Due to a lack of such incentivivizing and balancing tariffs we now have huge trade deficits and we have lost capacity to produce and so are becoming abjectly dependent. Interdependent with whom, for how long, and to what end we must ask... but don't.
As a result of a lack of smart trade and incentivizing tariffs, the world is now defaulting to global oligopoly – thereby decreasing competition, innovation, local freedom and, in the long run, guaranteeing higher prices due to fewer produers and currency depreciation.
Trying to balance trade with monetary policy is idiotic, and very costly as we are now seeing. Left with only currency depreciaton "in order to compete" we have seen our currency lose half its value in a few short years and yet the trade deficits and imbalances remain as high as ever. As a result of two decades of "free" trade we now have little or nothing left to manufacture and so trade in order to rebalance accounts.
As a result an undemocratic nation (China) has garnered tremendous leverage and power over the entire world – all due to a forced "free" trade. The idiocy of "engagement" leading to this dismal state should have been clear after Neville Chamberlain’s debacle. Now, China has more and more of our assets and can threaten us on monetary and trade policy due to their dollar reserves. Will we be working for Chinese Generals in the near future?
If you wanted to destroy the United States you could not construct a better regime to do so than "free" trade... amidst a still very disparate and undemocratic world.
As we now see, we, the fast-declining First World, are left to depreciate our currencies in order to compete in a downward, self-defeating, spiral, benefitting only the big multinationals. Instead of rifle-shot tariffs to fix and balance markets, and incentivize market openings, we punish everybody with lower currency values and rising import prices – thereby defeating any prior benefits from free trade. It is truly idiotic and irresponsible... but great for bankers and currency traders.
We haven’t yet mentioned the additional carnage of a global fossil-fuel trade – in which goods that move, say, 10,000 miles to market via fossil fuel vehicles are traded and treated the same as those which move only 100 miles to market. We thus reward the greater fossil fuel destruction of the environment – all due to a lack of distance tariffs (as proposed by this writer) - and all of which are easily calcalated and collected in our container-ridden ports of call.
Then there’s food and agriculture. We, and people around the world, don’t want chemical and genetic "frankenfoods" putting local farmers out of business so huge agribusiness can make everyone dependent upon their seeds and crops produced on latter-day latifundia complete with neo-slaves.
The question now is whether we, and "our" representatives, will stand by and watch as the First World economies, and centuries of social progress, are slowly reduced to ruin and every advantage is given to totalitarian and undemocratic powers, and their legions of exploited neo-slaves, upon whom we are fast becoming abjectly dependent.
In short, what we are witnessing is no less that the greatest, involuntary, transfer of wealth and power in the history of the world – all due to an undemocratic trade regime within which we are forced to trade with the greater slave, regardless of consequence or end result. In the corporate media, no one is asking trade with whom, on what terms, or to what end? In addition, no dismal result is ever ascribed to "free" trade.
Indeed, it is Free Trade Uber Alles and for free traders their imagined ends justify their fascist, undemocratic, means - which, as a result, mean endless social and economic cost. All in all, these "free" policies mean a demise resulting in the most expensive trade possible, in which both economic benefit and social power are privatized to the few while all the immense costs are socialized upon the many.
Current trade policies are neither intelligent economy nor the result of majority rule but, rather, reflect a religious-like absolutism and a naïve and perfidious faith in the service of Capital alone. Despite ever-growing trade deficits, job losses, dependency upon imports, phony export statistics, doctored employment statistics, and willingness to undermine our currency "in order to compete," free traders go on pretending there is nothing wrong with our mounting deficits, loss of capacity, and all the myriad social costs on this paved road to depression.
Indeed, free traders have no answers to growing deficits or the potential loss of nearly every industry, only a blind and irresponsible faith in a centuries-old English, imperial, dogma unfit for a still very disparate and dangerous world – i.e., one in which capital now moves at the speed of light. Even US intelligence agencies are now warning that globalization has become a serious threat to US security due to its unwanted, negative, effects on economies around the world. In other words, "free" trade and globalization are breeding global dissent and terrorism.
Again, for trade to be truly free you have to be free not to trade, otherwise it is forced trade. Worse, no morality, freedom, justice, human rights, child labor, or ecological impacts are considered or calculated – meaning the regime is a clear recipe for universal loss. Under capital’s GATT/NAFTA, even our energy–efficiency standards are a crime, as are recycling laws, attempts to protect family farmers, and virtually any Buy-American effort or legislation.
In effect, in a still very disparate and dangerous world - wherein huge magnitudes of differences in wages, standards and human rights exist - to have virtually no incentives working to improve rather than reward the greater slave and their worse conditions, is simply to reward the criminal, the dictator, the terrorist, the Red Chinese generals, all the greater exploiters of mankind and the environment, and punish the free, democratic, and ecologically responsible.
It is utter perversity to give away entry into our G7 markets and get nothing in return – except the promise of evermore lob loss, lower currency values, corporate hegemony, and endless rewards for the greater-slavemaster. Yet this is capital’s criminal nonsense, which is guaranteed to end in riot, revolution, and new pogroms against the rich… as Karl Marx predicted.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
