Hu Jintao, the President of the illegitimate Chinese mainland “government”, is visiting the US today.
At these meetings, US corporations are supposed to be talking with Jintao about “access problems” of getting their products into the Chinese markets. Meanwhile, nothing is going to be mentioned of China’s human rights abuses, spying, and constant theft of just about anything they can get their hands on.
I’m pretty sure there will also be no mention of the myriad crappily made, dangerous, poisonous (also here and here products that constantly flood into the US, as well as the various knock-offs and product fakes that flood our shores every year.
In an era when the US still had some trade barriers to work with, we lauded the “opening” of Chinese trade paved by on Richard Milhouse Nixon. Since then, however, the rush of “global free trade” has shown what a mockery “free trade” really is; completely unfair trade in which dangerous products regularly are sent around, in which products can be made in factories where workers are driven to suicide with shocking regularity, paid slave wages, have no safety, no protections, and no environmental protection whatsoever.
By all rights, we should be sticking up tariffs on Chinese goods until they learn to behave themselves like civilized people as far as worker protections and environmental protections go. This is doubly so when considering they are a communist nation which pays lip service to the “worker” constantly. Instead, for the past couple decades our government have been committing the error of handing a despotic communist dictatorship economic trade incentives in exchange for their turning around and dropping trou at us in UN security council meetings, and this week they’re going to compount the mistake by kissing the ass of a despotic criminal named Hu Jintao. Yeah, I’m a little sickened.
About the Author
5 Responses to Rant: Major Disappointment
Leave a Reply
please enter your email address on this page.
Coincidentally enough, I’ve been listening to Tom Clancy’s The Bear and The Dragon, which (I think, I haven’t gotten there yet in the plot and don’t read the synopsis) involves a war between the US and China originating with, among other things, trade policy.
ITA, 100 percent. Slap some tariffs on them boyz now! The US is a nation, with real people in it, not some freakin’ giant consumer “market.”
How is China’s current government less “legitimate” than any of China’s previous governments?
As for the trade issue, I tried to stir up a good debate between economists Ian Fletcher, who advocates what he calls “rational protectionism” (i.e., mostly free trade, but with restrictions or tariffs when these would make us better off) and Mark Perry, who is a dogmatic free trader, on Mark Perry’s blog the Sunday before last. Fletcher just popped over, noted Perry’s reductio argument, as I had before, dismissed it, and left. I stuck around for a while debating Perry and his commenters in that thread, if you’d like to check it out.
Oh, the communist thing is a figleaf for a capitalist nation now, just not one that allows any freedom. It’s been quite successful before, in Nazi Germany, and the Chinese aren’t nearly as diplomatically retarded as Hitler and GmbH. They’re not going to simultaneously start wars with the USA and India, they’re just going to keep using cheap currency and cheap manufacturing to overtake us and become the new world hegemon.
Even during the cold war ‘communist’ just meant ‘puppet of the Soviet Empire’ most of the time.
The people who did the best for the worker were the democratic Scandinavians. Gee, maybe that’s because the workers actually had some say?
I stuck around for a while debating Perry and his commenters in that thread, if you’d like to check it out.
The free trade fanatics are economic reductionists, nothing matters to them but dollars and cents. Arguing with them is pointless because they do not factor in anything else into the equation. Good points about the global monetary authority.
Pat Buchanan was warning years ago that “free trade” would result in loss of national sovreignty and here we are. The Euros voted ONCE for the EU, back in the 1970s, when they thought they were voting for a common trading bloc and that was it. They were never allowed to vote again. Now they find themselves becoming The United States of Europe with all laws made in Brussels.
Scary stuff.