It’s quiz time.
I will list a statement. You decide who said it.
The correct answer is either Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton.
34 Statements – Who Made Them?
- I do not believe in unfettered free trade. I believe in fair trade which works for the middle class and working families.
- I will take on corporations that take their jobs to China.
- I think NAFTA has been a disaster.
- Instead of passing such trade deals again and again, we must develop trade policies which demand that American corporations create jobs here, and not abroad.
- TPP is a death blow for American manufacturing.
- I’m for free and fair trade.
- We need to bring manufacturing jobs back home where they belong.
- Globalization has torn down the barriers that have formerly separated the national from the international markets.
- The top priority of any trade deal should be to help American workers.
- I heard it about NAFTA. I heard it about CAFTA. I heard it about permanent normal trade relations with China. Here is the fact. Since 2001, we have lost almost 60,000 factories and millions of good-paying jobs.
- Maybe we should have a trade policy which represents the working families of this country, that rebuilds our manufacturing base, not than just representing the CEOs of large multinational corporations.
- We must end our disastrous trade policies (NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, etc.) which enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to China and other low-wage countries.
- This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class.
- NAFTA was the worst trade deal in history, and China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization has enabled the greatest jobs theft in history.
- I think corporate America has to start investing in this country and create decent paying jobs here.
- It is a lot cheaper for the American companies to set up plants in China, hire Chinese workers at 50 cents an hour, 75 cents an hour, whatever it is, and have them build the product for the Chinese markets than it is to pay American workers $15 an hour, $20 an hour, provide health insurance, deal with the union, deal with the environment.
- Connect the dots. Our current trade deficit is causing the loss of over 2 million jobs. Over the last 20 years, while the US has run up over a trillion dollars in trade deficits, millions of American workers have been thrown into the streets.
- The function of trade agreements like NAFTA is to make it easier for American companies to move abroad, and to force our workers to compete against desperate people in the Third World.
- Our current record-breaking merchandise trade deficit of $112 billion is costing us over 2 million decent paying jobs. NAFTA, GATT, and Most Favored Nation status with China must be repealed, and a new trade policy developed.
- The word has to get out to corporate America, they are going to have to start reinvesting in the United States of America. They are going to have to start building the products and the goods the American people need rather than run all over in search of cheap labor.
- The TPP is horrible deal. It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble.
- I am all for free trade, but it’s got to be fair. When Ford moves their massive plants to Mexico, we get nothing. I want them to stay in Michigan.
- The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.
Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache. - When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing.
- Skilled craftsmen and tradespeople and factory workers have seen the jobs they loved shipped thousands of miles away.
- The current global trading system is distorted not only by barriers to entry in developing and emerging economies, but by the power of special interests in developed countries.
- We should focus on ending currency manipulation, environmental destruction and miserable working conditions in China.
- We’re going to stop giving penny of your money to anybody who ships a job out to another country. We’re going to begin to get the tax code to reflect what the needs of middle class families are so we can rebuild a strong & prosperous middle class.
- Trade needs to become a win-win. People ask me, am I a free trader or a fair trader? I want to be a smart, pro-American trader. And that means we look for ways to maximize the impact of what we’re trying to export and quit being taken advantage of by other countries.
- I believe in smart trade. Pro-American trade. Trade that has labor and environmental standards, that’s not a race to the bottom but tries to lift up not only American workers but also workers around the world.
- It’s important that we have an idea of how to maximize the benefits from the global economy while minimizing the impact on American workers. That includes things like real trade adjustment assistance and other support.
- It’s important that we enforce the agreements we have. That’s why I’ve called for a trade prosecutor, to make sure that we do enforce them.
- What we have learned is that we have to drive a tougher bargain.
- Hillary Clinton Voted for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions of jobs.
