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MSN and Washington Post.  Staff writer David Weigel contributed from Illinois.

The Republican establishment began losing its party to Donald Trump on May 24, 2000, at 5:41 p.m., on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Urged on by their presidential standard-bearer, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, and by nearly all of the business lobbyists who represented the core of the party’s donor class, three-quarters of House Republicans voted to extend the status of permanent normal trade relations to China. They were more than enough, when added to a minority of Democrats, to secure passage of a bill that would sail through the Senate and be signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

The legislation, a top Republican priority, held the promise of greater economic prosperity for Americans. But few could predict that it would cause a series of economic and political earthquakes that has helped put the GOP in the difficult spot it is in today: with the most anti-trade Republican candidate in modern history, Trump, moving closer to clinching the party’s nomination.

“I try not to regret things,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a Trump supporter who was one of 83 senators to vote for the China bill. “That’s one I regret.”

“The Republican electorate has gone along with their leaders, begrudgingly, for 20 or 30 years,” Sessions said. “I supported all these trade agreements . . . but it’s becoming clear that the promises that were made weren’t true.”

The 2000 vote effectively unleashed a flood of outsourcing to China, which in turn exported trillions of dollars of cheap goods back to the United States. Over the next 10 years, economists have concluded, the expanded trade with China cost the United States at least 2 million jobs. It was the strongest force in an overall manufacturing decline that cost 5 milion jobs. Those workers were typically men whose education stopped after high school, a group that has seen its wages fall by 15 percent after adjusting for inflation.

For blue-collar workers, the economic and political effects of permanent normal trade relations with China have swamped the effects of any other trade decision in the past 25 years. Economic evidence suggests the North American Free Trade Agreement, which passed on a bipartisan vote in 1993, did not cause anywhere near the same level of factory layoffs or wage losses — or any meaningful challenge to the GOP’s pro-trade orthodoxy in presidential nominations.

Trump, who has won important victories in states such as Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina and South Carolina that have been buffeted by the new trade, has built his insurgent campaign in part on opposition to what he calls a bad deal with China. “It is a typical example,” he proclaims on his website, “of how politicians in Washington have failed our country.”

Trump’s voters also break from conservative orthodoxy on trade, and so, increasingly, do other Republicans. Many of his most avid backers, polls show, are the same low-educated, working-class Americans who have struggled economically.

“I’ve always been a free-trade guy,” said Gene Ebergeny, 61, who lives in suburban Chicago. “I’ve thought it’s important. But it feels like we’re giving away the farm.”

“I think we’re getting screwed by trade,” said Mike Singer, 54, of Chicago. “We’re losing a lot of jobs.”

U.S. trade policy had come to a crossroads in the years before the China vote. Congress had voted against giving Clinton expedited power to negotiate new trade deals during his second term. World Trade Organization negotiations had come under violent protest in Seattle in 1999.

“Folks went into that China fight kind of thinking that, this might also be defeated,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, who helped lead the fight against the 2000 bill. “It didn’t feel like I was Don Quixote facing a windmill with my chopstick or something.”

In 2000, China was on course for membership to the WTO, a status effectively giving its exporters access to markets in the United States and around the world. Under WTO rules, member countries are required to extend preferential trading treatment to one another, or what the United States had begun to call permanent normal trade relations. For China, that required an act of Congress.

Business leaders stood nearly united in their support of the bill, arguing that the vote would serve only to open China’s markets to U.S. exports. They were joined in that argument by a pair of prominent Texas Republicans: Rep. Bill Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who sponsored the bill; and Bush, who by then had locked up the party’s presidential nomination.

A week before the House vote, Bush urged Republicans to approve the bill on freedom and foreign policy grounds, and also on economic ones. “Trade with China,” he said, “serves the economic interests of America.”

Business groups that lobbied the bill recall that the closing argument was not hard to sell. The bill passed the House by a vote of 237 to 197. The Senate approved it 83 to 15 in September.

In many ways, the vote worked out much better for the GOP’s donor class than for the working-class voters now flocking to Trump. By 2004, U.S. imports from China had nearly doubled. By 2011, the U.S. trade deficit with China had quadrupled. Thanks to the law, Americans were able to buy cheaper electronics, clothes, toys and other consumer goods.

