Category Archives: Trade

UPDATED III (5/3): NEW COLUMN: Who Invited The World To Infect America?

COVID-19, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Logic, Multiculturalism, Outsourcing, Technology, The West, Trade

UPDATE II (5/2): NEW COLUMN is “Who Invited The World To Infect America?” It first appeared on The Unz Review and WND.COM. It’s currently on American Greatness.

UPDATED I (5/1):  Fans of American Greatness: The column will appear there on Monday.

And excerpt:

On March 31, the number of Americans dead from coronavirus stood at 3,900! A mere month on, at the time of writing, 63,801 Americans have perished.

American deaths by COVID account for a fourth of the world’s, including those in the undeveloped world. To ignore this Third-World-like specter is to dismiss the dead and the dying. It’s tantamount to cancel culture!

China sucks. But if the United States must rely on the Chinese government to keep its citizens safe, then what kind of a Micky Mouse country is it?

If the American people can be convinced by their government to saddle a foreign power with the responsibility for their existential welfare—what kind of people are we?

China didn’t force the traitors of the American economy to shift crucial production lines to its country and strand Americans without surgical and N-95 masks and medication; homegrown turncoats made that decision, all by their lonesome.

Trade Goods, Not Places

Decades ago, the political, corporate and industrial leaders of the West chose to enmesh the fate of their pliable people with that of the vigorous, voracious Chinese.

Like the U.S., another hard-hit region—Northern Italy, so progressive and tony—had swung its tollgates open. Like greedy, northern, Yankee industrialists, Italy outsourced whole production lines to China.

Free trade in goods is great. But trade goods, not places. The tollgates were swung open to human trade, or population replacement.

Since the Chinese had begun settling in Northern Italy and buying up assets, I hazard that, much like youngsters of King County, in Washington State—local Italian girls and boys have had a hard time affording life in their homeland. And now, their grandparents and parents are dying.

Italy constructed gleaming tarmacs to accommodate the many direct flights to and from Wuhan. Over 100,000 citizens from China moved to Italy. As the Chinese accrued wealth over the past two decades, still more took up residence in Northern Italy, and bought-up Italian firms.

See if you can spot the trend. New York City, by Wikipedia’s telling, is home to far and away “the highest Chinese-American population of any city proper.”

Courtesy of an Italian strain of COVID-19, the New York metropolitan area has been as badly struck as Italy. In … early April of 2020, it was said that “coronavirus was killing a person roughly every four minutes in New York state, and about every six minutes in New York City.”

In my state of Washington, the overwhelming majority of Chinese reside in King County and Snohomish County, where the infection was seeded and from where it spread.

The West’s political and corporate leaders, not China’s, had opened their borders to the world’s flotsam and jetsam. Agreements to exchange goods and people reflected the choices of these gilded global elites, not those of their people.

Economic Elephantiasis

The sphinxly Bill Gates, we are told, foresaw the pandemic. Gates also pioneered the outsourcing of American lives to China (and India). I say “lives,” because, as it has become abundantly clear, in the wake of COVID, the very stuff of life has been outsourced to China. Not mere jobs; but careers, not just some products, but entire production lines; not one or two manufacturing plants, but the means of production.

Engineers who can think hate Gates. America’s best and brightest have done time supervising and titivating squalid, sub-par Chinese factories, when they knew full well that, instead of cheap, nasty, and disposable, their colleagues back at home could have delivered classy, attractive, durable and sustainable products and production capability, around which real communities would have coalesced. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Who Invited The World To Infect America?” It’s currently on American Greatness.

UPDATE III (5/3):  The numbers game.

American Leaders, Political and Corporate, Outsourced Life To China

China, Donald Trump, Economy, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Healthcare, Homeland Security, Labor, libertarianism, Outsourcing, Trade

Unless major shifts are taken by the West to stop outsourcing life to China—it is Western leaders who must be considered traitors to their people. China is just being China. Ultimate retributive action against China must come from our leaders. Ire must be directed at our leaders if they continue to outsource life to China, which includes manufacturing as well as energetically replacing American workers with Chinese workers.

