On a Fast Track to National Ruin
By Patrick
J. Buchanan
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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