
Only Ross Perot, the scrappy little Texan with abounding energy objected, stating that the only thing that NAFTA would create would be a “giant sucking sound coming from the South.” And was he ever correct, for despite all of the hype about how great all of these trade agreements passed since the 1990s would be, the bottom line is since NAFTA was passed the trade balance of America with her trading partners has been a negative eleven trillion dollars. And with it has come the outsourcing of American jobs, the opening of our borders to all comers with no control whatsoever, and the loss of good jobs for Americans as our manufacturing has moved overseas for cheap labor and tax advantages.
It's almost as if our nation's leaders are bringing us down and there are a number of theories that support that, among them Cloward and Piven. It's hard to avoid a look at things without realizing that for whatever reason America is being bankrupted. But perhaps it's as simple as plain greed, for with multi-national corporations being the order of the day, it's easy to come to that conclusion. Whatever the case, for the Republicans also eagerly seek to give trade promotion authority to Obama to establish a Trans-Pacific Partnership, just know that America will be coming out on the short end of the stick. We can't as a country continue as a viable entity if we continue following the same course of sheer nonsense.
Even with good intentions, our bargaining and negotiating with foreign powers has not been good. While we talk about free trade with our favored trading partners, they nonetheless retain heavy tariffs on American goods, giving them a huge advantage and the rest is history. We need to stop this now before we find that we have traded away our good resources while, in return, we've brought in cheap appliances and such goods that not only don't hold up, but in the end cost us dearly in so many ways.
You might want to call your Senator and tell him or her to stop the madness this time around. Just say not to free trade agreements that are anything but free. And with respect to China, tell them why are we dealing with a country that is ramping up its military by huge amounts when we are literally defunding much of ours? That ought to give them something to think about or at least slow them down a bit.
Be very concerned about what your country is doing. What you don't know can indeed hurt you. In fact, it can be quite deadly. That should be something to think about until we meet again. God bless.