Some companies ramped up exports to China, creating jobs. Other companies were able to send millions of jobs to a country where factory workers earned far less than those in the United States.

The ripple effects of those job losses have persisted, for workers, in ways that surprised many economists. Standard economists predicted no net job losses from expanded trade with China, economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson wrote in a working paper released this year. In reality, the authors found, new jobs have not materialized quickly, as expected, to replace the jobs lost from trade.

“Adjustment in local labor markets is remarkably slow, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated for at least a full decade after the China trade shock commences,” they wrote. “Exposed workers experience greater job churning and reduced lifetime income.”

The Bush administration filed a handful of WTO complaints against China in his eight years in office.

The Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, promised to crack down on China for manipulating its currency to sell more goods abroad. But Romney was a businessman whose former company had facilitated outsourcing.

It took Trump, a longtime critic of trade agreements, to rally conservative voters around the idea that the Chinese are ripping off the working class via bad trade deals.

Trump has won several of the states that Autor and his co-authors identified in another paper as hardest-hit by import competition from China, including South Carolina, Massachusetts and Mississippi. His surge has pushed many Republicans toward a more protectionist stance.

Some GOP lawmakers are now pushing to punish China for actions that they say constitute cheating on trade, such as currency manipulation. Others lament their party did too little to help the workers whose factory jobs were swept away.

Workers who lost jobs when companies outsourced production to China were left “on an island, economically and politically,” said Bruce Haynes, a Republican consultant who is president of the political consulting firm Purple Strategies. “There’s an acknowledgment that this is upon the party. We know we need to do something about it, but we can’t do anything about it right now, because we’re in the middle of a hurricane.”

It appears there are not enough Republican votes today in the GOP-controlled Congress to pass a new trade deal with Pacific nations.

“The Republicans are still way, way, way more the pro-free-trade party,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a longtime trade critic, who says the fracture that began with the China vote could end up splitting the GOP much like civil rights split Democrats in 1968. “That’s why the structure of their party is under such distress.”

Business groups are betting he is wrong. “In trade politics, things change but they also stay the same,” said John Murphy, senior vice president for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a veteran advocate for trade deals. “When we have a presidential election, it is not unusual to see an eruption like we’re seeing right now.”

Trade-agreement supporters point to a recent Gallup survey that shows near-record enthusiasm for trade. That enthusiasm is up among Democrats and independents, Gallup found, but it has fallen among Republicans.

Staff writer David Weigel contributed from Illinois.

 

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Jobs were exported to China because Republicans thought that Chinese would be more stupid than the Indians and that Americans would end up in control of the Chinese economy by exporting part of the industrial process and controlling the overall process from America.

The reality was that the Chinese made Americans and Europeans compete in their territory for cheap workers by giving more privileges to companies that transferred more knowledge and technology. So at the end the Chinese were able to quickly learn and replicate entire factories and the production chain,  and thus became providers of manufacturing services. Basically they became able to manufacture anything and so the western companies only needed to hire designers for their products and send those designs to China for mass production of the items.

This was it. Corporate America betrayed their base. They found that by exporting jobs to China they would increase their margins by 90%. Bingo! 

Unfortunately for America this increase in the corporate gains was not reflected in the collection of corporate taxes, because in reality most tax money is collected from workers salaries. Workers pay proportionally much higher taxes than the corporations. If the workers lose their jobs than America loses the tax money  they need to pay the government. Workers without job will have no money to spend so consumer confidence goes lower and so commerce, local production and the economy.

After 15 years of sending jobs to China we now see that even billionaires are upset at the results. Donald Trump is just one of them.

 

FM
baseman posted:

I tell you, back in the late 80's early 90's I went to a factory close to my home in NJ and there they made custom winter coats.  They were a big supplier for Macys and other stores but anyone could walk in and get one custom made.  The place was filled with hundreds of mostly women, but many men also, Blacks, Hispanics, others.  Today, it's all gone, abandoned buildings knocked down leaving a large empty lot!!

