Free trade. Why don’t we call a spade a spade?

[FreakinDJ]

From American Machinst magazine

Free trade. Why don’t we call a spade a spade?

Free trade. Why don’t we call a spade a spade?
We should rename ‘free trade’. Because it isn’t free and it isn’t fair. Since it’s trade that’s regulated in favor of multinational special interest groups, why don’t we call it for what it is: How about ‘rigged market trade’ or ‘turn your back on your fellow countrymen trade’ or ‘throw American workers out on the street trade’. Why are we so afraid to call a spade a spade? There are 36,000 fewer US factories than there were eight years ago. One in five manufacturing jobs has been lost, nationally, in the last ten years. And counting. What’s wrong with calling it ‘throw American workers out on the street trade’?

If we don’t stem the tide of multinationalism through trade law reform, then of about 140 million US jobs, between 42 and 56 million of them could be moved off-shore within 20 years: all 14 million current jobs in manufacturing and 28 million jobs in the service sector. We’ll be left without any manufacturing at all, which is at the core of our country’s national security.

Members of our association, The Tooling, Manufacturing  Technologies Association (TMTA) wonder if things will change in time. They know that most of their woes emanate from disastrous trade laws that have been written in Washington DC. Our members wonder if elected officials even care. It’s clear that these elected officials trail their constituents on the critical issues of trade reform. What it boils down to is that government, at large, is unresponsive to what the electorate wants. How long can this go on?

http://americanmachinist.com/304/Issue/Article/False/78226/Issue

His choice of words in the title are a little lacking to say the least, but the rest of the message is spot on for the current economic crisis the country is facing

[havocmom]

1. NAFTA the gift that keeps on taking.

Hate to admit it, but Ross Perot did have some valid points about trade agreements.

[OKthatsIT]

8. TEXANS FIGHT BACK!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2842900

Proposal in Texas for a Public-Private Toll Road System Raises an Outcry
Source: New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: February 10, 2008

[Romulox]

2. Good luck with this. LOTS of cheap labor democrats round here. nt

[amandabeech]

4. No kidding, My ignore list is full of them.

There are lots of them in the party, too, and they have the money.

There really isn't much of a place to go for economic Dems, anymore.

I'm a Western Michigan ex-pat, by the way. I'd love to return home to be closer to aging relatives, but you know the story.

[HughBeaumont]

7. Anyone who supports free trade and job offshoring gets instantly FLUSHED.

Neither are progressive positions nor are they sound economic practices that benefit anyone except the extremely wealthy.

[eridani]

13. Including the two remaining presidential candidates

Granted, they've moved more in our direction, but that was only because of Kucinich and Edwards.

[Romulox]

3. And btw, what's wrong with the title??? nt

[Buns_of_Fire]

9. My guess would be that it includes the word "spade"

See what The Phrase Finder has to say about it...

[brentspeak]

5. I call it class warfare -- war on the working and middle classes

[FreakinDJ]

6. DING - DING - DING We have a winner

Couldn't have said it better

and the question of the day is - What is the outcome of Capitolism run rough shot over a given society?

[TahitiNut]

10. It's "protectionism."

Instead of protecting all the people, including the working class, the laws have been rigged to protect the ownership class preferentially, with a corrupt system of entitlements. The Top 1%. The "have's and the have-more's." Our immigration laws have been rigged to create a system of Trafficking In Human Labor. Our trade laws have facilitated Trafficking In Human Labor. When a 'product' is created, it embodies human labor. Shipping it from one place to another is trafficking. The only "fair" trade is Win-Win ... where the working class in one place exchanges the products of their labor with the working class in another place. When that Win-Win is corrupted and becomes a Lose-Lose ... where the "owners" of that labor (whether they be totalitarian governments or totalitarian capitalists) achieve a narrow benefit at the cost of an enormous burden on the working class, we have corruption on a global scale. Empire. Colonialism. A Global Gulag.

[eridani]

11. Just love how they use that term, don't you?

Protecting intellectual property is not "protectionism," but protecting the jobs of the people who create it is. Go figure.

[eridani]

12. Or, we could join the DLC and call it--

--a leveraged tactile feedback geomass delivery system.

[JosephSchmo]

14. if you think free trade is bad

try only buying things made in your city, and then only working for people who live in your city. You'll make no money and you will have nothing to buy.

[brentspeak]

16. Hint: We're not talking about real free-trade

We're talking about free-trade deals, which (to take one important example) resulted in unlimited crap Chinese imports flooding into the United States, but huge tariffs placed on American goods shipped to China. We're talking about one side playing fair (American factories, with workers protected by safety laws, reasonable maximum hours-per-week loads, and the right to organize) and the other side playing slave-driver (Chinese factories, with workers slaving away 16+ hours/day, children slaving away, no safety laws, no right to organize, 50 cents/hour). That's not "free trade", with a free-exchange of goods between two parties who agree on a fair set of rules; that's a rigged, lopsided employment practice designed to exploit the desperation of one group of laborers (the Chinese) while simultaneously undermining the livelihoods of a previously-established and productive group of laborers (Americans).

Does that clarify the situation for you?

[scarletwoman]

15. Yes, he's spot on. Thanks for posting this! Rec'd (nt)