The bald facts are that Sec. Clinton lied about her support for the TPP. On November 5, 2012 Sec. Clinton said:
This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.
She did not say that she hoped it would as she claimed. She said that it did.
Donald Trump lied, too, when he said that he will bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States. That horse has already left the barn. It is beyond his or anyone else’s power. Our efforts would be better directed to mitigating the effects that our poorly-constructed trade agreements of the past have wrought on ordinary Americans.
The plain truth is that today’s trade agreements are less about free trade than about picking winners and losers. Too long have a privileged, connected handful been anointed the winners while most Americans were made the losers. That has to stop. Economic winners must start bearing more of the costs for remediating the harm done to those who have been who lose due to our trade agreements. Too long have our trading partners become prosperous by manipulating their currencies, exploiting the openness of our markets, and imposing backdoor tariffs on our goods and services. That has to stop. Too long have our trading partners allowed unhealthy and unsafe conditions for their own workers to prevail and polluted the environment in the interest of exporting their manufactured goods to the United States at low prices, undermining American manufacturing. That has to stop.
I am grateful to President Obama for his efforts in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and I am committed to expanding our relationship with our neighbors on the Pacific Rim. I believe, however, that the agreement is flawed and will return to the bargaining table to renegotiate the agreement along the lines I’ve suggested.
The “fast track authority” that some have sought to approve the TPP is nothing more than letting the president go over the heads of the American people to adopt trade agreements they don’t like. There’s another alternative to that: adopt trade agreements they do like.
The issues of trade and immigration are inextricably intertwined. No country is more accepting of new immigrants than the United States, a quality we have had for our entire history. Today there are six times as many immigrants in the United States as there were when our immigration policy was liberalized in the 1960s and as many as a percentage of total population as at any time in our history. Frankly, the American people need some time to adapt. We need to strike a better balance among restricting immigration, enforcing our laws, getting the workers that American industry needs, and providing a haven for those fleeing persecution. To that end we will fully implement and enforce a program of workplace enforcement. It will be fully funded by a surtax on companies that employ immigrants and foreign workers. The surtax will be borne by the federal government in the case of refugees, who will receive thorough screening prior to their admission into the United States.
Glancing back at the transcript, when Trump was asked about bringing back manufacturing jobs to America, Trump responded that the first step was to stop them from leaving, and his solution appears to be to end the tax incentives for relocating to other countries. His example was the effect of different tax treatments (VAT vs. income) btw/ the U.S. and Mexico.
I think he has a point, and I think the build up of multinationals along both sides of the Rio Grande where stuff is made on one side and assembled on the other is a tax avoidance scheme against both countries.
A point, meaning extrapolated meaning from a series of incomplete sentences and complaints of job theft.
… bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States. That horse has already left the barn. …
That is a load of horse shit. The US should be the leading manufacturing country by an order of magnitude (possibly two). At no time in history has a more advanced country prospered by devolving its manufacturing processes.
The logical conclusion of this nonsense is that the Industrial Revolution was a fluke, and the time and money would have been better spent finding cheaper manual labor. Please somebody with their much vaunted explain this nonsense to me.
Let a simpleton explain how this works. Advanced technology and cheaper energy allow mechanical labor to replace manual labor. This provides goods and services that are cheaper and more reliable because machines and robots are able to do repetitive work much better than humans. For the investor, the machine and robot is better because it is never late, it has no OSHA requirements, there is no FICA overhead, and when they are replaced by a newer model, nobody complains.
Goods produced in the US do not require the additional transportation costs. They do not require the additional overhead associated with working within another country and culture (including bribery no matter how it is itemized).
The way to end the manufacturing problem is to switch to a hard currency tomorrow or a semi-hard currency. When investors suddenly have to start investing real money, things will change, and that change will occur quickly.
The only jobs that Americans do not want to do are migratory work and underpaid work, and in an unrigged system, both would fix themselves. Machinery, technology, and ingenuity can solve almost any problem, and the US and Americans have the world’s largest supply, by an order of magnitude (or more).
The more people that are thrown out of work because of mechanization means that there are more workers for new mechanized manufacturing and service jobs. In this system, there will be some people who cannot make it, but they would be a small enough group to be manageable.
For a bonus question, can somebody explain why Germany is not affected by cheap foreign labor. Socialist Germany should be in the breadline instead of putting the rest of Europe out of work. How does this work?