to sign. NAFTA was a treaty endorsed by every former President (Republican and Democrat). The whole point of NAFTA was to encourage businesses to invest in production in Mexico and Central America so their citizens would have a reason to stay there and STOP coming to the US for jobs!

talk about TPP on Tom Ashbrook's NPR show and there's more to know about it, is all I can say.

I guess we don't matter right?

Those are the voters who researchers are seeking out and asking, "Why?"

We've had article after article, whole year, interviewing Trump supporters like they were precious, special things.

And there are many reasons why many possibly switched to Trump.

But I'm grateful to Washington Post for challenging the narrative that Hillary's economic message didn't resonate with voters in swing states:

"

"Exit polls show Hillary Clinton winning a majority of the vote from people who told pollsters that the economy was the most important issue facing the country. What's more, in each state, a majority of voters said that was the case. "

"The exit poll questionnaire gave voters a choice between four options for the most important issue. Clinton was generally preferred by those who said foreign policy was the most important issue, too, but Trump was preferred by those who saw immigration or terrorism as most important. The key is the margins. On average, about 13 percent of people in the 27 states said foreign policy was most important and they preferred Clinton by an average of 30 points. On average, voters who said the economy was most important preferred Clinton by 7.3. But on terrorism, rated most important by a fifth of voters, on average, Trump led by an average of 21.8 points. On immigration (most important to an average of 12.2 percent of respondents)? A huge 42.1 percentage point lead for Trump.""

and Trump's bullshit tariffs ain't gonna happen.

China's already making in-roads in South America

... how do you come up with a trade policy that benefits the 99%?

People a lot smarter than me have tried and failed to find an answer.


While bad trade deals have hurt people a protectionist policy would hurt the economy greatly. Google Smoot-Holly.


For the record I was against the TPP

While Clinton and other Democrats campaign on some of the very policies that help the German economy thrive (new high tech industries, reducing wage disparity, affordable college, technical education programs as an alternative to college, etc.).

Just as with the US, Germany has outsourced low-skilled jobs and knows those jobs aren't ever coming back.

Germany absolutely has a different culture and mindset...one that is the complete opposite of Trump's.

that have good jobs in manufacturing and compare that to America. Then you'll start to understand Trump's appeal in the rust belt

Germany thrives on high tech jobs, limiting wage disparity, affordable college, apprenticeship programs, a more progressive income tax structure than the US has, more parental leave than the US has, etc. Germany doesn't thrive on bringing back or preventing the departure of low-skilled manufacturing jobs.

US manufacturing is at an all-time high, but automation means far fewer people are needed. And wages have been stagnant, while the wealthiest continue to make a killing. Low-skilled jobs have been outsourced just as Germany has done. And those jobs aren't coming back. Germans would tell you the same thing.

Nothing about Trump's message is even remotely in sync with what Germany is doing in order to thrive. Quite the opposite in fact.

completely different culture and approach. And everything else you said. We should be careful with easy comparisons.

Lazy thinking or a lack of education? Some of both, I guess.

I fall into that pitfall occasionally , but we come up with better solutions if we accurately access what's going on, even if inconvenient - to try to be get some kind of objective perspective.

You wrote:

Germany doesn't thrive on bringing back or preventing the departure of low-skilled manufacturing jobs

Yet the evidence suggests there is essentially no relationship between the change in manufacturing employment and robot use. Despite the installation of far more robots between 1993 and 2007, Germany lost just 19 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 1996 and 2012 compared to a 33 percent drop in the United States.

For the 3rd time, Germany has also outsourced low-skilled jobs with no expectation that they will return. But they've replaced those jobs with high-tech jobs, they limit wage disparity, etc.

The US needs to invest in new high-tech "green" industries. Because things like infrastructure development can no longer be considered a jobs program like it was in the New Deal days. Road work that once required hundreds can now be done by 1 person with a big piece of equipment.

You're ignoring virtually every point I've made regarding tax structure, wages, education, parental leave, etc. Things that run completely counter to what Trump proposes but are in sync with what Clinton and other Dems propose. You need to do some more research on exactly what enables Germany to thrive, instead of suggesting that Germany's ability to thrive somehow relates to what Trump campaigned on, which is laughable at best. Yet again, Trump's proposals run completely counter to what Germany has been doing.

Pointing to Germany, in other words, makes my point. It makes Clinton's point. It most certainly doesn't make Trump's point.

Lastly, there's probably more resistance to re-locating in the US than there is in Germany due to differences in size, diversity, etc.

If you ever want to win the rust belt again, I suggest you look at the data I gave you again

Democrats campaign on ideas that are fairly in sync with what Germany has done in order to thrive. Trump campaigned on the complete opposite. So, once again, the irony is that you're making my point. And you're making Clinton's point. So, thanks.

Tariffs were already high when the bill was passed, which is not the case today. Also, most economists agree that trade protectionism wasn't the cause of the Great Depression, it was monetary policy.

On the other hand, tariffs and "protectionism" has been a staple of US trade policy until the 1970s and ww were a fairly prosperous nation during that period.

Ha-Joon Chang chronicled how a similar economic plan turned South Korea into an economic powerhouse.

You can find lots of nations that built their wealth through protecting and investing in local industry. You won't find a lot that have removed all barriers to trade and somehow have become wealthy. China in particular is benefitting from open Western markets, but itself has barriers for foreign products so it can develop it's own capacity.

It's not like this is shocking information.

But it made it worse.

