On May 27, 2019, Cody Cain writes on Salon:
China is not “stealing” American jobs.
President Trump loves to blame China for the job losses that have devastated American workers under globalization. But the truth is that Trump is blaming the wrong party. Trump’s reckless trade war against China is misguided and amounts to a colossal charade that will not solve the actual problem.
Yes, it is true that numerous American manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas to China, thereby leaving American workers jobless and suffering. But China did not steal these jobs.
No. These jobs were given to China. It was all legal and legitimate. China merely accepted the gift.
What would anyone expect China to do? Accepting these jobs was a perfectly rational course of action.
China was an underdeveloped nation with a large population of poor people willing to work for a fraction of the hourly wages of American workers. And then corporations came along and presented China with an attractive offer: We would like to build manufacturing plants in China and hire droves of your unemployed people to work there. What was China supposed to do? Naturally, China said yes.
This is hardly stealing.
It is true that these new jobs in China were intended to displace American workers. But does that concern belong to China? Does China have the responsibility to care for the well-being of American workers? Is China supposed to prioritize American workers over its own workers?
Of course not.
China is supposed to look out for itself and for its own workers, not for American workers. Thus it was perfectly proper for China to allow the manufacturing plants to be built in China and employ Chinese workers. China did not steal these jobs.
So if China is not at fault, then who is to blame for the devastation caused to American workers?
The answer is plain to see, and it lies within our own shores. The fault belongs squarely with corporate America.
It was corporate America that made these decisions. Corporate America decided to close their American plants and open new plants in China. Corporate America decided to lay off multitudes of American workers and ruin entire American communities.
And who profited from the destruction to American workers? It was the wealthy executives and shareholders of American corporations. They earned millions of dollars for themselves by cutting the costs of their workforce.
This is part of the larger trend of economic inequality that is eroding the entire middle class in America. Wealth is being shifted away from the workers down below and transferred up into the hands of the wealthy executives and shareholders at the top.
Trump blaming China is nonsense. China is not at fault. To be sure, China is hardly an angel and indeed engages in improper trade practices. But even if China agreed to whatever bone-headed demands Trump is seeking, the problem still would not be solved. The truth is that America cannot possibly compete against China on labor costs. The standard of living is much lower in China and thus Chinese workers are willing to accept wages far below living wages in America. So corporate America will continue to transfer more and more jobs to China and elsewhere. If we do not address this fundamental economic reality, then we will never solve the problem.
Trump blaming China has an insidious aspect to it as well. Focusing all the ire upon China is a grand misdirection that conceals the true culprit, namely, the super-rich corporate executives and shareholders in America.
This is part of Trump’s standard playbook. Trump falsely proclaims to be fighting for blue-collar workers, when in truth, Trump acts entirely in favor of the rich at the top.
Surprisingly, this seems to work. Some of the hard-working Americans who are being crushed by Trump’s idiotic trade war and who should be denouncing Trump, nonetheless praise him for standing up to China, believing that Trump is fighting for blue-collar jobs. It is painful to witness such good people falling victim to Trump’s despicable con job.
In order to actually save the middle class, we need to focus on the true cause of the problem. We must direct our great powers of reform where they belong — upon the wealthy executives and shareholders of corporate America who caused this problem in the first place.
The nature of the problem is that corporate America has no incentive to protect American workers. In fact, corporate America has every incentive to harm American workers by shifting their jobs overseas.
So the financial incentives must be reconfigured. If corporate America is going to ship American jobs overseas, it must not be permitted to pocket all the profits themselves and leave their displaced workers with nothing. Instead, corporations that send jobs offshore must be required to sufficiently compensate their displaced American workers. Executives and shareholders must not be permitted to enrich themselves unless and until their workers are financially secure.
Our society must favor people over profits, not profits over people.
Gary Reber Comments:
It is true that corporate America is the culprit by seeking to destroy American jobs in favor of lower cost production in slave-wage labor foreign countries, but Americans, as consumers, bought into the lower prices, not realizing repercussions of their choices on their ability to produce to consume.
If tariffs had been in place all along to make it financially unattractive for American corporations to gut our manufacturing capabilities and still sell tariff-free to Americans while stealing our livelihoods, this economic devastating scenario would have not occurred. For decades American governing administrations, both Republican Party and Democratic Party politicians, have done nothing to effectively deter this transition, with their governing members benefiting from political contributions and lobbying efforts. Yet they have done nothing to neutralize the profits gained from cheap labor and lack of environmental regulation, making it unprofitable for companies to produce the same goods in our country.
Now is the time to reset the stage using, among other measures, to de-incentivize the further gutting of our manufacturing capabilities and make it unfeasible for American corporations to embrace “free, unrestricted trade” instead of fair trade with protections for our own manufacturing capabilities and American worker livelihoods, while simultaneously empowering EVERY child, woman and man to become owners of advanced technologies of automation and “machine” production assets as a source of income as we build an economy that can support general affluence for EVERY citizen.