Sources
- Bernie Sanders on Free Trade
- Trump on Free Trade
- Hillary Clinton on Free Trade
- Donald Trump’s Jobs Plan Speech
Answers
- Sanders: 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
- Trump: 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 18, 13, 14, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
- Clinton: 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33
- Sanders and Trump: 34 (Sanders first, Trump quoted Sanders)
Flip a coin. As a firm believer in free trade, they are all totally hopeless.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Hi Mish,
Love your site & read it daily.
Here’s the deal: “Free Trade” is great if you’re on the side of Capital (i.e., an investor, bankster, or corporate officer; most of your income comes from capital gains); and horrible if you’re a Worker (i.e., most of your income comes from wages or a salary).
The world’s corporations are seeking to maximize their profits. In our distorted economy, that means minimizing employment expenses. When everyone does that, Aggregate Demand is reduced, economic activity slows, Workers are laid off, and economic activity slows further still.
Workers = Customers = Voters.
By lowering wages & salaries, corporations are reducing their primary sources of income. And that’s where we are.
Meanwhile, the world’s central banks are trying to stimulate Demand by any means possible — *except* increasing Wages & Salaries.
The Occupy Movement, the Brexit vote, the success of Bernie Sanders, and the similarity of the quotes of Sanders, Clinton, and Trump regarding trade are all clear indications that the world’s Workers will not longer tolerate a scheme where the fruit of their Labor, as well as the vast majority of their productivity gains, goes to the top 0.1%. Workers today are working longer hours for lower pay, fewer benefits, and less job security, so someone else can benefit.
It’s a great scheme if you can convince millions of Workers to support it. That was done — for a while. Now those millions of Workers have figured out that they were sold a bill of goods. And it’s an election year. Any candidate who campaigns against “Free Trade” & against TPP/TTIP will be difficult to beat in November.
Balanced trade is fair trade. Mercantile beggar thy neighbor is not free and not fair.
Most of the people and businesses you buy from every day do not buy an equivalent dollar amount of goods and services from you in return. The his unbalanced but it is free trade and it is good. Balance isn’t the answer.
You’re correct that mercantilism is bad.
Hi Mish, the problem with so-called “free trade” obviously is the playing fields are not standardized. I owned factories in California, and ultimately moved to Thailand because the regulations and costs of operating in CA were driving me bankrupt. I did okay in Thailand for some years until the Internet flattened things out and made India, China, Vietnam, etc accessible to everyone and gradually I had to sell at or below cost to compete. I finally tossed in the white towel, closed shop and stopped trading altogether.
If the USA has a quadrillion environmental, health, work, building, fire, water air, fuel, unemployment insurace, worker’s comp insurance, medical insurance, liability insurance, and on and on, there is just no way an American based manufacturing facility can compete with Vietnam, China, India etc where the regulations are far more lax. Solution? I can’t say.
William,
While it’s a bummer the deck was stacked against you, you don’t HAVE to run a manufacturing business and neither does anyone else. The system we have isn’t free trade, it’s managed trade– that’s Mish’s point. Pointing to your inability to profitably run a manufacturing business in a managed trade system is not an argument against free trade.
capitalism eats itself
Are you talking about laissez-faire capitalism or state capitalism?
Since NAFTA we have generated a $12 TRILLION goods trade deficit total – that is ALL money that has LEFT the United States to PROSPER other countries – none of whom can truly claim to be our “friends”.
If we just had a BALANCE of goods trade that would be $12 trillion in jobs creating business – probably a third higher because of higher wages in this country. And with TRADE AGREEMENTS, MOST of that business created LITTLE income to the federal tax structure – while simultaneously stealing the jobs.
And in return for those measly $12 trillion, “we” received goods it would have cost “us” many times more to produce “ourselves.” In Litteratia, that’s what we call a good deal….
The ones primarily getting the short end of the stick i all of this, are the suckers working for slave wages and huffing toxins all day, to build all manners of stuff for Americans. While getting paid back in money simply printed out of thin air, instead of getting anything tangible in return.
