Fair Trade

Business people have been complaining about US trade policy for decades. The federal government set US trade policy to give advantages to foreign manufacturers.  They got caught up in the “emotional fix” of being Santa Claus to the 3^rd world.

“Free Trade” has caused US manufacturing jobs to move to low wage, low regulation countries and the US 35% corporate tax has kept overseas earnings in off-shore banks.

Americans understood that the unionized auto workers were overpaid and could understand that if corporations were free to set up manufacturing plants anywhere, they would be better off to operate where their costs were lower.

The big lie about NAFTA was that it would result in higher US exports and therefore more jobs. Politicians said we were entering the “Information Age”, but what they didn’t say was that the information wasn’t good. The catch phrase “emerging markets” became the rallying cry. It assumed that we would be able to sell to China as they grew their middle class someday. But this came at the expense of our middle class.

Americans had to know that potential consumers of US products didn’t exist in 3^rd world countries, because they were very poor.  But Americans had turned off their brains.

It was true that US companies fared well in the days of “Free Trade”, but they did this by moving their manufacturing and other operations to low cost countries.

Open borders and the doubling and quadrupling of our US immigration policies from 1989 forward exacerbated the US jobs problem. Foreign workers were taking jobs from US students.

The US graduates about 1.8 million students each year.  The US has created about 1.8 million new minimum wage jobs each year. And the US has been importing about 1.8 million immigrants of all sorts each year.  The jobs went to the immigrants at the direction of the federal government.

There are no unintended consequences with government.  The US federal government was running a scam on the US citizens.

At the same time, the US government was threatening to increase our electric rates five-fold and passed a mass of other job-killing regulations.

So, here we were, after 30 years of bad policies, with a 35% corporate tax, the highest on the planet, excessive immigration policies, trade deals that advantaged foreign countries, no jobs and 86 million working-age US citizens without jobs. 

On top of that we ran our National Debt up from $5 trillion in 2000 to $20 trillion in 2017. The Democrats are still telling us we got a good deal and the Republicans are being very quiet. Now comes Trump. He gets it. He articulated every issue that needed to be addressed.  He exposed the scams and he won.  So, what is possible? 

The 15% corporate tax and the reversal of job-killing regulations gets companies close to being able to move more jobs back to the US.  The 10% repatriation tax will allow companies to move their profits back to the US. Our current tariffs are around 2.9% compared to China’s 5% tariffs on US-made goods.

Doing business in foreign countries has always been a pain because of corruption, instability and danger. US consumers are sick of cheap, throw-away electronics, so this industry should send jobs back to the US to build products that are more durable, reliable and repairable. US consumers will pay more for better electronics and electrical devices that are reliable enough to work for decades. We don’t have that now.

US electronics companies have been having their circuit boards stuffed in China for 50% of what it had been costing in the US. Auto-insertion equipment is used, so It’s not labor intensive.  Chinese engineers are taking care of concurrent design, changing the boards to accommodate component obsolescence. It’s a hassle, returning noncompliant boards and quality isn’t good. These companies will gladly go back to having this done in the US if they can. The 15% corporate tax could make the difference.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader