I don't support the democrats on protectionism. Do you?

outsouring
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20476&highlight=

So what you're saying is, it's okay that we shoved free trade down other countries throats when they were hurt by it because we stood to profit. But now that we stand to be temporarily hurt by it while the rest of the world benefits, let's back out. Great argument there.

The fact is, what's happening is very good for the entire world, not just us. India and china are booming economies as are many other Asian nations. They represent about half of the entire world's population. Their middle class's buying power is expanding at an extraordinary rate. We stand to benefit from this as much as anyone. From media to fashion, the US remains the primary exporter of many products. Products that this ever growing middle class is starting to export in large quantites from the US.

Where as a few years ago, much of the entertainment and fashion products went almost exclusively to us and Europe, they are starting to expand into markets all over the world.

When the buying power of half the world's population skyrockets, everyone including us is left FAR better off in the long run.

I don't agree with Bush on most things. But I agree with him that the best way to combat outsourcing isn't by crippling the entire world's economy by starting off a wave of protectionist policies. It's by making the government do what it needs to to make it easier for companies to emply many people here as well. The government needs to improve its regulatory policy, reduce healthcare costs, discourage frivolous lawsuits, assure affordable and reliable supplies of energy, and create a stable tax environment.

Such measures will ensure that new jobs get created both here and elsewhere. And that's the best thing that can happen to all of us.

This is a scathing indictment of EU trade barriers at the expense of third world lives.

I haven't found similar reports on the effects of US trade barriers. But I am sure there are grave effects.

http://www.cne.org/pub_pdf/2003_09_04_EU_barriers_kill_PR.htm

PRE-CANCUN WTO MEETING REPORT SHOWS
EU TRADE BARRIERS KILL ONE
PERSON EVERY 13 SECONDS



BRUSSELS, 04 SEPTEMBER 2003 ?- A new report, EU Trade Barriers Kill, published today in the run-up to the Cancun ministerial meeting of the WTO by the Centre for the New Europe, the Brussels-based think tank, analyses the impact of EU trade regulations and barriers on the developing world.

A PDF copy of the full report, by Stephen Pollard, Alberto Mingardi, Dr. Sean Gabb, and Cecile Philippe is available for download here.


KEY FINDINGS

6,600 people die every day in the world because of the trading rules of the EU. That is 275 people every hour.
In other words, one person dies every 13 seconds somewhere in the world - mainly in Africa - because the European Union does not act on trade as it talks.
If Africa could increase its share of world trade by just one per cent, it would earn an additional £49 billion a year. This would be enough to lift 128 million people out of extreme poverty. The EU's trade barriers are directly responsible for Africa's inability to increase its trade and thus for keeping Africa in poverty.
If the poorest countries as a whole could increase their share of world exports by five per cent, that would generate £248 billion or $350 billion, raising millions more out of extreme poverty.



KEY EXTRACTS

Trade barriers imposed by the EU are more than just a technical issue. Lack of access to the European market - by far the richest in the world - slows development in the poorest countries of the world, condemns thousands of millions of people to poverty and kills many others. This paper quantifies, for the first time, the cost in human life to Africa of EU protectionism.

It is widely acknowledged that it was trade that enabled the "Asian Tiger" countries - Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, etc - to develop as manufacturing economies. Opening their economies to the rest of the world allowed them to attract the investment in physical and human capital that brought them comparative advantages in the manufacture of a widening range of products.

It could be the same story for the very poorest countries now. For one thing they tend to have advantages in agricultural or textile production.

For the most part, however, this option is not available. Four main countries or trading blocs - the European Union, the United States, Japan and Canada - account for 75 per cent of world output. They are the obvious destinations for exports from the poorest countries. Yet while these countries talk endlessly about the liberalisation of world trade, they have been ruthless in keeping their domestic markets closed to agricultural and textile exports from the poorest countries.

The worst of the rich protectionists, however - by far - is the European Union.

The EU runs two sets of protectionist policies that could be almost designed to wreck the trading chances of those of the poorest countries that have comparative advantages in food and textiles.

First, there are the trade restrictions. Though the EU has a low industrial tariff of five per cent, its agricultural tariffs are far higher. These average 20 per cent, but rise to a peak of 250 per cent on certain products. For example, the tariff on Bolivian chickens is 46 per cent, and on Bolivian orange juice 34 per cent. On textiles, there are strict quotas on most important lines. These have been reduced or removed in the case of fairly unimportant products such as parachutes and umbrellas. But the European market remains barely open to the majority of low cost textiles from the developing world.

Added to open trade barriers are the complex rules of origin applied to imports from the developing world. These stipulate how much of a product must be made from local inputs to qualify for the preferential tariffs. According to a report published by the Centre for European Policy Studies, only a third of imports from developing countries eligible for preferential access are able to meet the strict criteria to comply with the rules of origin.

Even if an exporter from the developing world is able to comply with these regulations, there are then the further regulations on health and safety. These have a protectionist effect, and that again may be their intention. For example, one regulation requires that milk should be taken from cows by machinery and not by hand. This effectively shuts out all Indian milk products, which would otherwise, admittedly, enter only at prohibitive tariffs of between 76 and 144 per cent. Again, complex rules on aflotoxins cost sub-Saharan Africa $1.3 billion every year in lost exports of cereals, dried fruits and nuts per European life allegedly saved thereby.

Second is the agricultural subsidy handed out by the EU under the rules of the Common Agricultural Policy. This amounts to $41 billion a year, or $14,000 per European Union farmer (though half the spending goes to the biggest 17 per cent of farming enterprises). The CAP subsidy affects agricultural producers in the developing world in three main ways:

1. It completes the effect of tariffs and other barriers in shutting them out of a market in which they would otherwise have a comparative advantage. For example, the EU spends Euros 2.7 billion each year on subsidising European farmers to grow sugar beet, while it maintains high tariff barriers against sugar imports from the developing world.

2. It generates immense surpluses of foodstuffs that cannot be sold within the EU at the prevailing intervention prices. Much of these surpluses are exported at very low prices that undercut those charged by the unsubsidised producers of the developing world. A prime case of this is sugar sales in the Middle East. Countries like Sudan are crowded out of the sugar market in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

3. Some of the surpluses are exported at subsidised prices to developing countries, thereby crowding out domestic producers. In Jamaica, some 3,000 dairy farmers are being driven out of business by imported milk powder from the EU. 5,500 metric tons are sent there each year at a cost to the European taxpayers of $3m. Many of the farmers are women.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Centre for the New Europe (CNE) is a pan-European policy research institute based in Brussels.


The First World countries must decide what it is they value first and formost, true free trade among nations, or protection of their national business interests. They cannot have it both ways. May the Third World stand strong in this regard.

Untill then the idea of "free trade" is, at best, an abstraction with no meaning, and at worst, a term of predatory economic hypocrisy.

This is a comment I posted last year after the September WTO meeting in Mexico.

On the WTO, Western Economic Imperialism and Predation; and Third World solidarity

As witnessed by the latest meeting of the WTO in Cancún, Mexico, the governments of Europe, Japan and the United States of America, the "G-3," merely pay lip service to the idea of "free trade." Like previous WTO meetings, there was no change in these countries' stance on agricultural subsidies, those that allow the flooding of world markets with artificially low priced produce at the expense of Third World farmers who are unable to compete in the artificial market.

The EU lead these countries in agricultural subsidies that total $41 billion dollars a year acording to a report published by the Center for the New Europe (CNE), "EU Trade Barriers Kill." It also imposes agricultural import tariffs between 20 and 250 percent. The U.S. of A's subsidies avarage $20 billion dollars annually ("Rethinking U.S. Agricultural Policy: Changing Course to Secure Farmer Livelihoods Worldwide," Daryll Ray, director of the University of Tennessee's Agricultural Policy Analysis Centre (APAC), co-author). Japan imposes a 500 percent tariff on imported rice according to Stephen Castle in his article "Rich nations on back foot as poor seek fairer trade," The Independent.

