in Fair Trade, not Free Trade.

Free Trade 101

This is the way it works...

Company A makes a widget that sells for $1.00. Their workers enjoy decent pay, health care, vacation, and pensions. The company is required to meet strict safety and pollution standards. Company B starts to make the same widget, but sells it for $.25. Their workers are paid almost nothing, with no benefits. They are not required to meet any safety or pollution standards. Comparing widgets, which one do you think the average consumer will buy? The one from Company B, of course, the cheap one.

What happens to Company A when they can’t sell their widgets any more? The price of their widgets must come down. They have no choice but to lay off workers, cut wages, cut benefits, strip pensions, and cut corners in every possible way. It’s that, or simply shut down. This is what is happening right now. We are Company A. China is Company B. We are being dragged down to third world status. They are forcing us down to their level. Our manufacturing jobs are being lost at roughly 100,000 a month. Our real wages are dropping every year. Our standard of living is collapsing.

We went through this with Japan, and survived (arguable!). What’s different this time? China is four times our size, does not already have a decent standard of living like Japan did, and China is not an ally. There is no way for us to pull up on the Chinese economy like we did with Japan. It is simply too big.

“Free Trade” is another way to say “Americans out of jobs”.

We have a certain standard of living here, and when cheap labor takes our jobs, we all suffer. I don’t want a level playing field, I want to win. Free Trade is bad for Americans. Third-World labor at a buck a day is killing us, dragging our standard of living down into the ground.

I will tax imports relative to the standard of living of the country from which they originate. Imports from a civilized country with a high standard of living (as ours will be again some day) will be free of taxes. Imports from third-world dollar-a-day labor will be taxed heavily enough to encourage American companies to build the same thing here. And the importing country will pay the taxes, not us. When their standards go up, their import taxes will go down. This includes Intellectual Property and all other non-physical items, such as software, research and development, and testing, as well.

Nothing new here. It’s called Protectionism. The Europeans are already doing this, successfully. Their people have higher wages, better benefits, longer vacations, and generally a better quality of life. Beyond just giving us a better quality of life as well, Protectionism actually encourages other countries to follow in our footsteps. When they raise their labor wages, we lower our taxes on them. The entire world benefits.

Trade War you say? Good. That’s what we want! We win. Hands down. Flat out. No contest. We win any trade war. The American worker stands to gain huge benefits from Trade Wars. No more cheap imports taking American jobs. We’re the ones getting screwed with “Free Trade” right now. We gave up on the Trade Wars, and now we’re paying the price.

Our Technical Jobs are going overseas. Rapidly. These high-paying jobs, once the envy of everyone else in the world, are being shipped out. Japan, India, China and others, are wiping out our best and brightest. Great minds are getting stuck with marketing and business work, simply because the technical and scientific work is being shipped out. It’s cheaper to do research and development overseas, in all fields. Our scientists are taking a bit hit. I will not stand for this. I want the smart people right here, in America, where they belong.

Corporate America will bring these jobs back home.