Domestically, it is a real issue that all that printed money, instead of being handed to those who formerly did work for decent wages, are instead being handed to a small cadre of well connected banksters, lawyers, Public Sector unionistas, real estate “investors”/hacks and other dregs of a no longer even remotely decent society. But that problem is entirely unrelated to some Chinese guy voluntarily working under a whip for some American guy.
A sad thing abot the whole freedom-is-bad mantra, is that it is yet another example of the above dregs getting off scot free, by successfully deflecting blame towards someone else. Getting the indoctrinati all riled up about yet another hobgoblin. One that is not only entirely imaginary, but in fact logically impossible for those who care about such subtleties.
If people put a fraction of the effort required by their illiterate anti freedom tirades, into getting rid of the Fed, the Income tax at all levels and sales taxes along with it; while putting in place a government with the sense to write off all debt and “obligations” with sufficient gusto that no goverment would be able to borrow another peny for at least several generations; all these nonsense “issues” would sort themselves out in virtually no time. But count on the indoctrunati to stomp their well worn boots for yet another wannabe Tin Pot instead. One who promises “contracts with America”, “hope and change”, “make America great again”, or whatever such drivel the drones are clamoring to fall for this time around. While keeping up the printing, the taxes, the debasing of productive people, the theft by “law” and all the rest of the idiocies that have worked so well for the dregs in the past. And looks set to continue working for the forseeable future.
I didn’t see references for #’s 8 or 9
Trump 8
Bernie 9
Mish is living in theoretical world. Our ‘free trade” deals have ruined our country and cost the middle class.
I have been in the manufacturing business for 35 years. With all of the regulations, the business has never been more difficult. We lose business to Mexico all the time. It’s not just wages, it is the costs of operating in the US and the cost of regulation and litigation.
Trade isn’t free if one side has a heavier burden. I would compare it to the Olympics having the 100 M race and the US runner having to carry 200 Lbs on his back.That isn’t a free competition and neither is our trade.
The proper solution is to reduce regulation and litigation, not add a bunch of tariffs. Your solution is put 200 lbs on everyones backs, which is crazy.
Congratulations! First sensible comment I have read on this thread!
You’re right– adding more costs to the system is not a solution to the problem “there are too many costs in this system”. We need to remove costs, not add costs so everyone’s costs are “balanced and fair.”
I remember reading something by economist George Reisman on this subject. He was explaining the benefits of a unilateral policy of free trade (ie, no tariffs, regulations, etc., inhibiting the flow of goods INTO one’s country). He talked about a sailing ship that had to go against the wind in taking goods to the trade partner country, but sailed with the wind coming back. The return trips (imports) were cheaper because the trip was faster and less hazardous than the going trips (exports) due to the headwind.
He pointed out that a country is RICHER the more cheaply it can import goods and services, and it gains nothing by, say, trimming the sails on the return voyage so the ship goes as slowly as it does on the export route. That would be adding costs with no benefit.
The problems are created by governments, bond markets, government currencies, etc. The problems are NOT about the terms of trade in the sense that some tit-for-tat tariff system can make it all “fair”. Comparative advantage will sort out the most efficient way to produce goods and services regardless of the regulatory apparatus that is constructed.
If you argue for “fair trade” you don’t understand comparative advantage and you can’t reason through a principle from trade with your neighbor to trade with someone far away. The difference is distance, nothing more.
Yes the middle class has shrunk but the upper class has expanded.
Wait until Trump is elected. We will destroy China! A repudiation of the US debt that they hold and a complete embargo on Chinese goods. WAR!
Outside of a shooting war with China, the US will never default on debt held by them (or anyone else).
Never say never. In the brave new world of President Trump many things will be possible.
What currently goes by the moniker USA sure will.
Either because someone of consequence realizes it is the last option, or because it becomes so obvious to even the most thoroughly indoctrinated population in history that not doing so is tantamount to national suicide, or simply because it will be one of the first things the Caliph does once the territory falls under his rule.
Currency debasement is a form of default.
