[lit-ideas] Re: FW: Re: FW: Re: WTO
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 20:49:15 -0800
WHEN AMERICANS NO LONGER OWN AMERICA
By Thom Hartmann
Common Dreams
Monday, February 27, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0227-20.htm
The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality:
So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our
nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off
America.
Through a combination of the "Fast Track" authority pushed for by Reagan and
GHW Bush, sweetheart trade deals involving "most favored nation status" for
dictatorships like China, and Clinton pushing us into NAFTA and the WTO (via
GATT), we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built
American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years.
The old concept was that if there was a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of
shoes made in the USA, and somebody wanted to import shoes from China where
there may only be ten cents worth of labor in those shoes, we'd level the
playing field for labor by putting a 90-cent import tariff on each pair of
shoes. Companies could choose to make their products here or overseas, but
the ultimate cost of labor would be the same.
Then came the flat-worlders, led by misguided true believers and promoted by
multinational corporations. Do away with those tariffs, they said, because
they "restrain trade." Let everything in, and tax nothing. The result has
been an explosion of cheap goods coming into our nation, and the loss of
millions of good manufacturing jobs and thousands of manufacturing
companies. Entire industry sectors have been wiped out.
These policies have kneecapped the American middle class. Our nation's
largest employer has gone from being the unionized General Motors to the
poverty-wages Wal-Mart. Americans have gone from having a net savings rate
around 10 percent in the 1970s to a minus .5 percent in 2005 - meaning that
they're going into debt or selling off their assets just to maintain their
lifestyle.
At the same time, federal policy has been to do the same thing at a national
level. Because our so-called "free trade" policies have left us with an over
$700 billion annual trade deficit, other countries are sitting on huge piles
of the dollars we gave them to buy their stuff (via Wal-Mart and other "low
cost" retailers). But we no longer manufacture anything they want to buy
with those dollars.
So instead of buying our manufactured goods, they are doing what we used to
do with Third World nations - they are buying us, the USA, chunk by chunk.
In particular, they want to buy things in America that will continue to
produce profits, and then to take those profits overseas where they're
invested to make other nations strong. The "things" they're buying are, by
and large, corporations, utilities, and natural resources.
Back in the pre-Reagan days, American companies made profits that were
distributed among Americans. They used their profits to build more
factories, or diversify into other businesses. The profits stayed in
America.
Today, foreigners awash with our consumer dollars are on a two-decades-long
buying spree. The UK's BP bought Amoco for $48 billion - now Amoco's profits
go to England. Deutsche Telekom bought VoiceStream Wireless, so their
profits go to Germany, which is where most of the profits from Random House,
Allied Signal, Chrysler, Doubleday, Cyprus Amax's US Coal Mining Operations,
GTE/Sylvania, and Westinghouse's Power Generation profits go as well.
Ralston Purina's profits go to Switzerland, along with Gerber's;
TransAmerica's profits go to The Netherlands, while John Hancock Insurance's
profits go to Canada. Even American Bankers Insurance Group is owned now by
Fortis AG in Belgium.
Foreign companies are buying up our water systems, our power generating
systems, our mines, and our few remaining factories. All because "flat
world" so-called "free trade" policies have turned us from a nation of
wealthy producers into a nation of indebted consumers, leaving the world
awash in dollars that are most easily used to buy off big chunks of America.
