(07-13-2016 03:24 PM)Max Power Wrote: (07-12-2016 05:27 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (07-12-2016 04:40 PM)Max Power Wrote: Eh I'm cautiously optimistic. Sen Sherrod Brown has led the fight against TPP and has enthusiastically vouched for her on this. If she tries international multilateral TPP renogotiations at least that will give us time to rally the troops for another fight, when we'll have a more progressive Congress and have a shot of blocking the next version of this thing. So she might, but it will make the base very angry and she'll need us in 4 years.
So what's your alternative to TPP?
Withdraw and let all the other participants work out a deal among themselves that excludes us? Let them bring in China so that China's span of influence basically takes SE Asia away from us?
What would you do instead?
If Thailand and Cambodia want to sign trade agreements with each other knock yourselves out. We have the best consumer base and industrial base in the world so they need us more than we need them. These agreements have led to one thing: American jobs being shipped overseas to make products using pennies on the dollar labor so they can sell them back here cheaper and boost corporate profits. The promised souring in exports to create jobs here in America hasn't materialized. If they want to trade with us on an even plane they need to eliminate the slave labor conditions that are bad for everybody but the rich and corporations. Do that and we can talk.
Number one, it's a lot more than Cambodia and Thailand. It's Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, USA, Vietnam. Number two, if Cambodia and Thailand want to enter into a trade agreement, it won't be the TPP. They aren't parties. You don't even know the signatory parties. Would it be reasonable to infer that you don't know much more about what's in the rest of the agreement?
Number three, there are things I don't like about the agreement. I think some of the provisions impinge too greatly on US sovereignty. I have the feeling that One-World Obama did not instruct our negotiators to negotiate too hard om that.
Number four, these agreements have not led to American jobs being shipped overseas. Our tax structure and excessive nonproductive red tape in our regulatory processes have caused that. Hint: those jobs have already gone to those countries without TPP. How do you explain that?
Number five, there are a bunch of countries on that list where your tired starvation wages rhetoric is totally off base. New Zealand pays starvation wages? Australia? Japan? There are places there with cheap labor. But that cheap labor doesn't have the skill sets to execute complex up-scale jobs. So let them see up our Nikes and we build the robots, and we are both better off. The problem is that those tax and regulatory policies mentioned above make somewhere else a better place to build those robots.
Number six, the economics that drive jobs offshore are little changed by whether we are in TPP or not. If it is more profitable to make a product in Brunei with TPP, then about 99% of the time it is going to be more profitable to make it in Brunei without TPP.
Number seven, the reason the "promised" sourcing of jobs here hasn't happened is because those tax and regulatory factors make the US an unprofitable place to do business. You want those jobs created here, get rid of nonproductive and counterproductive regulations and lower and flatten taxes to world standards, as both Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin (as well as anyone else who looks at the facts objectively) recommends.
Ah, yes, the evil rich and corporations. You are just butt hurt because somebody might make more money than you think they should, and--horror of horrors--might make it somewhere that you and your fellow ambulance chasers can't go taking it away by filing trumped up lawsuits.