The The First World countries, in turn, demand unfettered foreign investment, and reduced import taxes--taxes placed on their selfsdame subsidized produce.

Their interests lie, not in "free markets," but in unilateral protectionism, and corporate control of developing countries' resources.

One positive aspect of the Cancún meeting was the increasing solidarity of the developing world countries, "G-21," twenty-one countries lead by Brazil, China and India. They refused to cave on the demands of the G-3. Cancún is regarded as a failure, with little or nothing having been achieved by either side.

"The main demand of the Group of 21 is that Europe and the United States end subsidies that allow agricultural producers to dump -- or sell below cost -- farm products into poorer countries and, in so doing, put local farmers out of business." writes Jane Bussey in her September 12 column in The Miami Herald "Nations dig in their heels at WTO face-off."

She goes on to quote Pedro Camago, the former agricultural trade negotiator for Brazil and an observer at these talks: ''We had to have a priority, which was agricultural dumping. Export dumping is difficult to defend. We have all the non-government organizations on our side -- both American and European.''

S. Lynne Walker, Copley News Service, in her September 16 article "Suicide underscored power shift in WTO" quotes John Cavanagh, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, "For the first time in over two decades, the most powerful poor countries have gotten together and taken a stand in their interests. They stood up to pressure that, in other times, they would not have been able to do. This may be a new era."

Walker's article refers to the protest suicide of South Korean farmer Kyung-hae Lee, who had lost his land after cheap, imported milk began pouring into South Korea.

"Lee stabbed himself in the heart as he sat atop a fence during a violent protest against the trade organization. He wore a sign saying, "WTO kills farmers" and led a crowd of 7,000 protesters in anti-trade chants before taking his life," she writes.

Exactly why I don't support protectionism. Why shouldn't we practice what we shoved down everyone elses throats for so long. Why should we give impoverished third world nations a chance to become more prosperous.

If we did, if these nations are allowed to have a booming middle class like India and China now do, we would have many more markets to sell our goods in as well. Everyone benefits from true market liberalization.

I'm not saying we should import from nations that refuse to pass laws against slavery, child labor, unhumanitarian work conditions and horridly poor salaries. But if we make it clear to nations that any government that adopts such laws would be free to sell its goods in America, I doubt any country would not do so.

This is one of the handful of things I disagree with democrats on. Stricter trade barriers is not the answer to job losses. Govt laws to make it cheaper to hire US workers (tax incentives, govt supplemented insurance plans, rewards to companies for manufacturing in the US) would ensure we don't lose jobs but would allow other nations to still compete with our markets.

bump, can anyone make an argument in favor of protectionism?

if not, why are democrats insisting on it, just like they refuse to do anything about frivilous law suits that cripple small business, force companies to layoff many workers, and insisted on leaving a ruthless tyrant that tortured and killed tens of thousands in power.

i liked it better when the democrats were in favor of policies that help us along with the rest of the world.

i still plan to vote for kerry btw. because i'm sick of bush giving the working class the finger, balooning the defecit, and pissing all over the constitution.

Let's take a hypothetical here.

Let's say we arrived in the Middle East about half a century ago, seeking to buy oil for our machines, our factories, our transportation systems, our heat and light, and oh so much more that benefits all Americans from sea to shining sea.

Now let's say we conducted business deals in such a way that made it an imperative that any sales that happen that are benefitting Americans so much must by law benefit the people of the Middle East as well. The current system in Alaska exemplifies this equal benefits in doing business.

Let's say that was the law from the word go. If it was, do you think we'd be having trouble with Middle Eastern terrorists right now?

