Rules of origin. They are found in trade agreements. These rules determine when we say a product is made in this or that country.
A 100% Mexican product is easy to label as a product of Mexico. But if most of a shirt is made in China, and assembled in the U.S. with a couple of buttons, is it made in the U.S.A.? Of if the shirt is primarily made in Argentina, but finally assembled in Mexico, is it entitled to NAFTA duty free status?
Ths U.S. has tariffs on imported ethanol due to a policy decision to grow our ethano industry for energy security purposes. Cargill and ADM make ethanol in Brazil. Under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, they could rehydrate their Brazilian ethanol and take advantage of the low CBI tariffs.
A NY Times op-ed today shows how luxury good makers are hiding the origin of their products, or misleading the public. These rules make or break some industries.
Krugman comments on the housing credit problems today. He pulled a quote from a piece he wrote in 2005, which sums up the U.S. economy pretty well.
“These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t.
It’s high time that Americans stood up and listened to political leaders who willingly ask us to fight, without willingly fighting for us in return. Not since the Robber Barons built their North American empires, have issues of labor been so blatantly in favor of the wealthy few, and so wildly distorted by some politicians in power.
As highlighted in a New York Times Op-Ed, manufacturers of luxury goods have caught on to the fact that government enforcement of trade laws has more slack than a wind whipped prairie telephone line, but out here on the prairie, keeping the phones working is only one of the many challenges we face. Sorting truth from fiction has become another daunting task. Political leaders would do well to listen to the buzz on the line, because some of that buzz is traveling along barbed wire fence telephone lines. Static may hide the truth, but only until the barbs begin to bite.
Right now the barbed wire fence phone lines are telling us that cheap labor drives corporate profit, and just like Asian Coolies provided cheap labor for rail lines and Robber Barons, a new breed of Robber Baron exists to manipulate markets and steal opportunity from Americans at the cost of developing nations whose latest development is merely the right to work long hours for little pay.
Some Coolies aren’t even Asian any more, living in places like Mexico, Peru, and Columbia.
In the meantime, check those Gucci handbags for Asian fingerprints. There’s a chance the Made in Italy label itself, as well as every thing underneath, was created by a Free Trade Coolie.
This link takes you to the NPR story.
Morning Edition, November 7, 2007 · The FBI is concerned that the open environment at U.S. universities makes it child's play for political or corporate spies to steal U.S. research. The relationship between the FBI and universities has traditionally been strained, but the fight against terrorism creates new bedfellows.
Mark Udall (D) and Bob Schaffer (R) are vying for the Colorado Senate seat left open by retiring Senator Wayne Allard (R). Udall is the current Congressman from the 2nd District of Colorado. Schaffer was a Congressman from 1997 to 2002, and lost a GOP primary to Pete Coors in 2004.
Every member of Colorado's House delegation voted for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, including Udall. Udall is being taken to task by some in state Democratic consitutents for the vote.
The political blog Colorado Confidential has this criticism:
Colorado's House members voted unanimously in favor of the measure, but some state residents don't understand why, because in 2005 four House members -- Democrats Diana DeGette, John Salazar and Mark Udall and Republican Tom Tancredo -- opposed CAFTA, a similar measure that relaxed trade regulations with a block of Central American countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. ... "It's just a mystery," says Reed Kelly, a cattle rancher operating outside of Meeker, Colorado, on the Western Slope, when referring to the House of Representatives' vote on the Peru FTA. ... Regarding the Peru vote, DeGette released a statement saying that "the Peru FTA is a step in the right direction of fairer trade. It offers a significant opportunity to raise the standard of living in Peru, with the agreement's core labor and environmental standards, while opening markets for American products and companies." ... But other groups remain unimpressed by the measure's environmental and worker protections, claiming that they don't go far enough.
Colorado's House members voted unanimously in favor of the measure, but some state residents don't understand why, because in 2005 four House members -- Democrats Diana DeGette, John Salazar and Mark Udall and Republican Tom Tancredo -- opposed CAFTA, a similar measure that relaxed trade regulations with a block of Central American countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. ...
"It's just a mystery," says Reed Kelly, a cattle rancher operating outside of Meeker, Colorado, on the Western Slope, when referring to the House of Representatives' vote on the Peru FTA. ...
Regarding the Peru vote, DeGette released a statement saying that "the Peru FTA is a step in the right direction of fairer trade. It offers a significant opportunity to raise the standard of living in Peru, with the agreement's core labor and environmental standards, while opening markets for American products and companies." ...
But other groups remain unimpressed by the measure's environmental and worker protections, claiming that they don't go far enough.
Schaffer was not in office during the 2005 CAFTA vote. He has run into criticism for allegedly receiving bribes and conflicts of interest. The accusations were leveled last August. Whether the issue gets legs, or is shown true, remains to be seen.
The CO-Sen 2008 Race Tracker wiki page is here.