Strong tariffs are an effective means to penalize those American corporations and their wealthy capital asset owners who have and are gutting our economy. Otherwise, there is no way we can counter the globalization of manufacturing which destroys our own capabilities to produce the products Americans need and want. Yes, for many products that will mean prices will increase. Of course, there’s going to be some initial pain when the tariffs are put in place after years of allowing corporations to run roughshod over the American worker. But then, if we stay the path, American corporations will no longer benefit from slave-wage labor and other cost-saving non-regulated production measures that have benefited them at the expense of Americans in our homeland.
This is what we are up against.
The Communist Chinese government controls a large portion of the Chinese economy by State-owned or State-invested corporations. The Communist Chinese government controls the largest Chinese banks and it can force the State-owned banks to loan money to businesses in financial danger of collapse. The government can shift revenue from one propersous industy to another industy directly by subsidizing corporations in those industries.
Our government cannot and should not subsidize industries, nor do we have to if we use our central bank properly. Still, with this trade war our private sectors are divided. There are those sectors who want high tariffs to protect against unfair trade practices and there are those sectors who want to return to free trade and no tariffs so that they can continue to shift from manufacturing in our homeland to manufacturing their supply chain parts and finished products, or even completely off-shore all their manufacturing in Communist China and other slave-wage labor foreign countries to maximize profits.
American workers cannot compete with Chinese workers who are paid less than $3.00 (20 yuan) per hour, and in many cases less than $2.00 per hour, or approximately $364.00 (2,300 yang) monthly.
We should be asking ourselves why have we been effectively incentivizing American corporations to outsource and off-shore their production to Communist China and to other slave-wage labor, non-environmentally- and non-worker-safety-regulated countries without penalty of a federal tax on foreign-made products exported back to the United States? Such products are produced with the aim of competitively producing at the lowest cost, while decimating home-based production. They have effectively been entering the United States tariff-free, duty-free or tax-free.
Communist China has attracted our corporations to invest in China and decrease investment in the United States, significantly decreasing the availability of good-paying manufacturing jobs, and Communist China has pilfered our intellectual property, as more and more American corporations have moved their production to Communist China
According to international trade experts, Communist China has been “stealing” more than $5 TRILLION from Americans — each year. Communist China and its American outsourcing accomplices have devastated our heartland, our businesses, and the livelihoods of millions of Americans.
As a result of our past governments doing nothing about American corporations abandoning the American heartland, we have undermined our once powerful industrial capabilities with the out-sourcing of production to Communist China and other developing countries. This means American corporations have been investing in the development of China’s capabilities to produce cheaper than us due to the willingness of their masses to become slave-wage laborers working in far less than ideal conditions. American corporations have left our country and have continued to leave in droves to outsource their production, or to source parts used in the assembly of products in the United States.
We also should be asking why have our governments used our taxpayer dollars to provide lucrative federal contracts to some of the largest overseas outsourcers in America, who have not only robbed us of productive development at home but shipped thousands of jobs to Asia, India and Europe?
There needs to be a policy to deny federal contracts to companies that outsource American jobs overseas. We should be awarding federal contracts to companies that create, not destroy, good jobs in the United States and whose ownership includes all of their employees and other Americans.
These questions should be front and center in the 2020 presidential election as well as how will we create new productive capital asset owners simultaneously with building a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man?
While other slave-wage labor foreign countries are open to replace Communist China as a low-end production source, this will take years to implement, and then only if those countries, with far lower hourly wage levels, are not subject to tariffs as well. As such, until we can revive and strengthen our own manufacturing capabilities using the most advanced technologies, U.S. companies, dependent on Communist China, will continue to buy Chinese product just with higher prices due to added tariffs. Hopefully, though, U.S. companies will stop investing and contracting with Communist China companies and other slave-wage labor countries and invest in the United States to ensure we are the most advanced producer of technologically superior and quality products. Of course, tariffs alone will not accomplish this goal. Other incentive and penalty measures will be necessary.
If we do not act, after decades of no-tariff free trade, Communist China will continue to gain an unfair advantage through intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, subsidies for domestic firms and other instruments of State, Communist controlled capitalism.
There are American companies dedicated to helping corporate owners manufacture goods in China. They have been doing this for over 40 years––boosting profits and reducing costs for those corporations who outsource their manufacturing. Now, we have the opportunity to penalize these corporations who have out-sourced their manufacturing of goods and products, and create a level playing field. We have the opportunity to replace Communist China and Asia manufacturing of the products we want and desire with American-made products. This will require a tremendous investment in the development of our own country-based manufacturing capability, using to the fullest extent the non-human factor of production to create optimized efficiencies and the finest quality. Such growth will not only create tremendous job opportunities, but also new capital asset ownership as new factories and revamped automated production is realized, enabling us to fairly compete on a global scale.
