print“China was America’s second-largest trading partner behind only Canada,” reports The New Republic. “It accounted for 13.6 percent of all trade. In other words, billions upon billions of dollars are at stake,” if Romney acts on his bellicosity, as he promised to.
The Republican presidential hopeful sounds more like a card-carrying union member than a former CEO when he outlines his White House agenda for China, urging tariffs and downplaying the threat of a trade war. He extended his tough talk recently to the pages of The Wall Street Journal in a piece epitomizing the protectionist rhetoric he’s deployed for much of his presidential campaign.
“Unless China changes its ways, on day one of my presidency I will designate it a currency manipulator and take appropriate counteraction,” Romney wrote. “A trade war with China is the last thing I want, but I cannot tolerate our current trade surrender.”
Here’s another pesky details TNR omits conveniently: China is also our largest creditor.
Just to keep purchasing greenbacks, China is inflating its own money supply. Moreover, inflation in China and the attendant price hikes — brought about because of the debased dollar — could threaten the stability of a country that has “moved more people out of poverty in the shortest amount of time in the history of the planet.”
We owe them!
Sen. Rick Santorum is even crazier when it comes to our Chinese enablers:
“You know, Mitt,” said Santorum during The Washington Post/Bloomberg Republican presidential debate, “I don’t want to go to a trade war. I want to beat China. I want to go to war with China and make America the most attractive place in the world to do business.”
Newt is almost as nutty on this front as his two rivals, adding Russia to America’s enemy equation, and threatening cyberwar against Moscow and Beijing. Maybe cyber-warfare is Gingrich’s idea of a preemptive strike.
The whirlpool of monetary mismanagement is encircling the globe. The big question is: Which country’s ship-of state will remain above water?
http://mises.org/daily/5897/Currency-Wars
http://mises.org/daily/5894/From-Loose-Money-to-Fettered-People
“THE NEXT DECADE” and “THE NEXT 100 YEARS” – both by Thomas Friedman – present some ideas for all to evaluate. [You must be kidding about the foul Friedman!]
“My, My America Has Lots of Unemployed Engineers” begs the question of what to do now? Will job seekers and entrepreneurs have to recreate themselves every five years? Pursue ongoing educational disciplines? Relocate, globally, to maintain a continuous state of employment and income? Change is the only certainty – ADAPT ASAP or become irrelevant.
ps: Politicians cannot control the market and market forces regardless of what they say and wish you to believe.
Ah, the insidious YELLOW PERIL. One cannot underestimate the threat that China poses – including: messing up my house, wrecking my car, and causing considerable financial sacrifices on my part – and that’s just my daughter Anna!
Then, even more insidious are those evil Chinese who study and do well in school (the nerve!). For example, blacks, who made up 11.8% of Texas, only made up 4.5% of the University of Texas even under a law allowing the upper 10% of any Texas high school guaranteed admission while Asians who make up 3.8% of Texas, got 17.9% of the University of Texas admissions:
http://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/document/Fisher_v_University_of_Texas_at_Austin_631_F3d_213_5th_Cir_2011_C
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas
Then the dirty Chinese bastards have the nerve to manufacture low cost goods and sell them to us! And loan us money! Oh my G-d!
The Chinese are such barbarians that they are # 2 in the entire world in the number of prisoners at 1.55 million, almost twice as many as the third place nation:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri-crime-prisoners
Only one nation leads China and guess which FREE COUNTRY that is?? At least Newt Gingrich would lower the prison population if he got a death penalty for marijuana use:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/13/gary-johnson-newt-gingrich-marijuana-hyprocrisy_n_1146739.html
Oh I forgot, we are FREER than China!
My-Ron: In your perspective analysis between incarceration, you didn’t mention that China and the US have approximately the same land mass, but China has three times the population of the US. Roughly The US is at 300 million with 2 million inmates or .06 percent. China at 1 Billion and 1.5 million or .015 percent. I used to be good at math, but haven’t used it lately, maybe I blew this one, but I get that China incarcerates one point five hundredths of their population and the US incarcerates six hundredths of their population or four times as many citizens as China does.
Don’t ya just love it!
Never said I AGREED with Friedman’s ideas or even those of Gerald Celente which I have read. I evaluate outside sources and make my decisions.
I do not believe any country has a lead in attaining the unattainable Utopia or is immune from corruption or does not stray from its original ideals. I do believe the actions that extended over a long period of time and got the U.S. to its current state of affairs may take some time to reverse towards a libertarian state of affairs.
Concerning the writings of futurists, I find it interesting to review them and keep score of accuracies, much like weather forecasters, simply because they may have an idea about things of which I do not know or have not made enough time to consider.
ps: Find Joel Garreau’s book, NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, written approx 20+ yrs ago…quite a reflective read for today.
Just finished Mao’s Great famime by Dikotter. It is a wonder that there are any Chinese people left. Perhaps it was all part of a long range plan?
What is wrong with tariffs? Ron Paul prefers funding the government with tariffs over income taxes. Count me in with Pat Buchanan and Sir James Goldsmith.