Free Trade Is Plutocratic Propaganda

Submitted by Dark Bid

 Free Trade Is Plutocratic Propaganda

With the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership dominating the headlines, now is a good time to revisit an old scam called “free trade.”

In 2003, Kevin Flanagan was an information technology employee at Bank of America. They told him he was being replaced with foreign labor, and he was ordered to train his replacement. After he completed his assignment, he was laid off. Then he went to the parking lot and shot himself.

That’s “free trade.”

Like The Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, sometimes, the most effective way to lie is to use the most innocent words. No word is more susceptible to propaganda-leveraging than “freedom.” Attach that word to any concept, and all of a sudden, it’s unassailable. That’s exactly what happened with “free trade.”

Proponents of free trade will often use the simplest analogies to convey their point, as if you were retarded. The reason they have to resort to such caveman illustrations is because free trade does not exist in the real world. There is no such thing as equality of bargaining power. If someone has ten million dollars and you have zero dollars, anything above zero is an “improvement” in your situation. The free trade economists will say this person with zero dollars is “free” to work for $1 per hour, and they will do so because it improves their situation. This is what “freedom” means to free trade economists.

If you doubt the free trade economists, they will call you a “protectionist,” as if protecting your country’s economy were some kind of grievous transgression. In fact, nothing is more American than shunning free trade nonsense.

Ian Fletcher calls free trade the myth of “cowboy capitalism.” According to Fletcher, all four presidents on Mt. Rushmore were protectionists. The entire American Revolution was fought because the colonists were tired of being economically exploited by the British. Alexander Hamilton realized that British dominance in manufacturing and American reliance on agriculture were dooming us to a banana republic future. The solution? Tariffs. By taxing British goods, the United States boosted its manufacturing industry. By 1820, tariffs were at 40%.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Give us a protective tariff, and we will have the greatest nation on earth.”

One of the fascinating parts of this history is that the South was opposed to protectionism. They wanted free trade. Why? Because free trade was necessary for the international slave trade from Africa to the United States.

Fast forward to 1994. That’s when the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted. The result was nothing less than the wholesale destruction of the American manufacturing industry. And where did these displaced workers go? In the 1990s, 98% of all net new jobs created were in the service industry, which has lower wages.

This is what free trade looks like. I love the smell of freedom in the morning.

NAFTA

Manufacturing Employees

One doesn’t have to look hard to find free trade evangelists in the corporate world. Apple, the world’s largest company, is also the largest example of how free trade is a game of heads I win, tails you lose. Only 5.6% of Apple workers are in the United States. There are 43,000 Apple employees in the country and 20,000 employees overseas. However, Apple is nothing without its global suppliers, where 700,000 workers make the next round of flashy gizmos that nobody needs anyway. These suppliers should be included in the worker count because they are directly involved in the manufacturing process.

In February 2011, President Obama asked Steve Jobs, “Why can’t that work come home?” Despite having the last name of “Jobs,” Steve Jobs made it clear that he didn’t care about jobs. He only cared about money. He said, “Those jobs aren’t coming back.

In 1983, Jobs used patriotism when it was convenient for him. He called the Macintosh, “a machine that is made in America.” Later, he said, “I’m as proud of the factory as I am of the computer.” But by 2004, patriotism gave way to profits, and Apple became an American company in name only. It relied on foreign manufacturing.

Betsey Stevenson, former chief economist at the Labor Department, said, “Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice. That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

Of course, Apple falls back on the timeless corporate lie that American workers are not skilled enough. One anonymous Apple executive said, “We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers. The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.” They were skilled enough before NAFTA, but after NAFTA, all of a sudden, they all forgot how to do their jobs. It’s funny how that amnesia works. Now, for every two American college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, only one of them is hired into a job in their field. Sounds like a real skills shortage.

Alan Blinder, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, the more offshorable occupations are not low-end jobs, whether measured by wages or by education. The correlation between skill and offshorability is almost zero.”

The anonymous Apple executive made it clear that Apple was really a country to itself and did not care about jobs or social effects, “We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”

Manufacturing analysts estimate that if Apple paid Americans to build iPhones, it would cost an extra $65 per iPhone. With hundreds of dollars of profits per phone, Apple would still be profitable.