Why would we want to destroy China? China enriches us. Chinese markets and capital frees us to innovate. They get sock factories. We get Google. We’re both better off. Now, if we have problems distributing our riches, then we should fix our internal policies that impede class mobility, restrict opportunity. Trade makes us rich. We just need to end policies that prevent free competitive access to the riches.
NeverTrump
You maybe factually correct but no one in America outside of the US Chamber of Commerce believes what you are saying. Never Trump? I doubt it.
As a canadian, I was appalled by Nafta, businesses started moving out immediately
Trade is economic war … and the spoils for victors is jobs gained.
US trade policies have enriched its owners of capital (the top 20%) while making poorer the workers (the bottom 80%)
Mish’s “free trade” agreement that can be written on a single piece of paper won’t change that outcome.
How wrong you are! Trade is the OPPOSITE of war. Trade only occurs when both parties agree they’re better off making an exchange. WHY they believe they’re better off is irrelevant, the important idea is that they see mutual benefit in making an exchange.
You’re engaged in Orwellian doublethink, where war is peace, love is hate and up is down. Do more reading on this subject. Russ Robert’s “The Choice” (https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Fable-Free-Trade-Protection/dp/0131433547?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc) is a good place to start, although the Austrians are much better (www.mises.org)
“Trade only occurs when both parties agree they’re better off making an exchange.”
I see your problem. You’re conflating those making the deals with the whole.
Of course, those in US making the trade deals (owners of capital) are better off with the trade deals … the workers (only the vast majority) are screwed.
And if you do not, or can not, see trade as war … that is your problem.
Wow mish, 6 comments so far and not one of them sensible. These people can’t think in terms of simple principles and seem unwilling or unable to treat your argument charitably. Why do they come here, just to piss themselves off?
You’re right of course. Free trade is the only sane option and none of the three candidates understand it.
All these people like free trade with their neighbors, coworkers, people in other states, etc. But when it comes to national boundaries their logic goes right out the window as if by magic!
Bad analogy. The United States can run trade deficits essentially forever because it creates the primary reserve currency for the world. Individuals within the country can’t do that. So it doesn’t go out the window as if by magic! They understand the consequences of that and I suspect that you don’t.
Jon Sellers,
No, I do understand the consequences of violent interference in market exchange. That is why I also understand the solution is to end that violent interference, not add more of it in the interest of an absurd “fairness”.
Your fatalism has distracted you from simple logic. Claiming the US can do something uneconomic “essentially forever” implies there is no economic scarcity. But there is. The US government is consuming scarce capital on this scheme and because that capital is scarce it will run out.
But the fed doesn’t really have to do it forever. Just long enough to gut the manufacturing and manufacturing know-how of the American people. True wealth is the know-how.
As Americans continue to move from producing valuable goods to schlepping women’s fashion at Macy’s, the American people will continue to get poorer relative to the rest of the world.
All three are more of the same. Yeah, sure…they talk about “bringing jobs home” and “shovel ready projects” but the fact is they only want to be President to become more rich than they already are. They could care less about the “Republic” or public service or paying for things and making sure anything works. Just keep printing money and give me my personal cut is all that Washington DC is.
A prophetic interview with Sir James Goldsmith in 1994 Part 1
Free Trade prescribed by a true and total 1%er
Mish, Hang in .
It is absolutely fascinating to watch as our political demagogues toss trade war meat to a willfully ignorant mob.
Never in history has the growth of international trade ever produced anything but rising living standards for the participants.
It’s always been TAXES on that trade, in the form of currency manipulation, regulation, or rent-seeking special interests that have given trade itself a bad rap…like today.
And, while I’m goring political campaigner’s sacred cows, let me at that fat old “fair tax on corporations” thingy: No politician anywhere ever taxed a penny of any corporation’s profit; the customers always ultimately pay the taxes, in the form of lost jobs and lowered living standards…like today.
There has been no rising living standards for the majority of the American people over the last nearly 40 years of growing international trade.
They were told it would eventually work and prosperity would “trickle down” to them eventually. Now they are 40 years older and a lot wiser. It is pitchfork time now.