As <http://www.economyincrisis.com> notes, US Government statistics indicate
the following percentages of foreign ownership of American industry:
· Sound recording industries - 97%
· Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage - 79%
· Motion picture and sound recording industries - 75%
· Metal ore mining - 65%
· Motion picture and video industries - 64%
· Wineries and distilleries - 64%
· Database, directory, and other publishers - 63%
· Book publishers - 63%
· Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product - 62%
· Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment - 57%
· Rubber product - 53%
· Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing - 53%
· Plastics and rubber products manufacturing - 52%
· Plastics product - 51%
· Other insurance related activities - 51%
· Boiler, tank, and shipping container - 50%
· Glass and glass product - 48%
· Coal mining - 48%
· Sugar and confectionery product - 48%
· Nonmetallic mineral mining and quarrying - 47%
· Advertising and related services - 41%
· Pharmaceutical and medicine - 40%
· Clay, refractory, and other nonmetallic mineral products - 40%
· Securities brokerage - 38%
· Other general purpose machinery - 37%
· Audio and video equipment mfg and reproducing magnetic and optical
media - 36%
· Support activities for mining - 36%
· Soap, cleaning compound, and toilet preparation - 32%
· Chemical manufacturing - 30%
· Industrial machinery - 30%
· Securities, commodity contracts, and other financial investments and
related activities - 30%
· Other food - 29%
· Motor vehicles and parts - 29%
· Machinery manufacturing - 28%
· Other electrical equipment and component - 28%
· Securities and commodity exchanges and other financial investment
activities - 27%
· Architectural, engineering, and related services - 26%
· Credit card issuing and other consumer credit - 26%
· Petroleum refineries (including integrated) - 25%
· Navigational, measuring, electromedical, and control instruments - 25%
· Petroleum and coal products manufacturing - 25%
· Transportation equipment manufacturing - 25%
· Commercial and service industry machinery - 25%
· Basic chemical - 24%
· Investment banking and securities dealing - 24%
· Semiconductor and other electronic component - 23%
· Paint, coating, and adhesive - 22%
· Printing and related support activities - 21%
· Chemical product and preparation - 20%
· Iron, steel mills, and steel products - 20%
· Agriculture, construction, and mining machinery - 20%
· Publishing industries - 20%
· Medical equipment and supplies - 20%
Thus it shouldn't surprise us that the cons have sold off our ports as well,
and will defend it to the bitter end. They truly believe that a "New World
Order" with multinational corporations in charge instead of sovereign
governments will be the answer to the problem of world instability. And
therefore they must do away with quaint things like unions, a healthy middle
class, and, ultimately, democracy.
The "security" implications of turning our ports over to the UAE are just
the latest nail in what the cons hope will be the coffin of American
democracy and the American middle class. Today's conservatives believe in
rule by inherited wealth and an internationalist corporate elite, and things
like a politically aroused citizenry and a healthy democracy are pesky
distractions.
Everything today is driven by profits for multinationals, supported by the
lawmaking power of the WTO. Thus, parts for our missiles are now made in
China, a country that last year threatened us with nuclear weapons. Our oil
comes from a country that birthed a Wahabist movement that ultimately led to
14 Saudi citizens flying jetliners into the World Trade buildings and the
Pentagon. Germans now own the Chrysler auto assembly lines that turned out
tanks to use against Germany in WWII. And the price of labor in America is
being held down by over ten million illegal workers, a situation that was
impossible twenty-five years ago when unions were the first bulwark against
dilution of the American labor force.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote of King George III in the Declaration of
Independence, "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his
assent to their acts of pretended legislationS" he just as easily could have
been writing of the World Trade Organization, which now has the legal
authority to force the United States to overturn laws passed at both local,
state, and federal levels with dictates devised by tribunals made up of
representatives of multinational corporations. If Dubai loses in the
American Congress, their next stop will almost certainly be the WTO.
As Simon Romero and Heather Timmons noted in The New York Times on 24
February 2006, "the international shipping business has evolved in recent
years to include many more containers with consumer goods, in addition to
old-fashioned bulk commodities, and that has helped lift profit margins to
30 percent, from the single digits. These smartly managed foreign operators
now manage about 80 percent of port terminals in the United States."
And those 30 percent profits from American port operations now going to
Great Britain will probably soon go to the United Arab Emirates, a nation
with tight interconnections to both the Bush administration and the Bush
family.
Ultimately, it's not about security -- it's about money. In the
multinational corporatocracy's "flat world," money trumps the national good,
community concerns, labor interests, and the environment. NAFTA, CAFTA, and
WTO tribunals can - and regularly do - strike down local and national laws.
Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" are replaced by Antonin Scalia's "Rights of
Corporate Persons."
Profits even trump the desire for good enough port security to avoid
disasters that may lead to war. After all, as Judith Miller wrote in The New
York Times on January 30, 1991, quoting a local in Saudi Arabia: "War is
good for business."
............
Thom Hartmann <http://www.thomhartmann.com> is a Project Censored
Award-winning best-selling author of over a dozen books and the host of a
nationally syndicated noon-3pm ET daily progressive talk show syndicated by
Air America Radio. His most recent books are "What Would Jefferson Do?" and
Ultimate Sacrifice.
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