Free Trade Is Not Fair Trade

Free trade has been a cornerstone of American international economic policy for the last 50 years. But is it really free trade when one side opens its markets and the other side keeps its markets closed?  Almost 20 years ago America faced a protectionist Japan which claimed to be a free trading country.

Today we face an even greater foe in a former communist, current dictatorship that is willing to do anything to acquire product market share at our expense - China. China represents a much greater challenge then anything we've faced before. Since China is not a democracy it's government does not respond to its citizens complaints the same as a democratic country. China controls it currency at an artificially low level with respect to the dollar which gives Chinese manufacturers an advantage by making their products cheaper on the international market when compared to US manufacturers. The end result is that Chinese citizens are paid less then they are worth on the open international market and thus live poorer lives while Americans suffer through job losses because Chinese manufacturers can produce products cheaper than American manufacturers can ever imagine. China's citizens are the slaves of the world and the American worker is paying for it.

Add to the previous facts that Chinese manufacturers don't pay social security, Federal or State unemployment taxes, nor taxes to cover a military industrial complex that eats 1 trillion dollars (1,000 billion or 1 million million dollars!) yearly, or absorb the costs associated with the release of toxic agents into the environment and a not so pretty picture is painted of a US supported totalitarianistic system that American workers can never compete against. The cards are stacked against American workers and American jobs while American politicians foam at the mouth about how Americans are fat, lazy, stupid, and uncompetitive compared with the nimble, smart, hard working Chinese companies and workers. The fact that Chinese manufacturers don't incur these costs represents in essence a tax that makes US manufactured goods substantially more expensive than Chinese made goods even if we could transplant Chinese workers here and pay them the average Chinese wage of $0.57 per hour. In other words, our government policies make us less competitive no matter what the average American worker concedes in wages and benefits.

So what do we do about this? Let our industries pollute our waterways and air all in the name of international competitiveness? Kill off social security and our unemployment safety net so we can compete with the Chinese? My vote is no; however, we don't need to give foreign countries unfettered access to our markets. We can regulate who has access and how much it is going to cost them to have access to our markets. We need to raise tariffs especially on Chinese goods equal to the amount of money that our own domestic manufacturers must pay in order to play in their own backyards (i.e. our US market). The playing field must be level and fair; that is all that Americans must insist upon.

If we ever try to implement protectionist policies for domestic manufacturers you can be sure that politicians will rail against these anti free market forces and that in response, countries like China, Malaysia, & Taiwan will erect trade barriers of their own and cost US export jobs. We just have to keep in mind that we buy much more from the world then we sell to it; the net effect would be that the loss of export jobs would more than made up with new jobs created by domestic manufacturing. Countries like China would have no choice but to work with us to address our valid grievances or risk losing their best customer. Americans need to decide if Walmart and General Electric run our country or if we do.