Best stimulus: fair trade

[WhiskeyGirl]

Best stimulus: fair trade

We're buying imports with borrowed cash. We must make things again

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
Thursday, February 12, 2009

"One of the concerns that I have is that we'll probably end up borrowing this $150 billion from the Chinese. And when we get those rebate checks, most people are going to go out and buy stuff that's been imported from China. I have to wonder whose economy is going to be stimulated the most by the package."

The fact is, unless America revitalizes its ability to make things, all we'll be doing is moving money around.

Increasingly, that money is moving offshore.

The federal government this week said America had a $677 billion trade deficit in 2008. That means that $677 billion left this country and did not come back.

Since 2001, our trade deficit in manufactured goods has exceeded a jaw-dropping $3.6 trillion. Not surprisingly, we've lost 4.4 million middle-class manufacturing jobs in that time.

So the question remains: Why is America getting its rear end handed to it in the realm of trade?

Answer: We're being played for suckers in our trade policies and tax laws. They have carved out a sharply uneven playing field for American companies and workers. American workers are competing against those in other nations earning far less per hour, and yet our laws and treaties only encourage American companies to move offshore.

Instead, trade needs to be expanded -- and it needs to be made fairer. We never agreed with the Bush administration's worshiping at the altar of free trade, and said so often; we think the answer is fair trade.

We urge the Obama administration to fix our trade policies as soon as possible. The American worker can compete with anyone in the world, if he doesn't have his arm tied behind his back.

Bringing sanity to our trade policies, and inspiring a manufacturing renaissance in America, would be the best and longest-lasting stimulus we can think of.

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2009/02/12/edi_511061.shtml

Is "Free Trade" a tired old political argument?  What happened to change?  Change to make trade work for All Americans...

[WhiskeyGirl]

The great good of Fair Trade
 
Maria Lopez, 34, lost her husband, a coastal fisherman, in a terrible storm a few years ago. With four children and no income she was destitute and reduced to begging to hold-off starvation. But with a small loan from the Preda Fair-Trade project, she bought an old model mobile phone and established the first telephone service in her remote fishing village. The customers were queuing up outside her house to send text messages and call relatives. Soon she couldn’t cope and bought another cellphone with the earnings and her business grew and thrived. All from a small loan which she soon repaid.

I'm thinking 'fair trade' doesn't provide just a competition for a single job, it creates an opportunity to sustain a family.  Fair trade provides opportunity to many, not just competition for scarce jobs.

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2009/feb/15/yehey/opinion/20090215opi6.html
 
jmho