You say that there have been no rising standards of living for the majority of American people, and with that I agree. Yet why? That is where I disagree. Trade is a force that has increased standards of living, but there have been other forces which have decreased standards of living. The net result has been a wash.
What forces have been working to decrease standards of living? The growth of government, and the growth of the welfare state are both things that consume an ever larger portion or our nation’s wealth. Unfortunately they are growing fast enough that the additional benefit of trade has not been able to overcome them. Once the trade war starts, though, and we reverse the benefits of trade, it will all become painfully clear, however.
Can you show that the government has grown as a percentage of GDP over the last 40 years? Or the welfare state? Granted I would suspect the welfare state has grown but primarily as a result of private sector increases in healthcare costs.
It seems to me that taxes have been dramatically cut since Reagan. I know mine have.
Whoa, here’s something I wasn’t expecting to see, a comment that demonstrates some understanding that trade always enhances the standard of living. We are a couple generations removed, now, from Smoot-Hawley, so it’s painful lessons are long forgotten. Smoot-Hawley led to a global trade war, and the result, not surprisingly, was a downward spiral in global trade over the next 5 years or so. Another result was a massive decline in standards of living worldwide, and a massive global depression, which in turn was one of the precipitating causes of WWII.
Now that we are long removed from Smoot-Hawley, and it’s lessons have been forgotten, it’s time to repeat it. We can focus on the gains of blocking global trade, local manufacturing jobs, and forget the losses, such as higher costs for items, and lower standards of living, and a depression. It’s all good, though, because once we repeat Smoot-Hawley, and see what happens, we will learn once again the benefits of trade, and it will be a mistake we won’t repeat again for another hundred years or so.
If you doubt that trade improves your standard of living, consider a world with no trade at all. What if you had to grow all your own food, and make all your own tools, and your own clothes, and could buy nothing. How high would your standard of living be? Mine would not be very high at all.
“If you doubt that trade improves your standard of living, consider a world with no trade at all.”
I care about the US … not the “world”.
The US is an exception … outside of some rare earth minerals the US is rich in natural resources (oil, coal, timber, arable land, fresh water, access to oceans, etc) and could “go it alone” if need be (not saying that is the preference … just that US should ALWAYS have the upper hand in trade negotiations) whereas, most, if not all, other countries HAVE to trade.
Any – most at least – standard of living increases courtesy of massive amounts of debt created the past few decades … by both households and governments. Take that away and standard of living craters … trade or not.
@Tony,
Agreed. The U.S. has run a trade deficit since the ’70’s. How was that financed? By reducing taxes and increasing deficits, the feds created treasuries that could be traded for real goods. And the trillions in various types of real estate related CDO’s are traded for real goods and services. So you are absolutely right, any real increase in the standard of living was not through trade, but through the massive increase in real debt, both public and private.
Hitler wanted to “go it alone” as well economically (and politically!)
I am not saying you’re Hitler, but I am saying you subscribe to the same inane crankish principle that economic autarky is superior to trade and the division of labor. You wouldn’t use this principle in your own life and try to “go it alone” by producing all the things you need and want by yourself. You trade with others because some people do things better than you do. This is comparative advantage, a very simple economic principle developed by Ricardo.
You haven’t studied economics deeply and think you can get by with an intuitive grasp of violent tribal politics. Didn’t work for Hitler, won’t work for you.
@The Lion,
Yes! Everything is always either all or nothing, black or white! There can never be any reasonable middle ground. That crap is for Socialist liberal Nazis!
Holy conservative talking points, Batman!
You think that Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Republican Depression?? Think again. At the time, international trade was only 4% of GDP! The U.S. was largely self-sufficient, and most producers & vendors were small-scale & local. They didn’t even consider taking on the expense of international selling.