But outside of GOP think tank circles, I don't think you'll find much support for the idea that Smoot-Hawely deepened the Great Depression.

The Democratic Party needs to speak to people in the rust belt or we are fucked, even more than now

There is a significant difference. Populism has been the purview of both the Right and Left historically, but has been out of fashion for a long time. In the decades since the Great Depression both parties became free trade. Hoover was the last President to propose real protectionism for American products and jobs. The kind of populism that Trump is advocating is closely associated with nationalism.

Last edited Sun Dec 4, 2016, 08:19 PM - Edit history (1)

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 was the GOP's and supported by the "progressive" (sarcasm) Hoover.
These are historical facts.

It was FDR and the progressive Democrats of the 1930s who moved the country toward free trade. Every President until Trump has been a free trader. Even the most progressive Democratic candidate of our times, George McGovern was a free trader. NAFTA was more of the same-- supported by both parties, although the Left did begin to oppose free trade treaties like NAFTA in the 90's, before Trump. Bernie Sanders for one voted against it.

Here is but one article on the history-- I can't quote the whole thing but read it through:
There is nothing controversial here.

https://hbr.org/2016/04/americas-uneasy-history-with-free-trade
"We seem to be awash in opinions about free trade these days. From U.S. presidential campaign rhetoric to the recently signed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, it might feel like this debate has just started. But debate over trade is as old as the American republic, and it is intertwined with economic theories of competition and geopolitics
...
As decades passed, the general trend was toward higher tariffs to protect northern manufacturing; the trend culminated in the highly restrictive Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.
...
Four years later, however, the tide started to reverse. At that time, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, was a dyed-in-the-wool free-trader (reflecting the interests of his state of Tennessee) and he was determined to reverse the high-tariff policies embodied in the the Smoot-Hawley act.
...
His answer was to negotiate foreign trade agreements. The U.S. would reduce its tariffs, but only in exchange for partner nations reducing theirs. Congress authorized such negotiations in the landmark Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. This new law provided, moreover, that once the lower rates were negotiated, they could be implemented through presidential proclamation. No further Congressional action was required. And the lower rates would be extended to all major US trading partners."
-------------
The Right and the GOP were the last protectionists, so it is fitting that Trump is bringing them back to their roots. Bernie Sanders was also interested in returning the country to more protectionist policies on the Left. But really free trade versus protectionism is not a matter of right/left policy. NAFTA however was the first free trade policy rejected by liberals-- so the Left has wanted to return to protectionism before the Right in modern times. So in that sense you are correct.

Tariffs were already high before Smoot-Hawley, and furthermore, opposition to free trade is not opposition to trade.

you can't fabricate history. It's true that tariffs were high before Smoot Hawley- In the 20's, it was the official policy of the Republicans, who were even more conservative than those today. Before that, protectionism was favored by the Right and the Left at various times to foster America's nascent industries.

This stuff used to be taught in high school history-- free trade versus protectionism is one of the big themes of American economic history. I guess things have changed. Perhaps you might know that Smoot Hawley was blamed for exacerbating the Great Depression at least retrospectively. That doesn't mean that the time is not right for a move back toward some protectionism. The real problem these days is sophisticated automation which will soon destroy manufacturing jobs forever across the world.

WRT jobs or anything else, is delusional.

... is that some people will believe anything, if it's what they want to hear.

Trump has every one of his brand-name products made in low-wage countries, including all of the products and accouterments for his hotels.

Anyone who thinks that he's really interested in keeping jobs in America is a damned fool.

Tired of the anti-Hillary redux

Milwaukee — I love telling people I’m from Wisconsin. Maybe it’s my defense mechanism for when people accuse me of being a coastal elite, out of touch with Real America. I like fulfilling all the Wisconsin stereotypes. I love cheese and cheese curds, of course. I love our sports teams out of a vague sense of homerism. And my accent (all hard A’s) comes out in full force after ah coupl’ah beers.

Mostly I love my grandma, who has called Wisconsin home for 88 years. Her parents immigrated to Wisconsin from Germany, and she started public school without knowing a word of English. She forgot most of the German her parents taught her years ago, but taught me the words to the “Liechtensteiner Polka” that we would sometimes hear when my family would go to a Friday night fish fry.

Up until Nov. 8, I still believed my state’s moral baseline bent toward empathy. The Wisconsin I thought I knew, where I lived for 21 years, was filled with complex but fundamentally decent people who recognized that everyone is deserving of respect and could disagree without being disagreeable. The state did elect Scott Walker as governor in 2010, and the Republican-led legislature gutted public-sector unions, setting off huge protests in the Capitol. But I didn’t think that state would vote for Donald J. Trump, turning its 10 electoral votes to a Republican for the first time since 1984. (I mean, come on, we even voted for Dukakis.)

As much as Mr. Trump won the election in Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton lost it. Her campaign, which prided itself on employing all the data wizards and ground game gurus money can buy, did not do nearly enough to lock down the upper Midwest, particularly Wisconsin and Michigan, and instead treated those states as a given.'>>>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016171309

You'll probably get a more open-minded hearing if you make it clear that it isn't you yourself saying that.

Oh my god.
We need a mandatory reading list for elections. Jk. But man, this is so hopeless.

In the beginning, many were opposed to the TPP and saw it's dangers. Once the primary season began, it seems that most here spoke in favor of the TPP out of respect for Obama and Clinton. Here's one of many early posts:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023661805

Deserve what's coming.