Free trade is a misnomer. The governments we do business with are benefitting mightily, while the people under their rule remain locked in squalid poverty for the most part. The richer we make these governments, the more oppressive they become. The current trade system is creating the poverty and the terrorism, not ending it. To call it free trade is a travesty. A people, not a government, need to benefit equally from trade, not just the business owners or the governments. We trade today with total disregard as to how it impacts those we are doing trade with, and we look the other way so long as we profit from it. This business lacking moral considerations or social obligations is what is creating all the problems the world faces today.

The simple rule of share and share alike is not the way we do business.

We are going to be very sorry about all this much sooner than later. You can't globalize without a middle consuming class spreading all over the planet, and it isn't spreading all over the planet. The Indians and Chinese are working for peanuts, not emerging into middle classes. How can you have an expansionary capitalistic system based predominately on consumption when most of the planet remains locked in poverty and is unable to consume? We can't keep stockpiling production and hope that someday people will be able to buy it when those making the profits could care less if the poor live or die. If we want a global economy, we have to invest in it. That means less profits now to ultimately make greater profits later.

But business investing in itself instead of raking fantastic wealth out of the system? We might as well still be in the Middle Ages for all the push there is to truly open up the planet so that all may participate.

So be it. If you refuse to grow up and act like an adult, you don't deserve the comforts, securities, and independence that comes from acting responsibly.

Down we go, and no one is even concerned enough to even try to stop it. Chinese sweatshops are our future, not a prosperous and open world.

Yes, we would be having problems in the Middle East right now. This is EXACTLY the sort of nonsense that breeds resentment and terrorism.

Who the hell are we to create laws that impose our view of how a soverign nation should organize their internal affairs? If another nation creates their system of government and laws what they do internally is 100% THEIR business - not ours.

But your basic premise here falls apart on many other levels as well. What do the people of AK get as a result of the oil pipeline? Some reduced state taxes and an annual check for a few thousand $$. Look at what the people of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other mid-east nations get - Free health care, free education, a government paid dowry when they marry, free housing, etc.. The claim that the people of the mid-east haven't benefited from the oil trade is 100% BS.

But are you going to deny that the governments there have benfitted mightily in comparison? I don't see suburbia planted all over the Middle East when we get images at all. I see peasants. And if they are benefitting so mightily, why are they not the leading universities and cultural centers of the world like we are? The dichotomy is what I am talking about. The fantastic wealth is not really trickling down to the people in the Middle East. It never has. THAT is what the problem is. Hell, it's a problem in THIS country too.

Anything-Goes-Business is THE problem. Why is it people refuse to consider that business has moral imperatives behind it? People see no problem with environmental considerations behind business, and business fights that mightily.

It only makes sense. And the USSR is the perfect example. They STRIPPED their resources to try and win the Cold War, and look where it left them.

Saddam is another perfect example. Look at his lavish palaces, then look at the state of the people around them.

Hell, look at DC. Nice town, surrounded by ghettos. Same thing for the Vatican.

This all stems from business controlled by an elite minority that sees no obligations whatsoever to the people they do business with.

Profits can and must be made by ALL involved, not just the Owners.

Call it bull all you want. History has tons of examples of what happens when an elite minority calls the shots.

The world needs an Economic Bill of Rights as much as a Social Bill of Rights. The sooner we realize this, the better off we all will be.

Private wealth is a very old, and very archaic economic system that has done nothing but flop time after time, over thousands of years. You would think by now we would at least be getting suspicious that maybe our systems have flaws in them that ultimately cause us all to fall down.

Capitalism with a consciousness, however, is decried as communism and socialism, and it gets trashed as heretical and anti-American.

But is it?

If our system is so great, then why are we being slowly engulfed by problems? Why can't anyone find the solutions? And the longer we stand still on this issue, don't you think the bigger the problems are going to get? And where is the upper limit, when the system just doesn't function anymore and the whole thing collapses?

