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The Huffington Post reports:
There has been no shortage of China-bashing in the brief course of the Republican presidential primary, highlighted by Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann riling up a debt-fearing conservative crowd with the memorable double entendre: “Hu’s your daddy!”
On Tuesday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney appeared to ratchet up the rhetoric beyond even that one-liner, suggesting that there was a basis for ending U.S. trade relations with China altogether.
“I’m not sure, whether the intellectual property you have is regularly being stolen by competition around the world, but in the case of China, for instance, we’ve sat idly by as they have stolen — year after year — intellectual property: Designs, patents and so forth,” Romney told a crowd member at a Mosiac Technology Business Roundtable in Salem, N.H. “And I don’t see how you can have a trade relationship, on an open basis, with another nation if they’re stealing a large part of what it is you sell.”
I await their proposals.
well well a republican front runner going anti neoliberal protectionist. that line will get dem and independents to pay attention.
i think romney has tapped into his inner reagan/real republican…. free trade is not republican it has been sold as republican but it is not. the modern republicans, like i have said, resemble the confederacy far more than the republicans that made america great.
May 30, 1988 The Reagan Record On Trade: Rhetoric Vs. Reality THE CATO INSTITUTE
“The Reagan administration has failed to promote free trade. Ronald Reagan by his actions has become the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover.”
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa107.html
How does the GOP win in 2012? Start talking about the neoliberal hijacking and follow Reagan on protectionism.
Good Job Romney!
The Confederate Constitution has a clause that has no parallel in the U.S. Constitution. It affirms strong support for free trade and opposition to protectionism: “but no bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; nor shall any duties or taxes on importation from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry.”
free trade aint republican it is confederate and what romney just said is totally republican and 100% accurate…. romney is not a southern republican thank god!!
Wow – that really surprises me, coming from Romney, a business friendly free trader type not given to impulsive comments or cheap pandering.
I disagree with the economic case against free trade, but am open to national security based trade restrictions such as our embargoes on Iran, Cuba, and North Korea.
If things with China are getting so bad as to justify serious trade restrictions, then things are BAD.
It does seem to be the case that lack of respect for IP is just endemic in the Chinese system. And it’s not just us – the Russians are furious at China for having ripped off Russia’s Su-27 fighter plane in violation of license agreements.
Carney notes some of the necessary complexities in raising this issue – which is why I definitely want to see proposals before I make any judgement. It’s easy to raise the issue, it’s damnably hard to figure out how to act on it without screwing yourself to the wall in the process.
Personally, I believe that our trade agreements over the last 20 years with ANYONE should have had incredibly tight – and auditable – environmental and workforce protection standards built in. We don’t want American companies having to compete with someone who can dump massive amounts of pollution into the air and water, but we shouldn’t have to accept Chongqing’s air quality or benzene plumes on the Mississippi in order to keep jobs at home … and American workers don’t need to be looking at the $16/day they’d make in a top-paying manufacturing line job in China as a baseline for their future earnings.
how about this for a proposal…. A national Intelligence Estimate on our Manufacturing Decline
Forbes Feb 14, 2011
The U.S. deficit of $273 billion in bilateral trade with Beijing reflects a persistent feature of the Sino-American relationship since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Over the last ten years, China has mounted the biggest challenge to the U.S. manufacturing sector ever seen, threatening producers of steel, chemicals, glass, paper, drugs and any number of other items with prices they cannot match. Not coincidentally, ****the United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs every month during the same period.****
That trend has now progressed to a point where the U.S. intelligence community has become concerned. Richard McCormack reported in Manufacturing & Technology News on February 3 that the Director of National Intelligence has initiated preparation of a National Intelligence Estimate to assess the security implications of waning manufacturing activity in America. National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative analyses prepared by the intelligence community, definitive interagency products typically reserved for the most serious threats. So the fact that the nation’s top intelligence official thinks a National Intelligence Estimate is needed for manufacturing isn’t a good sign. It suggests that America’s industrial decline is approaching the status of a crisis.
the koch brothers are starting to sweat the concept of the tides turning against free trade and here is their latest propaganda video backing up their neoliberal ideology.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/28/new-koch-video-draws-parallel-between-economic-freedom-quality-of-life/
It suggests that America’s industrial decline is approaching the status of a crisis.
You can put the blame for this squarely on the decision by wealthy Americans to make breaking the back of American unions their first priority. Federal policies could have been passed 40 years ago that limited the ability of American corporations to profit by off-shoring jobs, but the deepset hatred of organized labor among the wealthy elite made them decide to move jobs and even corporate infrastructure spending overseas, and to back politicians (of both parties) who facilitated this decision.
Wal Mart et al can put as many Chinese-made flags in their windows and on their logos as they want – they’ve still been acting in a structured way to undermine America’s future.
frum needs a china desk on this site because china is going to be at the center of 2012 and beyond. trump was right their leaders think our leaders are stupid and mitch mconnell is married to a chinese shipping magnate’s daughter who gave mitch 25 million dollars recently.
how to win a war 101….destroy the enemy manufacturing base….. free traders is spelled wrong it is actually free traitors…