Major Corporations moved off shore... abandoning the US because they can make significantly greater profit by manufacturing in the third world ... than in the US. It's all about profit, whether those profits are increased by avoiding union wages, OSHA and EPA regulations or taxes... It all boils down to a better bottom line... Profit.
Before, the US engaged Free Trade Policy.... the global corporations were unable to move off shore due to tariffs and imposts which took the profit out of leaving the US. Before the current Free Trade frenzy, the middle class grew and US markets expanded, as the middle class grew prosperous. Tariffs and Imposts protected our consumer driven markets from exploitation by global markets and those corporations looking to exploit the third world.. taking advantage of their low wages, limited taxes and the lack of regulatory oversight by third world governments.
However, the introduction of Free Trade resulted in... a steady and accelerating decline in US Heavy and Light Industry, good paying manufacturing jobs were exchanged for low paying service jobs and finally no jobs at all. As the middle class and their wages stagnated and then declined in real dollars, the US declined and is now imploding. Our economy is based on consumption and when the consumer doesn't have the disposable income to generate sufficient consumption... all sorts of economic troubles begin. These economic woes compound and with time become exponential in their acceleration... our economy is imploding today as a result of what Ross Perot once said... NAFTA will generate a great sucking sound as our jobs go South. Today we have world wide NAFTA policies... and the jobs needed to produce a viable middle class are being sucked out of America by third world wages... and world market disparities
US Free Trade policy ... has worked to enrich Globalist Corporations (business able to engage world markets), bankrupted small to medium sized businesses (unable to engage world markets) and is rapidly destroying the middle class. Many former members of the middle class are now unemployed or underemployed. In the beginning days of US Free Trade Policy, wages stagnated, then declined, and are now disappearing entirely; as both, manufacturing and service sector jobs disappear... so is a once vibrant and growing US economy.
Want to restore jobs in America... restore tariffs and imposts, end US 'Free Trade' policy. Free Trade brought with it capital and industry flight, the destruction of good paying jobs, a shrinking middle class and the end to vibrant and expanding US markets. Free Trade Policy encouraged major corporations to leave America; taking their manufacture jobs where wages are .12cent an hour, while permitting them to sell those goods in the US for windfall profits.
Free Trade Policy is collapsing from within and coming to an end... America's middle class is rapidly becoming the NEW POOR and our consumer economy is rapidly imploding. Soon Free Traders will find the market in America can not afford their goods produced in the third world... nor will the third world be able to purchase them. The .12cent an hour wages paid in Bangladesh by a Global Corporation to its employees will certainly not generate the disposable income to purchase the clothes they manufacture.
Free Trade as we know it... is about to come crashing down. The greed and avarice of big capital is about to find that the US worker and his counterpart in their factory don't have the disposable income to keep the world's economy healthy and expanding. America's economy is bumping along only because the US Government has dumped TRILLIONS of dollars into it through its Welfare programs and those industries associated with those programs, barely keeping the economy afloat. When the government is no longer able to keep up these historic rates of spending; then, the economy will crash without any government remedy.
Comments
Free Trade the doors too exploitation and the destruction of the middle class. Want jobs, a thriving economy... industry is the engine of wealth... not McDonalds. Bring back heavy and light industry with good paying jobs... raise tariffs and imposts on imports to offset the disparities in world markets.