While Obama asked Steve Jobs about bringing jobs back to America, the Apple executives had their own suggestions. They wanted more visas so they could bring in more foreign workers. They wanted a tax holiday so they could bring back some of their overseas profits at no cost. They wanted government funding to train American workers. Notice a pattern here? They want to exploit government assistance so they can maximize their profits, which would boost their stock options. On and on it goes.

You may be familiar with the term “corporate raider” from the 1980s, but what is happening now is on a scale much larger than that. It is “country raiding.” Entire countries are being exploited and saddled with the burden of supporting multi-national behemoths who tell you that your very demise is actually your greatest freedom. Some Americans are catching on to this scam and are actually leaving the country in pursuit of opportunity. Imagine that: leaving America for economic reasons. Ellis Island has been flipped on its head. “Give me your tired and your poor” has been replaced with “Let’s GTFO!”

As Zero Hedge reported, in the first quarter of 2015, a record number of Americans renounced their citizenship.

Expatriates

One expatriate, Emily Matchar, described her experience, “After applying for 279 jobs over two years, my husband finally got the offer he’d been hoping for: a well-paid position teaching philosophy at a respected university. We should have been thrilled. There was just one little thing. The job was in Hong Kong. My husband said, “I feel like we’re being deported from our own country.”

Meanwhile, in China, Apple continues to thrive on its masses of slave labor. Like the antebellum South, Apple supports free trade because it makes their slave labor possible. Foxconn, Apple’s major supplier, is located in Shenzhen. Do you know how they keep their unemployment rate down? If you are a migrant worker who has been unemployed for more than 3 months, it is illegal to rent housing. So you can either be homeless or leave. I’m sure the people at the Bureau of Labor Statistics would love a policy like this in the United States. Then they wouldn’t have to bend over backwards to goal-seek all their employment data to conform to the official “recovery” story line. If you’re not unemployed in Shenzhen, you’re probably getting beaten by Foxconn security or jumping off buildings to escape your miserable existence.

So you can imagine my level of trust when President Obama says this time will be different. He called the Trans-Pacific Partnership “the most progressive trade deal in history.” And yet he doesn’t want to tell us anything about it. With NAFTA, 5 million American manufacturing jobs were lost, and 57,000 factories shut down. What will the Trans-Pacific Partnership do? It’s like a sequel to a movie that was terrible in the first place.

Obama visited Nike’s headquarters as part of his political rally. One of the high-quality jobs at Nike is held by a 32-year-old mother in Indonesia who processes 100 shoes per hour for 83 cents. I’m sure she is a free trade supporter.

After awhile, you start to realize that the people who love free trade so much are economic hacks and the uber-rich. They use sterilized language and hollow arguments to convince you of the positive ideals of free trade. In all honesty, it’s a great theory. It really is. But then the moment you start believing it, they start working in all sorts of exceptions – usually for themselves. Before you know it, you’re an unemployed American or a Chinese slave at Foxconn. And the uber-rich are in the Bahamas laughing about it, thanking the economists for playing along with the story.

One thing is for sure: The Founding Fathers would have never put up with this bullshit. Neither should you

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Capn Mike
Capn Mike

What a crock!
The Free Trade Bill IS bullshit, but precisely because it’s NOT free trade. thousands of pages of gummint regs is NOT free trade.
He says the SOUTH was pro free trade because of the slave trade. Huh? WTF?? What does that have to do with free trade? They were pro free trade so they could escape the ruinous Yankee tariffs so they could afford farm machinery from Britain and sell their cotton in the European markets without punitive “revenge” tariffs due to the protectionist North.

robert h siddell jr
robert h siddell jr

More New Speak: Free Trade = Economic Enslavement (money for the NYC Criminal Syndicate out of Southern pockets).That is exactly why South Carolina fired on the Union Customs fort at Ft Sumter on 12Apr1861; it had nothing to do with slaves.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

About the claim that half of US STEM grads can’t find jobs- maybe, despite their degree, they’re just not very capable. There are people who get a law degree who couldn’t lawyer their way out of a wet paper bag. I’m sure there are American grads who have the credential but not the ability. Most H1-b workers around here start at about $80k. If that’s less than what a company would have to pay to get a capable American, then maybe the American STEM grad expects too much. I’m unconvinced that free trade is – on balance – the best policy, but using the argument about H1-b workers isn’t working on me.

AC
AC

If you find yourself in the same position that Kevin Flanagan did, don’t do what he did. Gather up as much dirty company information as possible, and give it to Wikileaks.

Also, sabotage.