Maybe somewhere in the grand scheme there is a net net, but the average blue-collar lower middle-class don't see it that way!!

Many in RH earned their money in the garment industry. I had a girlfriend who went to U Con and we decided to spend summer of 80 together. We got a crib in Harlem dirt cheap. Once in NY I decided to track down some of my friends from High School. One worked in the garment district and I went to meet him. He took me to the factories and they were all populated with Guyanese, women and men by the hundreds. I remember it was hot dust and congested and I was filled with sadness at how hard those people had to work for 3.5 dollars an hour. I am glad those jobs went to mexico or wherever. They were bad.

FM

You will see how the Mexicans will climb over Trump's wall to get these jobs for $15. per hour.  And they will pay taxes that will go back into the country to develop the infrastructure.  We will have to worry about housing and other services for them but Trump is a real estate man.  He will figure it out.

And the best thing that will happen is the low income workers who can't find jobs will get off the welfare system which is a burden to taxpayers, once these jobs come back to America.  More people will be working and paying lower taxes.  Win-win situation here!

Bibi Haniffa
Bibi Haniffa posted:

You will see how the Mexicans will climb over Trump's wall to get these jobs for $15. per hour.  And they will pay taxes that will go back into the country to develop the infrastructure.  We will have to worry about housing and other services for them but Trump is a real estate man.  He will figure it out.

And the best thing that will happen is the low income workers who can't find jobs will get off the welfare system which is a burden to taxpayers, once these jobs come back to America.  More people will be working and paying lower taxes.  Win-win situation here!

Like he figured out how to file bankruptcy 4 times..hahahah

the man is dunce who pulling the wool over people who just overeacting to a black fella in the white house

FM
Bibi Haniffa posted:

 

And the best thing that will happen is the low income workers who can't find jobs will get off the welfare system which is a burden to taxpayers, once these jobs come back to America.  More people will be working and paying lower taxes.  Win-win situation here!

So low income people will get low income jobs and get off welfare? WHich world you living in?

There are low income people working low income jobs and are receiving welfare right now...

Unless you think these companies gonna pay high income for stuff they used to pay low income??

FM
baseman posted:
RiffRaff posted:
Bibi Haniffa posted:

 

And the best thing that will happen is the low income workers who can't find jobs will get off the welfare system which is a burden to taxpayers, once these jobs come back to America.  More people will be working and paying lower taxes.  Win-win situation here!

So low income people will get low income jobs and get off welfare? WHich world you living in?

There are low income people working low income jobs and are receiving welfare right now...

Unless you think these companies gonna pay high income for stuff they used to pay low income??

It's not a zero-sum game!!  Working for a living is better than welfare even if both financially net to the same.  To work is better for the mind and for your kids to see!!

Base Hit the nail on the head.

I visited Albany/Schenectady NY and what I saw shocked me. A whole generation of African Americans are living on welfare through no fault of theirs because there is not enough jobs or industries to provide employment.

Succesive Republican and Demoracts governments kept these people in poverty. Their voices were not heard and the media kept these communities as America's dark kept secret.

It was like visiting a third world country.

Enter Indo Guyanese who started to invest and buying houses (some Canadians also did) and then all of a sudden these communities have been revived.

Base is right about people working and being role models to their children. 

Trump needs to make Americans proud again. Bring back jobs and investment to America and stop the corporate greed. There is no sin in what Trump wants to do.

 

FM
RiffRaff posted:
Bibi Haniffa posted:

 

And the best thing that will happen is the low income workers who can't find jobs will get off the welfare system which is a burden to taxpayers, once these jobs come back to America.  More people will be working and paying lower taxes.  Win-win situation here!

So low income people will get low income jobs and get off welfare? WHich world you living in?

There are low income people working low income jobs and are receiving welfare right now...

Unless you think these companies gonna pay high income for stuff they used to pay low income??

Low income workers will acquire skills and hopefully move on to higher paying jobs if they don't want to be stuck in one place doing the same thing.  New doors can open for them.  They can start saving money and build points towards Social Security for their retirement years. You don't learn anything on welfare or can transfer skills to another job. 

