew on.

Quote by: milton So tell me where I can get the actual facts, without the corporate spin, and I will gladly come to terms with the truth.

every one of my professors (i'm a grad student in finance/economics) all view the federal reserve's research branches and the bls as being completely credible places to get facts, raw data, and no spin (corpororate OR political). also, the link you yourself posted by factcheck included the same exact information about manufacturing job growth as what i put up (look at the graphs -they're identical). are you trying to suggest that all of my information is somehow incorrect? i definitely hope that isn't the case..

it seems to be you have an aversion to look at the bigger picture while you're wallowing in the situation where you happen to live. you ever hear of the term "labor mobility"? americans do it all the time - you move to where job opportunities are good. ohio isn't the only dustbowl out there that has manufacturing jobs. in fact, the rest of the country seems to be doing pretty well aside from a couple areas, including ohio.

Quote by: milton I posted in the first post I made in this thread, and I have reitterated again, and again. When the American company relocates its factories overseas, it violates the free trade agreement, which specifically states, that the product produced must be more mobile than the facility that creates it.

no, you didn't reiterate anything.. you repeated the same line without backing up your argument. i kind of doubt that you have read any of the trade agreements that we are party to, but, i want just one SPECIFIC example.. give me a specific clause from a specific trade agreement, and explain to me how the company violated the rule. if you can't do that, i'm just going to assume that you're talking out of your ass.

Quote by: milton P.S. Since when are American companies located overseas shipping goods to American consumers considered foreign imports?

that's always been the way it is. it's one of the four core assumptions under gaap accounting rules:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_gene...ing_principles

the plant in china is a separate legal entity that is not required to repatriate its profits back to the u.s. parent company. for this reason, and others, imports produced in foreign places, by individual legal entities, are counted as foreign imports.

[northtexan]

Quote by: Milton Bradley I made the point earlier that it would be difficult to produce a lot of numbers supporting my side of the discussion. Here is a little piece by people who share my concerns for not only the numbers, but the way the game is played. http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases...ng.rpt.lm.html http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicl...cing_jobs.html I also mentioned the lack of oversight, or a mechanism to track these types of statistics, and the above link confirms that point. When the US government lets corporations keep two sets of books for their finacial dealings, and tax reporting, it would be little surprise to find they are not required to produce accurate numbers for their outsourcing either. (yes, it a big conspiracy, but who can deny the facts) So, think for a minute, about what you are asking me to produce. However, here is another attempt to track such behavior, but it really only helps to implicate both the Democrats, and NAFTA, along with the Republicans, as integral parts of the problem. http://www.factcheck.org/article234.html An attempt to look from both sides of the debate. http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/outsourcedebate.html No doubt, this is a very tough topic for me to produce documents that support my side of the arguement. I maintain the best source for facts about this topic to be the floor of Congress where the best numbers are produced. However this only occurs before it becomes law. Having watched the NAFTA debates at the time, I can tell you the situation is worse than it appears. It probably also helps that I live in the Mid-West, where a lot of manufacturing had been done in the past. Now the empty buildings stand quiet, except for the the critters, and the criminals who exploit the now empty space.

Thanks, MB, for a great post. And yes, indeed, Clinton and other Democrats (particularly DLCrats) are implicated. That's why I said earlier that on this one, we should get enjoyment from seeing Democrats and well as Republicans squirm.

I have been to Mexico and have seen the depridations there from NAFTA. The place that created corn can no longer compete in raising corn, because the U.S. still gets to subsidize U.S.-grown corn while dumping it in Mexico. Meanwhile, what has happened with those maquiladores that were going to raise Mexico up economically by moving manufacturing from the U.S. to Mexico? Why, many of them have now fled to China, leaving huge empty plants in northern Mexico.

What is needed is something that neither the protectionists nor the free-traders have been able to supply: fair trade in a global market. Of course, neither bunch of crooks have been able to supply the framework for such trade because both are beholden to selfish interests that prosper, at least temporarily, from trade barriers on the one side or from open-despoiling by corporations on the other.