Posted under Free Trade
Manufacturing’s Dismal Decade
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Last year, Barack Obama committed his administration to doubling U.S. exports in half a decade.
The good news: He is on the way. U.S. exports of goods and services grew in 2010 by 16.6 percent.
Bad news: U.S. imports, starting from a higher base, surged by 19.7 percent.
Result: The U.S. trade deficit in 2010 worsened by 33 percent, rising from $375 billion to $498 billion, the largest percentage increase in a decade. If Obama keeps this up, he may prove as big a disaster for U.S. manufacturing as his predecessor, although these are big shoes to fill.
As he has each February for years, Charles W. McMillion of MBG Information Services has compiled the stats on the industrial decline of his country under our free trade presidents. Here are but a few numbers for the decade from December 2000, the month before George W. Bush took the oath, to December 2010, the end of Obama’s second year.
In that decade, America ran a total of $6.1 trillion in trade deficits, more than our entire economic growth. To finance those 10 years of deficits, America had to borrow $1.553 billion every day.
And we wonder why China owns America.
roho on 28 Feb 2011 at 7:56 pm #
Good points PJB!……….Free Trade is a failure……The entire British Empire was built on mercantilism and protectionism for 200 years. Look at what free trade has done tpo them?………Do we manufacture and export?……………..Yea, weapons, for the military industrial complex…..That’s not an economy!