The out-of-touch NYT Editorial on trade, which I commented upon in a prior blog entry, generated some email commentary from "fly over country" in middle America.
Here is one email.
They just don’t care. After all they live in a river of money and these are just numbers. They forgot that these numbers represent people’s lives and that people suffer – unlike numbers. They have no idea what is happening in “fly over” country. They haven’t driven through small town America to see the devastation of their policies. I am convinced the bigger the market/city – the less aware people are of this problem. This is why people in Colorado Springs are more aware of the problem and willing to join the fight and some folks in Denver are still saying that it is good to “thin the herd”. These Wall Street economists need to visit small town America and find out how the other half are doing. The author implies that one job is as good as another and a reduction in pay (life style) is a minor adjustment. Tell that to the Tool and Die maker stocking shelves at Home Depot. Better yet ask the author to take a 50-75% pay reduction so he will understand people’s anger over sending middle class America’s best jobs overseas. When I discuss this with my friend who manages my portfolio, he says it isn’t a question of whether he agrees with my position on this matter or not, it is more a question of who you are. This is his way of recognizing the Wall Street/Main Street aspect of this. He doesn’t mind the status quo. He lives in a 10,000 sq. ft. home in a gated community in the Broadmoor area of Colorado Springs. I care because I have downsized my home, my business and my life style. Thanks to his success and my sharing in that a little, I am still in business. The author also suggests we need to step up the safety net as a result of job displacement. We don’t need hospice for America’s producers. We need to replace some people in Washington who have lost touch with Main Street, America.
And another.
It isn’t clear to me that anyone in the physical proximity to Wall Street and that river of money understands what’s happened, let alone the truth about what’s happened on Main Street.
The New York Times Editorial Board must be co-ordinating with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Constant editorials are penned, going into detail on why trade is good, and blaming the problems on something else.
Today's Sunday Times editorial goes deeper than before, and reveals the thin reeds to which they cling.
There is no question that trade can disrupt lives. Just ask the nearly 500 workers who lost their jobs four years ago when Sanmina-SCI closed its plant in Wilmington, Mass., to move its production of circuit boards to Asia. An investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that eight months later only about 175 of Sanmina’s employees had found new jobs, with most of those taking a pay cut.
Yes. Trade disrupts lives. Too bad.
That's a technique of the free traders. If they admit a problem, they minimize it. Millions lose jobs, its a disruption. Thousands of businesses close, another disruption. A world record trade deficit, darn... another disruption. But trade is good because:
While trade can hurt some workers, most economists believe it plays a modest role compared with other forces in the economy, including advances in technology, the decline of trade unions and mushrooming executive pay. Many Americans benefit from freer trade, whether they are buying cheaper imports or exporting products.
Do you see now? "Most economists" believe. Thus the NYT Editorial Board, all of whom have a job, believes. No mention of trade deficits, or record foreign debt. These are fundamental folks. Fundamental to running a country successfully.
Their naivete is appalling. They believe free trade agreements, just because they are named thus, are "free trade." The naming of those documents was brilliant. "Free trade agreement." Critics and supporters alike use the labels. The label, Free Trade Agreement, frames the debate. Critics lose before they start.
Free trade is free when currency is not manipulated. When tariffs are not replaced - in equal measure - by other border taxes. When the U.S. trades but keeps its sovereignty. When food and product standards are sound, and improving. When labor and environmental standards are solid.
The NYT likes relative income equality, and environmental standards, and food safety. Its strange how trade trumps it all. Strange.
Your cars pollute far less than before. And your home furnaces are more efficient. But the shipping industry is still n the 1950's on emissions controls. Another example of trade trumping - and corroding - all other interests.
And despite the growing availability of cleaner technologies, the shipping industry has made little progress toward becoming greener, even as traffic grows heavier on existing routes and new routes open up in the Arctic. Indeed, the most recent efforts to tackle the problem have met resistance — less from the shipping industry, however, than from the big oil companies that supply the dirty fuel.
The ships produce "black yogurt." Yuch. I've never heard that term.
