We Can't Even Produce Baby Forumla
We need an America first trade policy with higher tariffs, especially on China.
Joe Biden says his administration is solving the supply chain problems caused by his administration and fellow progressives. And yet, the administration will soon announce that we have to import baby formula, which is now in short supply around the country.
Think about that. Two years after WuFlu showed how dependent America was on China for pharmaceutical ingredients and medical protective equipment, our ruling elite has done nothing to free us from foreign dependency, which now extends to a critical part of the food supply.
Please check out the enclosed six-minute video from Sagebrush Rebellion that we just released. You may have seen a preview. In it, I make the case for tariffs, especially on China. I also enclose the script if you prefer reading to watching.
Tariffs Work (script)
By Christian Whiton for Sagebrush Rebellion
America was founded on trade but it was not founded on globalism.
Two of our most important Founders, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, had very different visions for the United States. Hamilton saw a manufacturing powerhouse that traded with the world. Jefferson envisioned a genteel, bucolic society, largely removed from the world. Clearly, Hamilton’s vision was borne out by history.
However, the Founders agreed that trade should be conducted primarily to benefit American businesses and citizens. They knew that unfair foreign competition, including foreign government subsidies of industries to undercut American producers, had to be controlled.
That is why the very first significant piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington was the Tariff Act of 1789. The act was meant to create an environment where American industry could grow, and to provide revenue for the new federal government. It did both. Our trade with the world prospered as well.
Throughout the 1800s, American industry grew first to rival and then surpass the competition in Europe. By 1890, the United States had overtaken the British Empire as the world’s most productive economy. We had a trade policy that put America first and made America first.
Trade policy began to change in the 20th century. Internationalist President Woodrow Wilson raised income taxes and cut tariffs.
Globalists today like to blame part of the Great Depression on tariffs. But trade was a minor part of that economic contraction, which conservative economists like Milton Friedman blame on repeated mistakes by the Federal Reserve.
After World War II, we let the free nations of Western Europe have higher tariffs on us than we have on them because we wanted their economies to recover and outshine communism. Fair enough, but today Europe is rich, and yet the unfair tariffs continue.
In 1970, the average tariff rate on dutiable goods imported to the USA dropped below 10 percent for the first time. It’s no coincidence that American manufacturing also began a decline then.
Matters got much worse after the Cold War ended. Trade deals like NAFTA and the arrangements that eventually led to the World Trade Organization incentivized our companies to move manufacturing out of America. We also ignored unfair practices in Europe that hurt American farmers and car manufacturers, and non-tariff barriers to trade that made it difficult for American companies to sell in Japan.
Then came the worst development of all. In 2000, Congress gave communist China permanent most-favored nation trading status. Then-Senator Joe Biden said in a congressional hearing at the time:
Granting permanent normal trade relations to China is all about opening their markets to U.S. goods and investment from my perspective. And trade concessions are all one-way in this deal.
He also said that:
…getting China into the World Trade Organization, a rules-based organization, will subject China to multilateral pressures on trade and, over time, enhance their respect for the rule of law, or they will not be in.
As he has been so often, Biden was dead wrong. The opposite of what he said was what happened.
China did not trade fairly and the World Trade Organization has been its accomplice, not a reformatory. Our financial elite exported American manufacturing and jobs to China, where workers were paid very little, no one cared about intellectual property, and environmental regulations were a joke.
American business does not get a fair chance competing to serve China’s large domestic population, although that hasn’t stopped unpatriotic business leaders, especially in Hollywood and Big Tech, from trying.
What globalists called “free trade” didn’t make China’s government kinder and gentler either. It is now more repressive to its own people and more threatening to the United States. We basically paid for China’s high tech military and police state.
As a result of these bad assumptions and policies, we are dependent on China, our foremost adversary in the world, for an enormous amount of what we consume. American cities and towns that depended on manufacturing have been decimated. Despair has led to record suicide and drug addiction. Our economy is unsustainably focused on finance and consumption.
Donald Trump started to change this lamentable situation during his presidency. He replaced NAFTA with a fairer deal. His agreement with China was less successful and China of course failed to comply with the deal. However, Trump put the first significant new tariffs on Chinese imports, which are as high as 25 percent in some instances. He also placed tariffs on steel and aluminum on national security grounds.
Unfortunately, the coronavirus crisis put an end to his trade reforms. Plans to press harder on unfair trade with China and Europe ended with his administration.
Not every American is cut out to be an investment banker or a real estate agent or a software programmer. We need to make things in this country to have a balanced economy and secure nation. We need to reform trade, and consider policies like higher tariffs, decoupling from China, withdrawal from the World Trade Organization, and ending loopholes that allow goods made in places like China, Vietnam, and Mexico to be considered made-in-the-USA just because they have a fraction of inputs from here.
America will still be a trading powerhouse under these reforms, just as we have been since George Washington signed that first tariff act. We will just be trading on terms that are fair to American companies and workers.
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