Smoot Hawley did not cause the depression – It made it much worse
So did the idiotic crop burning of FDR
That man committed treason and belonged in prison
Lion. There are limits to any of these parameters. Your judgement is politically founded. Why? You are insinuating that global trade is good on the grounds of that it is possible. So you expand trade to its earthly limit, and you find that it is then restricted to that. There is no reason in principle therefore to suggest that restricting trade to only the US may be any worse than an eventual global restriction, and there are reasons offered why it may be better. I have no absolute judgement on this except to point out that there cannot be one, at least until the politics of nation no longer exist and we trade openly and unguardedly as individuals, at which point there will be no judgement beyond individual preference.
Why do I say politically founded? Because you are talking of installing a certain policy on other nations, even if you consider it a removal of policy. A policy of removal of policy remains a policy until as a last act it deletes itself – you are going to be asking for more faith than is around to have it followed to its end.
I think we have a fair way to go, and it is possible setting up the ethic of free trade properly as reality is more feasible within a national boundary than at a global scale, just as totalitarianism is easier within a national boundary also. Maybe we should be watching our own nations first, ensuring that the opening/closing of boundaries does not facilitate the totalitarian trait or its expansion – I would call priority to that rather than a surplus of unneeded goods and a political tab that is unaccountable.
“You haven’t studied economics deeply and think you can get by with an intuitive grasp of violent tribal politics. Didn’t work for Hitler, won’t work for you.”
Ha. You gave me a good laugh.
My “intuitive grasp” has taught me when someone has “no game” they take the invective route.
The “willfully ignorant mob” is the US voting public.
Gee Mish, any one of them could have said any of these things on any given day. They are politicians, especially now pre-election politicians. Depressingly, we only find out what they will DO, which has become increasingly predictable, AFTER elections, which have morphed into stupefying charades. A referendum, especially a short one in plain Anglo-Saxon English, is more meaningful unless a by-design entrenched and fundamentally disloyal civil bureaucracy decides to sit on its hands and ignore the vote.
In a market where jobs are scarce, you’re never going to convince anyone that buying cars, iPhones and large screen TVs, etc. cheaply from abroad is better than having a job. It’s not that “free trade” is necessarily at fault, but rather that circumstances brought about by years of ill-conceived policies make it politically impractical right now.
The problem isn’t that “jobs are scarce”. There are plenty of jobs. The problem is the available jobs aren’t stable enough to allow the job-holder to have a confident, long-term outlook for their financial stability.
Therefore, people won’t be willing to spend as freely (confidently) and that spending is what supports everyone else’s income.
Wrong again, Jon! You are quite the consistent Keynesian, though. “Demand, we need more demand!!” Why do you come here if not to troll Mish? It’s quite clear how he thinks about these issues.
Tcht. He put jobs and hence productivity first, he did not suggest stimulated spending/demand to create jobs, but true earnings to stimulate demand in trade… here at least…
Many in the west have the notion that the definition of ‘free trade’ is ‘getting things for free’ though… and then wondering where their own value is as they find themselves bought out.
Its not JUST the British who are fed up with political crooks (see the at least 8 other countries that want a referendum on the EU, plus Iceland and Switzerland just pulled their applications).
Its not JUST the Americans who are fed up with political crooks — putting a real estate / reality TV guy into the white house in defiance of media weenies.
It turns out the west has another thing in common with the people of Iran:
** Iranians are angry about big bonuses paid to bureaucrats **
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-36600786
Who said #8???
Trump
http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Donald_Trump_Free_Trade.htm
So is it right to assume Republican, Democrat, and socialist are all speaking against NAFTA and TPP agreements. Why are they passed or moving through congress as a top priority. Really pointless to listen to these guys unless they have are presenting legislation to shut these agreements down. All candidates have opinions none have any action to back up their ideas.
I get why free trade is good. I also understand taxes are necessary, but that taxes on businesses are generally passed on to the customer. So, if trade otherwise remains free, but a portion of income tax is replaced by an import tax, who in the United States is hurt? This makes US companies more competitive in the US market but the customer gets the same value for a unit of work. Or am I missing something?
I could only guess.