During the 2016 presidential election, an issue front and center was outsourcing of our manufacturing and associated technologies, as well as the job destruction and wage stagnation caused from American corporations investing in foreign operations, rather than the United States. Tariffs are a way to deal with non-fair trade, and penalize those corporations who are manufacturing in Communist China and elsewhere in slave-wage labor countries, yet able to sell what they produce back into the United States without penalty of a tariff. Obviously, this is why corporations are building in foreign lands that offer far lower production costs, such as land, labor and regulations. Communist China companies, both majority owned by the State or solely owned by the State, are significantly dependent on accessing our markets for contract manufacturing and to sell their less expensive goods and products. They are also dependent on our technologies.
Communist China cannot win a tariff war against the United States.
It would not be in our long-term interest to seize implementing a policy of strict tariffs on those trading partners who do not practice fairness or who steal our technologies.
Our best position is to pull back where there is not fair trading practiced, and focus on developing and building our own domestic capabilities for manufacturing, while simultaneously empowering EVERY child, woman, and man to acquire an ownership portfolio of new formed productive capital assets using pure, interest-free capital credit, repayable out of the earnings of the investments, without the requirement of past savings. In this way, ALL American would be able to benefit form a full-earnings dividend income, as well as have greater opportunity to work and earn wages and salaries.
We are at a pivotal point that will largely dictate our future economic status and for the possibility of an economically secure and affluent future for our children.
The greater impact derived from fair trade and tariff policy should be to stimulate the return of American corporations, who over decades have invested and outsourced production to foreign countries instead of investing in productive development at home, and to stimulate exports of American-made goods to other countries at competitively fair prices.
Of course, we should expect that as a result of a trade policy that readjusts the cost of imported products, prices in the short term will increase for both home-based American manufacturers and assemblers, who have come to rely on foreign-made materials and parts, and consumers, during the time American corporations readjust and return or expand to manufacture goods in the United States and embrace fair trade supply chains, in cases where we are unable to produce all the material necessary for production. No doubt, tariffs, in the short term, will force some U.S. importers and retailers to raise prices and in turn, the tariffs imposed by foreign countries on United States exports will make those American goods less competitive. But looking ahead, this is a cost we need to absorb.
But should we reason, as is sadly prevalent, that, because prices will increase for certain materials and parts, as well as for certain consumer goods imported into the United States, we should abandon policies that deter outsourcing and provide new opportunities for Americans to produce at home American-made replacements? The short-term thinking to stop taxing goods imported into the United States is, in reality, a rally for continued outsourcing of American manufacturing and investment in Communist China and other slave-wage, non-environmentally- and non-worker-safety-regulated countries, depriving Americans of opportunities to become productive at home. Those engaged in “Stop Imposing Tariffs” thinking are obviously no-restriction free-trade advocates, not fair-trade advocates and are OK with the continued outsourcing of the production of goods and services, as long as wholesale and end user prices can be kept lower than if those goods and services were produced in the United States.
What Americans do not see is how, with the earnings boost provided by American corporations outsourcing productive capital asset investments, Communist China is spending billions to automate Chinese factories and to employ technologies gained by interaction with U.S. and Western manufacturing contractors and investors. Also, Communist China is exempting foreign investors and American outsourcers from being taxed on profits from investments in China provided the proceeds are reinvested in industries high on the Communist Chinese government’s priority list. In other words, Communist China is using tax breaks to discourage foreign earnings from flowing out of the country. These measure are aimed at gaining an edge in global competitiveness.
Why are we not spending trillions to fully developed our at-home productive capabilities, using our central bank to create new money backed by the formation of productive capital assets? Highly automated production could just as feasibly be employed in the United States as in Communist China or other countries. Tariffs are a means to incentivize the development of such production and other production in the United States and penalize investment in Communist China and other non-fair trade practicing countries.
Instead, duty-free imports over decades have resulted in propelling American corporations to outsource and offshore production to Communist China and other third-world slave-wage labor countries, enabling new investment in those countries and building their economies through exporting tariff-free back to the United States. This is at the expense of Americans, who have been losing jobs to outsourcing. Of course, the wealthy capital asset ownership class, who monopolize the ownership of the large American corporations doing most of the producing and who outsource investment to produce at the lowest possible cost, continue to enrich themselves by investing in productive capital asset formation in other countries, which, as a result, they own or share ownership with, for example, the Communist Chinese State-supported and controlled manufacturing elite. We need a pro-active policy to stop allowing goods produced as a result of outsourcing from entering the United States without a stiff tariff applied so that the imported pricing is commensurate with the pricing for the same or similar goods produced here. This will help to deter American corporations from further outsourcing and eliminate production cost advantages, while incentivizing investment and production in the United States instead of elsewhere.
