The fallout of 'Free Trade'

Baltimore and Detroit are mentioned as casualties. Now instead of a large portion of the population working in manufacturing or support businesses the bulk of the population depends upon big government for jobs and/ or handouts.


On a Fast Track to National Ruin
Pat Buchanan | May 08, 2015

In the first quarter of 2015, in the sixth year of the historic Obama recovery, the U.S. economy grew by two-tenths of 1 percent.

And that probably sugarcoats it.

For trade deficits subtract from the growth of GDP, and the U.S. trade deficit that just came in was a monster.

As the AP's Martin Crutsinger writes, "The U.S. trade deficit in March swelled to the highest level in more than six years, propelled by a flood of imports that may have sapped the U.S. economy of any growth in the first quarter."

The March deficit was $51.2 billion, largest of any month since 2008. In goods alone, the trade deficit hit $64 billion.

As Crutsinger writes, a surge in imports to $239 billion in March, "reflected greater shipments of foreign-made industrial machinery, autos, mobile phones, clothing and furniture."

What does this flood of imports of things we once made here mean for a city like, say, Baltimore? Writes columnist Allan Brownfeld:

"Baltimore was once a city where tens of thousands of blue collar employees earned a good living in industries building cars, airplanes and making steel. ... In 1970, about a third of the labor force in Baltimore was employed in manufacturing. By 2000, only 7 percent of city residents had manufacturing jobs."

Put down blue-collar Baltimore alongside Motor City, Detroit, as another fatality of free-trade fanaticism.

For as imports substitute for U.S. production and kill U.S. jobs, trade deficits reduce a nation's GDP. And since Bill Clinton took office, the U.S. trade deficits have totaled $11.2 trillion.

An astronomical figure.

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n importing all those trillions in foreign-made goods, we exported the future of America's young. Our political and corporate elites sold out working- and middle-class America -- to enrich the monied class.

And they sure succeeded.

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