Capitalism is complete, whole, true, accurate and utterly dependable even though it is an economic system that was born over 200 years ago? Nothing left to develop? No quirks to be fixed? Absolute economic reality grounded in reality with no flaws whatsoever?

I think not. If our system was so great, so modern, and so successful, why hasn't it spread across the entire planet? Why isn't Earth one big middle class now, ever growing, ever expanding, opening up newer and bigger and better markets like it must to survive? Why are people blowing things up if everything was so great? Why is most of the world still trapped in poverty?

America has stopped evolving, and that is America's death sentence.

Maybe you need a better source for your viewing then? Try a Google Image search on "Jiddah", "Mecca", "Kuwait City", "Samara" or "Esfahan". There are thousands of middle-class, suburban neighborhoods across the Middle East.



Exactly what moral imperative overrides the moral imperative to operate within the confines of the laws that the people of each of the countries on the planet create within their own nations?

Why is it that people refuse to consider that free trade has moral imperatives behind it? When does the right of externally imposed "benefit" supercede the right of self determination?

OK, let's try it this way.

We blast China about its human rights abuses and threaten economic consequences if they do not knock it off.

Well, we used to...

Again, isn't doing business with dictators that turn around and fund terrorists kind of saying we should in fact be certain that the people we do business with are worthy of getting wealthy off our transactions? And conversely, are we so greedy and petulant that any business goes even if it is feeding our enemies? So what? So long as we profit from it?

We give money to charities based on the assumption that charitable work will result.

Why should business be any different?

The way things are, charities are under attack now because we found out they were funnelling money to terrorists. According to the business no matter what the consequences, we shouldn't be lifting a finger against the charities. But we are, because the transaction is creating enemies, not charity. So we turned a blind eye all this time in the name of business, and now we are attacking those who aren't playing the business game so that it continues to benefit us. Who suffers? Those getting the charity.

Yeah, we have all the answers all right. You should really bang your head against the bars once in a while to remind yourself you put yourself in a cage of your own making.

fishin', I think a breakdown of wealth per capita, based on city dwellers, and non-city dwellers in the Middle East will reveal a HUGE gap between those who have plenty and those who have damn little. Showing a few cities does not a region make. The brochures don't portray the ghettos either, for that matter.

Shame on you to post such shoddy evidence and call it complete. And Palestine is the perfect example. If they were all middle class and comfy like we are in the US, how come they are willing to blow themselves up to put an end to all that comfort? Are you willing to die so that you can continue living in the middle class, or are you not more complacent and uncaring what goes on outside your little orbit?

And while your avatar does not really show the RIFLE it is holding on a window sill, I for one know it at least was there before you cut back on the pic, and as a symbolic representation for a moderator, it really is a rather poor one. What kind of moderator displays himself as a cute little assassin wannabe?

When does the right of externally imposed "benefit" supercede the right of self determination?

Umbagog - Can you produce a single document or statement from any terrorist organization that links terrorism directly to the way the oil business is run? I am unaware of any such statement or document, but perhaps you know of some factual basis for your argument of which I am unaware?

Thanks in advance for any citation you can offer to support your position.

And this comment shows the true depth and quality of your thinking. First of all, it isn't a rifle. It's a handgun - a revolver at that. Secondly, I didn't have to cut anything. I used it just the way I found it. Thirdly, yes, it is a symoblic representation - a representation of the sort of nonsensical garbage (such as your comments here) the Moderators put up with on a daily basis.

You can't refute the points so you resort to attacking an Avatar? Apparently even you recognize the thin ice your position skates on...

And shame on you for fabricating statments that were never made. You can't win your point without lying? Where did I say that there were no poor in the middle east? Where did I say anything was complete?

YOU were the one that asserted that you never see any surburban neighborhoods in the middle east. I provided directions on how you could easily find depictions of several. If your knowledge of geography is so incomplete that you can't think of names of other cites to type into Google who's fault is that?

Umbagog - You don't seem to be a big fan of facts.