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Why I’m Not a Free Trader

By Selwyn Duke

I certainly believe in a free market; that is, within the United States.  So a free trader I’m not.  I don’t think we need junk from China, or, at least, we wouldn’t if the internationalists hadn’t decimated our manufacturing base. 

I take the position I do because of the law of supply and demand.  Someone I know who lives in the Midwest ran into a man who was baffled by his dropping income; he couldn’t understand why he used to make $20 an hour but now only garnered $10.  I think I know why.

If the supply of something increases relative to demand, its value diminishes.  This is also true if that something is workers.  No, I don’t like objectifying people and boiling them down to commodities, but for the purposes of economic discussion its instructive. 

If you have fewer workers than jobs, employers have to compete for workers and the latter become more valuable.  If you have fewer jobs than workers, workers have to compete for employers and become less valuable.  And the more workers you have — all other things being equal — the less they will be worth.

Back when it wasn’t profitable to outsource, business had to content itself with the American labor pool.  But once trade barriers were lowered to a point at which companies could profit by moving overseas, this changed.  Now American workers don’t just have to compete with each other for pay, but with the whole world.  It probably increased the labor pool at business’ disposal at least tenfold.

Companies now are free to look for greener pastures beyond our borders, and this ensures that many will lie fallow within them.  And this problem  is exacerbated because as we export jobs, we import low-wage workers.

The solution is to re-institute tariffs, which we traditionally had in America.  If you make them high enough, business will have an incentive to produce goods domestically.  People would still be able to buy foreign goods; they’d just have to pay more for them.  This would offer the added bonus of being a revenue source for government — a voluntary tax if you will — that would allow us to lower taxes.  (That’s the idea anyway; of course, with our politicians, you never can know). 

As it stands now, we’re simply slaughtering the American worker on the altar of lead-laden toys, poisoned toothpaste and mammon.  And China holds one trillion dollars in American currency. 

Free trade uber alles.

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3 responses to “Why I’m Not a Free Trader”

  1. Ray Hicks Avatar
    Ray Hicks

    There appears to be, among the Boomers, a lot of fond reminiscences and sappy nostalgia about the sixties lately. Robert Stone wrote “Remembering the Sixties.” Tom Brokaw switched his focus from the “Greatest Generation” to one less so.
    I lived through that period. Maybe because during that time, I spent a lot of thought and energy trying not to get killed, that it doesn’t hold a particularly warm spot in my memory. It surprises me that some young people today, fashion themselves after the lifestyles of their grandparent’s youth. It would have been like me back then pretending to be Doughboy or a raccoon-skin coat wearing member of the Lost Generation. I don’t get it. The sixties weren’t that great.
    But, America still was! And if there is anything about that period I miss, it is that. Men still behaved like men and women were relatively new to the marketplace. The sensitive metro-sexual-pseudo-male didn’t exist. Cry babies, maybe with the exception of Jack Parr, didn’t get that much attention and were kind of embarrassing. It was still possible for an average guy to get a job with a salary that would support a family. There still were families then, not just a bunch of cohabitating couples.
    Social Security was still thought of as a viable pension. You didn’t have to sell your car to see a doctor if you didn’t have health insurance. People still had some remnants of manners. You would occasionally see a World War Two vet give up his seat on the bus to a woman (young or old) standing in the aisle. All of my (male) relatives worked physically hard, demanding jobs in production. America made things then. There were factories. McDonalds was just starting out and it wasn’t considered a great place for a career.
    The cops then still demanded respect and got it… one way or the other. People went to church on Sunday. There were no businesses open on Sunday. People hung flags outside their homes on Veteran’s Day and on the Fourth of July. The memory of having beaten the pants off of the Germans and Japanese and fighting the Chinese and North Koreans to a standstill was still fresh in the minds of many.
    America’s enemies in the world were yet to be considered the Good-Guys. Although people like Jane Fonda, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Dave Dellinger, Stokley Carmichael and a host of others (my father called traitors) were working hard to change all that; Vietnam giving them the opportunity to throw the baby out with the bath water. And that they did. It has been the changes of the 1960’s that have brought America to where it is today.
    The “Flower Power; If It Feels Good Do It” moral ambiguity of that time paved the way for the soulless corporate criminal who would gut our industrial base to boost quarterly profits; for the Bobby has two Mommies family; for the no-fault divorce; for abortion as a family planning tool; for the “I-didn’t-have-sex-with-that-woman” Presidency; for the dial one for English-dial two for Spanish society we live in today.
    The America before the “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll” culture was, despite any of its failings, a better place. A place without drive-by shootings and hip-hip vulgarity. A place without kids who don’t know what part of their baseball caps face front and who don’t have the sense to pull up their pants. A place where it was still considered bad form to be seven months pregnant in the eighth grade. And a place where people were still ashamed to be on welfare. Where it was a disgrace to be on drugs; or get arrested; put in jail; or crash your car D.U.I.; or have the state take your kids. Where pornography was not mainstreamed in hotels and cable TV channels and every imaginable excess a virtue. A place where people had pride in their accomplishments and shame in their faults. We have no shame anymore. Everything is permitted. Everything is allowed. It wasn’t like that before.
    It was a time when we were satisfied with what we had. A Ford or Chevy was enough. No one would have bought a Hummer or Escalade even if they were available back then.
    Our corporations had allegiance to the nation that took precedence over the bottom line. They were loyal to the communities they operated in. They felt a responsibility to their employees that was returned in spades. I had one uncle who worked at a Ford plant. He bought himself a new Pontiac and his fellow workers told him that he couldn’t park it in their lot.
    Politicians courted the American worker. Unions stood by them. Trade policies and tariffs protected them. But not now. No, I’m afraid not now. With the Democratic National Convention coming up in Denver, there are those who would, “Recreate 68.” I wish they could, so we could start over again. On balance for most of us, if there is anything to legitimately feel while thinking back on the sixties, I’m afraid that it is simply just… Regret.

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  2. Sticks n Stones Avatar
    Sticks n Stones

    Another insightful article. If you like this one, you should read his article on World Net Daily. Keep up the good work, Mr. Duke.
    “What we can’t say about black-on-white crime” http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59129

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  3. The Colonel Avatar
    The Colonel

    Excellent, Mr. Hicks.

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