Although I sometimes despise Pat Buchanan for his open racist rants he squarely hit this one out of the park. Please read the whole article it is just the truth.
Excerpt: Death Of Manufacturing. By Patrick J Buchanan
From 2003 article Death of Manufacturing.
Across America the story is the same: steel and lumber mills going into bankruptcy; textile plants moving to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and the Far East; auto plants closing and opening overseas; American mines being sealed and farms vanishing. Seven hundred thousand textile workers—many of them minorities and single women—have lost their jobs since NAFTA passed in 1993.
http://www.amconmag.com/...
<Thirty years have elapsed since our free-trade era began and 30 months since George W. Bush became president. It’s time to measure the promise of global free trade against the performance.</p>
Undeniably, free trade has delivered for consumers. A trip to the mall, where the variety of suits, shoes, shirts, toys, gadgets, games, TVs, and appliances abounds, makes the case. But what has it cost our country?
Every month George Bush has been in office, America has lost manufacturing jobs. One in seven has vanished since his inauguration. In 1950, a third of our labor force was in manufacturing. Now, it is 12.5 percent. U.S. manufacturing is in a death spiral, and it is not a natural death. This is a homicide. Open-borders free trade is killing American manufacturing.
In 2002, we ran a trade deficit in goods of $484 billion. This May, it reached the level of $562 billion, nearly 6 percent of GDP. Evangelists of free trade tell us trade deficits do not matter. Michael Boskin, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Bush I, declared, "It does not make any difference whether a country makes computer chips or potato chips.">
END OF EXCERPT....
It is only natural that we now find ourselves in Deep DOO DOO.... We have nothing driving the U.S. Economy except Government spending. Drastic times call for drastic measures the things we once did we must do again ...make things...
What should we make things like Microchips that are un-disputably domestic for our defense industry. High Speed rail that serves as back up for an aging and ever increasingly nefarious air travel systems. Infrastructure to support the vehicles of tomorrow to replace the internal combustion engine that relies on a ever shrinking world oil supply. We have to make hammers and nails and nuts and bolts and screws and all the things we used to make to be productive. Even domestically produced television sets because after all it is the most American invention beside Cars and planes and we have just given away the technology.
Vertical integration of products is the key to the future of American manufacturing resurgence. We also need a Set of leaders who understand that without a strong manufacturing base the U.S. is on unstable footing for the future...