Shipping is responsible for about twice the emissions of carbon dioxide as aviation — yet airlines have come under greater criticism. Particles emitted by ships burning heavy bunker fuel, described by some seafarers as “black yogurt” for its consistency, also contain soot that researchers say captures heat when it settles on ice and could be accelerating the melting of the polar ice caps. ... “The sheer volume of pollutants from shipping has grown exponentially along with the growth of our economies and of global trade,” said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program. “Shipping is just less visible than other industries, so for too long it has slipped to the bottom of the agenda.”
Shipping is responsible for about twice the emissions of carbon dioxide as aviation — yet airlines have come under greater criticism. Particles emitted by ships burning heavy bunker fuel, described by some seafarers as “black yogurt” for its consistency, also contain soot that researchers say captures heat when it settles on ice and could be accelerating the melting of the polar ice caps. ...
“The sheer volume of pollutants from shipping has grown exponentially along with the growth of our economies and of global trade,” said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program. “Shipping is just less visible than other industries, so for too long it has slipped to the bottom of the agenda.”
The NY Times Editorial Board loves the environment and loves so-called free trade. How will they resolve this quandary in their own brains?
Why do we ship food so far? It is really odd. Is it truly "market forces"?
The U.S. is a net food importer. Our farmers are losing domestic market share of the U.S. consumer's food intake. The same is happening for U.S. manufacturers. It defies logic to see how $120/barrel oil is not a tremendous barrier to imports.
Asian currency manipulation and foreign value added taxes produce much of the incentive to ship this food so far.
It is 6,000 miles from Beijing to Kansas City. How much fuel is used? How much pollution is produced? The answer is quite a lot. The economics may be shifting with the high oil prices, so much that foreign protectionism cannot overcome it.
But the environmental cost is starting to be addressed on the transportation side.
Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya. In the United States, FreshDirect proclaims kiwi season has expanded to “All year!” now that Italy has become the world’s leading supplier of New Zealand’s national fruit, taking over in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.
So what is happening?
Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures. “We’re shifting goods around the world in a way that looks really bizarre,” said Paul Watkiss, an Oxford University economist who wrote a recent European Union report on food imports. ... Europe is poised to change that. This year the European Commission in Brussels announced that all freight-carrying flights into and out of the European Union would be included in the trading bloc’s emissions-trading program by 2012, meaning permits will have to be purchased for the pollution they generate.
Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures. “We’re shifting goods around the world in a way that looks really bizarre,” said Paul Watkiss, an Oxford University economist who wrote a recent European Union report on food imports. ...
Europe is poised to change that. This year the European Commission in Brussels announced that all freight-carrying flights into and out of the European Union would be included in the trading bloc’s emissions-trading program by 2012, meaning permits will have to be purchased for the pollution they generate.
An interesting idea.
“This may be as radical for environmental consuming as putting a calorie count on the side of packages to help people who want to lose weight,” a spokesman for Tesco, Trevor Datson, said.
The Executive Branch - both Bush and Clinton - have used successful strategies of buying off mini-sectors to get just enough votes to pass a free trade agreement. Socks, for example. Sock production is a subset of textiles.
In 2005, Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) was persuaded to vote for CAFTA in return for protections for his sock makers. He got promises from the Bushies. And boatloads of pressure from wacko free traders. CAFTA passed. But the promises were largely unfulfilled.
This mini-sector buy-off strategy sacrifices the whole economy by giving a few exemptions, and then not following through. Bush has imposed 6 months of tariffs on Honduran socks, now that they are working for Colombia FTA passage.
Jim Schollaert, executive director of Made In USA Strategies, which represents many domestic manufacturers, called the administration's action a "pitiful remedy. . . . It's just hard to understand why they would think this was going to do anything."
And Aderholt?
In a statement, Aderholt said that he was "deeply disappointed and very frustrated" by the tariff's size and short duration. "I will continue to be a thorn in the side of the administration when it comes to fighting to protect our sock industry and all manufacturing jobs, and I will work hard for more fairness in our trade policy," he said.
Rep. Aderholt should simply pledge to oppose the Colombia FTA. His in-district sock producers are holding him accountable this election year.
