Balanced Trade
In 2007, we broke two records, and we shouldn’t be proud of them. We had the largest trade deficit in our history, and the highest ever with a single country. We had a total trade deficit of 711 billion dollars, and with China alone, the trade deficit was 257 billion dollars.
Our total national debt is 9 trillion dollars. Five trillion is owed to foreign countries and 1.3 trillion of that to China. All three numbers are pointing to an economic crisis, and all three are a direct result of our trade policies.
Over the last decade the United States has lost over 8,000 manufacturing companies and these losses will continue if we don’t change our ways.
The folks in Washington like to say that we in an era of “global competition.” The problem is that the system is competitive at all, it’s rigged. Right now our workers aren’t competing on a level playing field, but it doesn’t have to stay this way.
For instance, China manipulates its currency and many other nations shield their markets from our goods. Some pay subsistence wages, use child labor, counterfeit and steal copyrights, steal trademarks and steal patents. They provide domestic industries with local tax incentives, offer special financing and charge tariffs on imports. There is only one “modern” industrialized country that doesn’t protect its domestic markets, and that’s the United States of America. We don’t have free trade, we have predatory trade, and no U.S. manufacturer or grower can compete with predatory trade.
All these policies and practices are stealing from American industry, and our politicians seem unable to act, so it’s time to change our elected officials in Washington. That’s why I am running for Congress.