by darman7718
The year was 1999.
NAFTA had already been passed back in 1993 and many high paying manufacturing jobs had been outsourced to new factories built in Mexico.
The financial lobby in Washington surmised that opening trade relations with China would allow US companies to not only sell into the massive Chinese market, but that it would also allow manufacturing to move there and take advantage of their dirt cheap rural labor, their non existent environmental protections, and their massive state subsidies.
What would happen to the millions of US citizens (6-8 million to be exact) that would lose their jobs though?
What would happen to the millions of other people in those manufacturing communities that relied on that sector of the economy to keep their towns afloat?
Easy, we will simply grant those displaced workers “Trade Adjustment Assistance”.
It never happened though, welfare was used as the stopgap, and millions of Americans that wanted to have homes, families, and stability were put onto welfare starvation wages.
As the next decade played out Obama tried to pass Trade Adjustment Assistance, but as it turned out no one wanted it. The American public decided that the better course of action would simply be to stop manufacturing everything abroad, and to bring back manufacturing to the United States.
As the Obama presidency was winding down, his trade deal with the pacific block countries was struck down by his own party.
Much to the chagrin of Republican voters it was actually Nancy Pelosi that put down the Trans Pacific Pact, the trade deal Obama negotiated with his wall street economist advisors. Nancy Pelosi did not believe that selling out the American worker and rural America were a good idea.
Then we saw the Rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton was the financial lobby pick of course though, because they knew she would stick to so called “free trade” which really just means “corporate trade”.
Trump took the Presidency and the rest is history, USMCA was signed, Tariffs went up and the transition away from free trade began.
However what has happened since Trump left office is that the corporate and financial lobby have continually tried to chip away at the Tariffs on China and have been very slow to change their ways.
The financial lobby thought that they could get Biden to drop the Tariffs, but he wouldn’t do it.
This election will be the defining moment of the 21st century.
Will we bring back manufacturing to the USA, or will we drop the Tariffs on China like Kamala Harris will likely do?
Will we allow the US government to import new people to make up the difference for their failed economic policies of the last 30 years rather than accepting and rebuilding from the population that we have?
Sources:
https://news.mit.edu/2021/david-autor-china-shock-persists-1206
https://youtu.be/u–y3nLY6AQ (time stamp 12:39)
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21906/w21906.pdf
https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/china-shock-and-its-enduring-effects
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/bill-clinton-neoliberalism-welfare-nafta
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/no-trade-is-free-robert-lighthizer?variant=41004612943906
Nancy Pelosi quoted on the day (2015) she killed Trade Adjustment Assistance:
“As some of my colleagues have said our people would rather have a job than trade assistance, Trade Adjustment Assistance, I talked about that red-hot stove that people put their hand on when they go home Mr. Cicilline talked about his district Mr. Norcross about his Mr. Boyle about his and the list goes on and on how do we say to these people we are here for you you are our top priority when the impression that they have is that this is not a good deal for them?”