Mr. President, Bring Jobs Back Home

May 16, 2011 By 3 Comments

Tom W. Pauken, FloydReports.com

Were I to have a moment with President Obama as he visits El Paso and Austin this week, my message would be simple: Bring jobs home to America.

The citizens of El Paso could be especially instructive in this regard. They’re first-hand witnesses to the jobless “recovery” as well as the almost total collapse of manufacturing that’s taken place in our nation over the last decade. As home to the border port with the largest amount of Mexican-American trade, El Paso is at the crossroads of a trade deficit that is the direct result of a flood of manufacturing jobs that have left America for other countries.

A story appearing in Tuesday’s El Paso Times states that in the first two months of this year, Mexico has imported $1.1 billion more into America than America has exported into Mexico. Over the course of a year, that adds up to a $6.6 billion trade deficit with our neighbor to the south. Compounding the problem, according to the article in the El Paso Times, is that even though U.S. exports to Mexico have increased over the last two years, there has been almost no accompanying increase in new jobs in the U.S. Meanwhile, Mexico enjoys a 16 percent….

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The 20-year Sellout of the American Worker

May 12, 2011 By 4 Comments

Tom Gibson, FloydReports.com

Most nations try to avoid running trade deficits because those that do lose jobs.

Why, then, for the last 20 years has the United States run a persistent, growing deficit that has destroyed more than 9 million jobs?

The story begins when President Bill Clinton, promising expanding markets and more jobs, pushed our country into the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992 and the World Trade Organization in 1995.

After that, the power to make decisions on trade and employment began to shift dramatically to the multinational companies and to our political leaders in Washington whose influence they were able to buy.

The primary interest of the multinationals is in the success of their own enterprises rather than that of a particular country, even their host country.

So because NAFTA and the WTO abolished U.S. trade laws and tariffs that had been put in place over the years to insure we didn’t import more than we exported, the multinationals were free to begin their long and steady effort to move their manufacturing to the countries with the lowest wages.

The great “sucking” sound, predicted by Ross Perot in his attack on NAFTA during the 1992 presidential campaign, began to be heard across our country as factories were abandoned and jobs sucked out….

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How to Bring Manufacturing Jobs Back to the U.S.

April 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tom W. Pauken, FloydReports.com

A front page story in Sunday’s Des Moines Register addresses the closing of the Electrolux plant in Webster City and the loss of 850 manufacturing jobs which will be moved to Juarez, Mexico. As the article points out, “the four counties in the Webster City area…have experienced a 32.1% drop in manufacturing jobs” since 2000. That mirrors what’s taken place across the U.S. which has lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs during the same period of time. That’s more than 5.6 million good American jobs that have been shipped overseas, outsourced, or simply gone away.

In the words of the late German economist Kurt Richebacher, “Essentially all (U.S.) jobs losses are high-wage manufacturing, and most gains are in low-wage services. In essence the U.S. economy is restructuring downward, while the Chinese economy is restructuring upward.”

This hollowing out of our manufacturing base also results in the United States running massive trade deficits with our trading competitors. We currently have trade deficits with 90 nations. In fact, our manufacturing trade deficit from 2000 to 2008 was $5.4 trillion.

A major cause for this decline is that the United States has the most onerous business tax system in the world….

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Obama Tells India, U.S. Decline is “Healthy,” and Permanent

November 9, 2010 By 9 Comments

The Times of India

Implicitly acknowledging the decline of American dominance, Barack Obama on Sunday said the US was no longer in a position to “meet the rest of the world economically on our terms.”

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Mumbai, he said, “I do think that one of the challenges that we are going face in the US, at a time when we are still recovering from the financial crisis is, how do we respond to some of the challenges of globalisation? The fact of the matter is that for most of my lifetime and I’ll turn 50 next year – the US was such an enormously dominant economic power, we were such a large market, our industry, our technology, our manufacturing was so significant that we always met the rest of the world economically on our terms. And now because of the incredible rise of India and China and Brazil and other countries, the US remains the largest economy and the largest market, but there is real competition.”

“This will keep America on its toes. America is going to have to compete. There is going to be a tug-of-war within the US between those who see globalisation as a threat and those who accept we live in a open integrated world, which has challenges and opportunities.”

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