MuckAbout

“Free Trade” is a farcical Ponzi Scheme played on the American People years ago. We get cheap shit cheaper at the cost of resources and welfare.

It is an exercise in eventually making everyone equally poor to the benefit of the monied and industrialized classes. Sounds so sweet. Tastes so sour..

MA

kokoda
kokoda

The trade aspect within TPP is minimal. The primary purpose is to make International Corp’s = to Gov’ts. They can’t be sued for damaging the environment, but they will sue the landowner/homeowner on any pretext. Who has the funds to engage in legal battles with a Corp that has Gov’t backing.

The bankrupt Western developed countries have turned against the citizens – this is the latest installment. The uber rich have bought the politicians and control policy.

Llpoh
Llpoh

Pass trade barrier laws because people are too stupid to by s made.

Free trade would be an enormous boon to the US if Americans only bought American made, and exported more than they import.

Nope – Americans are too stupid for that. So lets pass another law “for their own good”, and create trade barriers.

Yep, that is a great idea.

ottomatik
ottomatik

Lloph- I generally agree with your position on the matter as we have discussed before. No doubt Americans have been irresponsible with their consumer activities. Much needs to change. That said, it seems appropriate that our Federal Government negotiates trade deals with foreign entities right?
They are neck fucking deep in this type of activity, that is selling out the long term livelihood of their constituents for short term personal gain. Its clear they have, and fuck them for doing so.
Most people are super busy with their daily daily, and are just now realizing the damage NAFTA has done 20 years later, all of the lying, treasonous, shameful fucks that pushed it through knew then exactly what would happen and they did it with dirty fuckin smiles on their faces….
same as now.
Fuck them and their secret trade deal, how these levels of betrayal are not treasonous is beyond me. Purposefully planning the reduction of sovereignty and the elimination of the Constitution to allow ascent of the super-sovereign globalist is of grave concern.

Overthecliff
Overthecliff

If we fall for this crap again,we deserve what we get.

IndenturedServant

The part of business I never get is the excess of the profit motive. I know you have to make a profit to remain in business. I also know that that profit needs to be high enough for the small biz owner to make all the bullshit he goes through “worth it”. For big business it’s much the same but scaled up to account for shareholders, board of directors etc but how much money does one man need?

You’ve got bozos pulling down $100 million a year plus bonuses and that’s still not enough. I couldn’t spend a hundred million dollars if I tried. Several times a year I read about business owners who retire and turn over full ownership of the company to their employees. There was even one guy who sought out former employees he was fond of that he included in the ownership arrangement. Others sell but insist that the new owners keep the current employees and then they split up the profit from the sale among current employees. I’d never expect an employer to do that for me but I’d sure do it if I could.

One of my dreams is to be filthy rich but not because I want to be filthy rich but because I’d like to run around the country and give away money to decent people I encounter. If someone stops to help you change a tire or push your car off the road after a breakdown……..pay off their mortgage. If your struggling to get in or out of a door with a bunch of packages and someone holds the door for you……..hand them $10,000 in cash. Just blow peoples minds and be gone before they get your name. I can’t imagine having more fun than that. Once you have enough shekels to provide for your future, give some back.

It’s probably best that I’m not rich lest I turn into a greedy bastard.

Tucci78

“,,,international trade, is relatively easy to dispose of. In a country that is truly free — not one that merely says it is, or pretends to be — any decision about what to trade, or with whom, or for how much, does not rest with government, which can have nothing legitimate whatever to say with regard to ‘acts of capitalism between consenting adults’, but with individual consumers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs.

“Tariffs, a form of taxation that has been with us since America’s beginning, have distorted markets, drained resources, made ill-gotten fortunes for the politically connected, and caused the War Between the States. There are many who argue that tariffs also cause international wars.

“Businesses that try to use tariffs against foreign competitors are picking our pockets by denying us the benefits of free trade. They don’t deserve to be protected by the law. And any ‘agreement’ longer than half a page is not about free trade, no matter what it calls itself.”