The American people should share a large part of the blame for American corporations outsourcing as we have widely embraced buying lower-cost Communist Chinese-manufactured goods and products instead of higher-priced American-made equivalents. And this has further propelled more and more American corporations to outsource their production to stay competitive with those American corporations in the same industries who have preceded them. The snowballing result has been “American Made” production has not been able to compete, resulting in factory closings and underproducing.
But after years of sitting back and letting hardworking Americans take the brunt of Communist China’s attacks and unfair trade policies, imposing tariffs is a way to de-incentivize American corporations from further outsourcing, and instead invest in the expansion of American-made production, while simultaneously creating new productive capital asset owners and jobs.
What is frustrating is that there is not a broader discussion on the national level in political circles over the threat to our economic well-being from Communist-ruled China. Over the last two decades, Communist China has gotten away with robbing us of our jobs and the productive foundation that enables us to be self-sufficient in producing the goods, products and services that Americans need and want, and create and keep jobs at home.
If we continue on this outsourcing path it will do significant harm to our economy and our ability to strengthen our capability to produce at home, and empower EVERY citizen to be productive. Without productive input there can be no consumption outtake. We need to uphold an economic policy that strengthens manufacturing in the United States, while ceasing production in Communist China and other slave-wage labor countries. This will strengthen our economy and galvanize “Made In The USA.”
In the current political climate, the question is why would any American support outsourcing? De-incentivizing outsourcing and creating a fair trade system should be an issue that receives bi-partisan policy support.
We need to call out those who advocate for continuing to allow cheap-labor-produced Communist Chinese goods to enter duty-free or near duty-free when exported to the United States.
We need to face up to Communist China’s mercantilist economic policy and plan for pushing its “Made In China 2025” campaign, an ambitious plan not only to upgrade Chinese industry––most notably in advanced sectors like information technology, robotics and pharmaceuticals, where IP is key — but to compete with and ultimately displace foreign companies domestically and globally. To that end, China has continued to aggressively push foreign companies to hand over technology and IP rights in exchange for market access — a violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.
At home, there is virtually no political discussion of how globalized manufacturing and manufacturing that employs the non-human factor of production — productive land; structures; infrastructure; tools; machines; robotics; computer processing and apps; artificial intelligence, which are owned by people individually or in association with others — is continually eliminating the need for masses of human workers. Yet, as tectonic shifts in the technologies of production continue, resulting in more and more AI-assisted automation, the result is less-educated workers, who have in the past performed the physical work needed by our industries, now must increasingly compete against labor-saving, efficient machinery. With plenty of want-to-be workers, willing to work for less pay, wage levels are dropping, especially for less-educated workers.
Unfortunately, in light of these decaying developments and opportunities, no politician has come forth to offer solutions to empower Americans to earn income by owning the productive capital assets that are continually eliminating the necessity for their labor.
Isn’t enough, enough? Or will we continue to not penalize American corporations who outsource to Communist China and other slave-wage labor countries, without tariffs? The plan should be to make “Made In The USA” the gold standard for quality.
Solutions to energizing our at-home economic growth have been developed since the 1960s but political leaders and academia have ignored the policy recommendations.
We do not have to depend on the Chinese or the wealthy, wherever they are, to create investment monies to re-build and build new productive capabilities in the United States and create a technologically advanced new industrial economy that can produce general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man. We should and can manufacture the materials and parts necessary to supply industries at home and produce products for consumers in the United States, and adopt and expand the application of highly automated processes to create efficient production, and not rely on foreign producers.
The key to our success as we rev up to develop new production capabilities and factories is to finance their formation using financial mechanisms that will empower workers and other citizens to own the new productive capability. By simultaneously creating new productive capital owners with the development and growth of our future economy, there will be more financially sound “customers with money” who earn from the productive capital assets they own, as well as from their earnings from jobs that will be created as a result of the huge demand for workers to build a future affluent economy.
What we need to do is enact legislation that will empower EVERY citizen to acquire productive capital assets to be formed in the future, without the requirement of past savings (the exclusiveness of the wealthy), and whose investments pay for themselves out of the earnings generated (future savings).
The solution to economic inequality and productive capital asset broad ownership can be found in the following:
Support the Agenda of The JUST Third WAY Movement (also known as “Economic Personalism”) at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/…/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-…/ and http://www.cesj.org/…/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-…/.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
Support the enactment of the proposed Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act and Economic Empowerment Act) athttp://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/,http://www.cesj.org/…/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-get…/,http://www.cesj.org/…/capita…/capital-homestead-act-summary/ andhttp://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/. And The Capital Homestead Act brochure, pdf print version athttp://www.cesj.org/…/uploads/2014/11/C-CHAflyer_1018101.pdf and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs) at http://www.cesj.org/…/ch-v…/capital-homestead-accounts-chas/