It’s not enough to agonize “aloud, about how [the West] found [itself] so dependent on a country like China.

Via The Economist’s Chaguan column:

“On March 29th the Mail on Sunday, a British newspaper, quoted government ministers blaming Chinese secrecy over covid-19 for ruining the world economy. How could Britain [and the U.S.] not now review Sino-British [and Sino-American] ties?”

Easily, unless the people hold their leaders responsible for reckless endangerment …

European and American elites “were [so] confident of ‘change through trade’; that commerce with China will nudge that country towards openness and democracy.”

a propaganda campaign [is] under way inside China to stress that most new infections involve cases imported from abroad. Though almost all of these involve Chinese nationals, curbs on foreigners are tightening. The border has been shut to most of them. On March 27th the government shocked embassies in Beijing by declaring a halt to the issuing of new identity cards for most grades of diplomat. This was apparently in response to the flouting of virus controls by a Western envoy. Embassies, in effect, face a ban on staff rotations until at least mid-May.

…during this pandemic, POTUS seems strikingly unmoved by ethical questions about China’s conduct. Asked about Chinese propaganda accusing America of infecting China with covid-19, which his own aides have angrily denounced, Mr Trump shrugged. “Hey, every country does it,” he told Fox News

On April 19, Trump suggested that Chinese culpability for mass murder would depend on the presence of intent: “If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they deliberately carried responsibility for it, that’s what I mean, then there must be consequences.”

I agree with President Trump that the “autocracy called China” is characterized by “ruthless self-interest” that is praise-worthy. More so than America is China likely to act in the interest of its own people.

There Is More Cronyism Than Capitalism In Corporate America (Boeing? Oink, Oink)

America, Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Globalism, Labor, Trade

In “Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking,” I explained how, “The H-1B visa racket,” like so much of the rent-seeking global, corporate America does, “is … a taxpayer-subsidized, grant of government privilege. Duly, profits remain private property. The costs of accommodating an annual human influx are socialized, borne by the bewildered [American] community.”

the corporations that hog H-1Bs act like incorrigibly corrupt rent seekers. Not only do they get to replace the American worker, but they get to do so at his expense.

Here’s how:

Globally, a series of sordid liaisons ensures that American workers are left high and dry. Through the programs of the International Trade Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, and other oink-operations, the taxpaying American worker is forced to subsidize and underwrite the investment risks of the very corporations that have given him the boot.

Domestically, the fascistic partnership with the State amounts to a subsidy to business at the expense of the taxpayer. See, corporations in our democratic welfare state externalize their employment costs onto the taxpayers.

MORE in “Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking.

Now, via Washington Examiner’s “When foreign airlines go under, US taxpayers could be stuck with the bill” comes quite a positive description of the sordid liaisons and transactions on the backs of American taxpayers:

Subsidizing Boeing jets has generally been the Ex-Im Bank’s main activity. Typically, about 40% of all its financing supports Boeing exports. That’s why the agency has earned the nickname “Boeing’s Bank.”
As a result, airlines in China, Turkey, Bangladesh, Canada, Mexico, and all over the world have benefited from U.S. taxpayer-backed financing to buy Boeing jets in recent years. Many of them still owe their lenders, meaning the U.S. taxpayer is still exposed via the Ex-Im Bank. There’s a decent chance some of those foreign airlines will default on some debt payments. That could result in the Ex-Im Bank having to make the creditors whole.

There is more cronyism than Capitalism in the operation of the giants of corporate America.

UPDATE:  Just desserts.

Ass With Ears Obama Takes Credit For The Trump Economy

Barack Obama, Business, Economy, Labor, Trade

Barack Obama is taking credit for the Trump economy when he had first dissed the idea of Donald Trump’s pro-American worker economic policy.

Via the New York Post:

“‘President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,’ stated President Obama.

But Trump’s mention of Obama’s comments about a “magic wand” appear to reference a June 2016 town hall event in Indiana when the former president was asked about Trump’s promise to kick-start manufacturing jobs in the country.

“Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What exactly are you going to do? There’s no answer to it,” Obama said.

“He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, what, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he doesn’t have an answer,” Obama continued. …