— L. Neil Smith, “The Plan” (1 January 2011)

[http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2011/tle601-20110101-02.html]

ottomatik
ottomatik

Riddle me this= How can there be free trade between slaves and free men? Thought so.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

I got 6 thumbs downs (so far) – which is fine – but no one’s explained why American companies would pay an $80k starting salary for an H1-b programmer from China, India or Sri Lanka when there are ostensibly skilled Americans who could be hired instead. Seems to me that either 1) they’d have to pay Americans even more or 2) there’s a shortage of Americans with the needed skills. I’m open to other explanations.

ottomatik
ottomatik

Iska- I know many of them choose to do so for tax purpose’s. Thats right tax bene’s for not hiring Americans.

llpoh
llpoh

People are not out there demanding free trade agreements. They should not be entered into, because they will indeed be used to line someone’s pockets. And the American people are en mass too stupid to take advantage of such an agreement.

A country can do very well in a free trade situation if 1) its people refuses to buy imported goods voluntarily, and 2) ships its stuff to the other country (s involved in great volume.

Does that sound like the US? Will Americans refuse to buy cheap shit, and instead chose to send US made goods overseas to the other nations? No way in hell.

There is zero reason for the US to pursue free trade agreements – the people do not want them, the people will not take advantage of them, and business and megarich and other nations will take advantage of the situation at the expense of stupid US consumers.

As a concept, I am all for free trade – but it will only benefit nations with smart consumers. I do not support tariffs, as that imposes laws upon the people “for their own good” – which is the path to hell.

Leave things alone – they are bad enough already, and will only get worse if the govt fucks with things in any way.

starfcker
starfcker

Otto, iska, it’s called the work opportunity tax credit (WOTC). All the fast foods down here hire haitians almost exclusively, the credit for hiring them is up to 9 grand per, which is significant savings on minimum wage employees.

Zarathustra

If the US had truly free trade, California would not be growing rice, nor would sugar be produced from domestically grown sugar beets.

starfcker
starfcker

Dark bid, nice essay. Props

TE
TE

I am trying so hard to not be vulgar today, but, once again, it is NOT about the workers’ wages.

In 1983 Steve Jobs probably made about 25x, or even 100x, his average American workers’ wage. Maybe even less, it was early in the game.

Flash forward to after offshoring and artificial run up in stocks, and largesse of Y2K, and see that the CEOs are now making 400x, or more, the average.

Wake the fuck up.

Our offshored jobs took Sam Walton from obscenely rich and well-deserved at that, to his kids/offspring being worth more than the bottom 40% of America, whom, btw, used to have family-supporting jobs to strive for producing American made products for Wally World. And GM and Emerson.

We don’t have jobs because from the local City Hall to the hallowed halls of CONgress, we have allowed, and believed, we should be regulated, mandated, litigated and protected until our businesses and their leaders have found it not worth the risk nor the time.

Unless you are the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Jamie freaking Dimon.

The still moderately successful refuse to see the truth. I see it over and over. Cognitive dissonance at its finest. They have been lucky enough to not have been targeted by the army of bureaucrats and regulations, well, lucky enough yet. It shouldn’t take a genius to realize that if an agency has 20,000 employees, and the free enterprise under their control is losing 5% a year, at some point the rate of government destruction will outstrip the ability of the owners to justify the company remaining in business.

@Iska, your experience is not the norm. The tales out of Microsoft, Alexis-Nexis, and dozens/hundreds of others companies does not always play that out. There is a set limit, I cannot remember what it is, of what the difference in wages can be. Instead of paying wages subject to taxes and other liabilities to an American, they just shift part of the costs to lawyers fees and pocket the difference.

AND, what would an American with similar skills cost?

Oh yeah, they don’t pay social security on them either. And just as icing on the damned cake, they aren’t worried about lawsuits either. Corporation says “fuck you!” to all the laws that we Americans can use. Corporation can just revoke visa and ship back. Disappear the problem into the ether of a foreign country.

As a former accountant, and human resource director, I can tell you that if it were not cheaper to employ foreigners, they would not be employed. And that is both the problem, and the crime against the common man.

I once asked many CFOs and HR people why corporations don’t spend the same time and effort recruiting, and domiciling, Americans from other states as they do from India and China, and I mainly received blank stares.

Continuing to support the belief that wages are the problem, or there is a magical shortage in green new grads, “needed” foreign imports and in pro/anti tariffs, is continuing to support the complete destruction of the free and successful liberty minded entrepreneurs.

It is as simple as that. Has not a damned thing to do with wages. Well, our wages. It has everything to do with the wages of the politicians, bureaucrats, and connected.

And those dying off entrepreneurs – have you SEEN the rate of death/decline in start ups and small business? – are taking this country’s glory days with them.

So it goes…

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