Has Obama assumed the position of salesman-in-chief to China?

[Enrique]

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/20/has_obama_assumed_the_position_of

What do the heads of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Motorola, General Electric, Boeing and the Carlyle Group have in common? They all attended last night’s State Dinner with President Hu Jintao. Earlier the White House announced $45 billion in new trade deals with China, including a $19 billion deal with Boeing and a package with GE expected to generate more $2 billion in U.S. exports. Some economists say the deals will hurt U.S. efforts to end the jobless Great Recession. "President Obama has assumed the position of salesman-in-chief for companies like Boeing and General Electric who are actually engaged, along with many other multinational businesses, primarily in outsourcing U.S. jobs to China," says guest Robert Scott, senior international economist with the Economic Policy Institute.

(video at link to Amy Goodman's panel discussion about this)

[Sheepshank]

1. Unrec

stoopid assumptions in the article "Some economists say the deals will hurt U.S". Some economists may vehemently disagree with this statement.

[obxhead]

2. Clearly outsourcing has been a great benefit to America and its

workers.

Counter your unrec.

[Sheepshank]

3. You are making the assumption that trade deals = 100% outsourcing?

wrong.

[mkultra]

4. Article clearly states deals increase US exports

counter your counter for lack of reading comprehension

[obxhead]

5. It says exports, but does not say what kind of export.

We have come to a time where intellectual property is considered an export. Exporting of this "good" does not create jobs in any kind of meaningful scale within the US.

I guess you missed this part of the article as well:

ROBERT SCOTT: Yes. Well, let me respond first to, I think, a misperception that Professor Blecher, I think, promoted a moment ago about productivity growth. United States has had productivity growth for generations. That’s not the cause of job loss. For example, during President Clinton’s term, we had created 23 million jobs. We had stable manufacturing employment. The problem really started in 2000. Since then, we’ve lost six million manufacturing jobs. We had essentially the same rates of productivity growth in the ’90s as we did in the last decade, and yet in the last decade we lost six million manufacturing jobs. And that—the entire reason for that is largely due to the growth of imports, and China is the largest source of the growth in those imports.

Now, in terms of these deals that were cut and announced yesterday, they were actually cut a year or two ago. These deals had been announced several years ago. This is just a formal government approval of the sale of these 200 jets by Boeing to the Chinese airlines. And these sales are going to be accumulated over the next decade or so. They’re going to be a drop in the bucket compared to the growth in imports from China, which have surged enormously just in the past year, as I mentioned earlier.

I’m also very concerned about the GE deal. GE is essentially giving away its technological keys to the kingdom in exchange for a few short-term sales. They’ve set up a joint venture with a Chinese company. They throw in $200 million and their most advanced avionics technology to their Chinese partner, who pays them handsomely for it, who puts in $700 billion, and in return they’re going to get some sales to Chinese aircraft manufacturers, which many other companies have been competing for. But there’s a pattern here. What happens is that the Chinese joint venture partners tend to suck the technology out of their foreign partners, and then they kick them aside in a few years. So, GE says this deal is good for 50 years; I can almost guarantee you that the deal will end in just a few years. And as a result, GE will find that it’s no longer in the business of making avionics equipment. That business will have shifted to this Chinese company. And that’s the problem we run into.


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So, yes, we get to export a few billion in goods. We also export the technology so China can build that good themselves afterwards at a cost of a permanent job loss.

But hey, it's a win for the short term!

[mkultra]

6. Actually, like i said, it states tangable exports of goods

Even by GE. Yes, theft of high end technology is always a risk when you sell products to another country, especially one like china. We are the leading world manufacturer of tangle goods with China coming in right behind us. The difference is that China is almost all retail while we are high end goods oriented. They know that the low end retail manufacturing sector is going to hit a wall eventually and they are scratching around for anything they can get. Transfer of technology was not part of the deal. It is simply a risk. The net result is that he increased US exports of tangible goods to china which increase employment.