Bibi Haniffa
Last edited by Bibi Haniffa
baseman posted:
RiffRaff posted:
Bibi Haniffa posted:

 

And the best thing that will happen is the low income workers who can't find jobs will get off the welfare system which is a burden to taxpayers, once these jobs come back to America.  More people will be working and paying lower taxes.  Win-win situation here!

So low income people will get low income jobs and get off welfare? WHich world you living in?

There are low income people working low income jobs and are receiving welfare right now...

Unless you think these companies gonna pay high income for stuff they used to pay low income??

It's not a zero-sum game!!  Working for a living is better than welfare even if both financially net to the same.  To work is better for the mind and for your kids to see!!

you miss my point...even if you work for a low wage like Bibi advocating, you still going to be on welfare. I am all for working for a living, but cost of living surpasses the meager salaries lots of companies pay.

AMericans going to have to decide if they want to pay more for goods and services.....and I don't see Trump advocating for higher wages, so I take all he says as just BS!

Unfortunately, lots of so called intelligent folks fall for his BS, some of you post on GNI

FM
Bibi Haniffa posted:
RiffRaff posted:
Bibi Haniffa posted:

 

And the best thing that will happen is the low income workers who can't find jobs will get off the welfare system which is a burden to taxpayers, once these jobs come back to America.  More people will be working and paying lower taxes.  Win-win situation here!

So low income people will get low income jobs and get off welfare? WHich world you living in?

There are low income people working low income jobs and are receiving welfare right now...

Unless you think these companies gonna pay high income for stuff they used to pay low income??

Low income workers will acquire skills and hopefully move on to higher paying jobs if they don't want to be stuck in one place doing the same thing.  New doors can open for them.  They can start saving money and build points towards Social Security for their retirement years. You don't learn anything on welfare or can transfer skills to another job. 

what skills...working in an assembly line assembling the latest edition of the Apple Iphone

Manufacturing is not coming back...US are the innovaters, they create, get paid big bucks for their creation, then look for the cheapest place to make them, so Americans can afford them, the company stock goes up, the stockholders are happy...and you dancing because your 401K just went up 10%

Yuh think Trump or anyone else stopping that???

FM

I don't necessarily see a proportionate increase in price to transferring the operations from overseas to the US. Many of the products sold here already have very high rate of returns and will still do so if they were made here. Take the iPhone for instance. The production cost for the 6 is not three times that of the 3 yet the 6 sells for three times what the 3 was sold for. I am sure that Apple will still make a killing selling the 6 for 8+ hundred dollars even if it was made in the US. There was a time when it was good to be a million dollar company. Now it is all about being a billion dollar company. Certified Financial Planners used to be called Money Managers. Now they are called Wealth Managers.

FM

In 1992 when Walton became the world's richest man at $6B, he did it bragging his products were proudly made in the USA. Somehow he did not need to outsource his products to climb to the top. Now after his death, greed took over the Walton family to where their aggregate worth is over $100B. And that is only one example of the greed that has permeate our society. The kind of greed that made a Guyanese family fall to the level of committing over $50M real estate fraud not so long ago.

FM
cain posted:

Well how do you expect one to go out and purchase a few mansions, few cars, a yacht a plane and the same typea toilet tissue we use on only 6B?

One of those Walton's son was able to amass some $11B less than a decade after his poppy died before he crashed his self made plane into a tree and died. May his soul rest in peace.

FM
Last edited by Former Member
ksazma posted:
cain posted:

Well how do you expect one to go out and purchase a few mansions, few cars, a yacht a plane and the same typea toilet tissue we use on only 6B?

One of those Walton's son was able to amass some $11B less than a decade after his poppy died before he crashed his self made plane into a tree and died. May his soul rest in peace.

Walnut tree???

cain
cain posted:
ksazma posted:
cain posted:

Well how do you expect one to go out and purchase a few mansions, few cars, a yacht a plane and the same typea toilet tissue we use on only 6B?

One of those Walton's son was able to amass some $11B less than a decade after his poppy died before he crashed his self made plane into a tree and died. May his soul rest in peace.

Walnut tree???

With emphasis on nut.

FM

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