TPP Passage Will Guarantee 3rd World Wages In US. American Workers Will Not Be Able To Compete.

[TreasonousBastard]

63. There aren't any direct benefits in any trade agreement...

all the benefits to us tend to be indirect-- and not in that bullshit way they talk about cutting taxes on the wealthy makes them hire more people.

The point is that trade ultimately benefits us all, but the question is how to best regulate it so that it doesn't bring too much benefit to the wrong people and cut others out. Smoot-Hawley was an attempt to close our borders so we wouldn't import much, which was seen by some as driving prices down and causing unemployment. It was a spectacular failure and disrupted exports and the import of raw materials and food that we don't grow here. It didn't cause the Depression, but it extended it.

Wall Street went to Hoover begging him to veto it, but then as now Wall Street was seen as purely profiteers with no knowledge of or interest in proper economics. Wall Street was greedy then, as now, maybe even greedier, and they were a primary cause of the Depression themselves, but they aren't that stupid. They saw what would happen, but, being the craven financial manipulators they were, their pleadings were ignored and everything went to hell.

I've seen NAFTA blamed for killing as many as half a million jobs, but the the jobs that would have been lost anyway are rarely separated out. We had already been in a recession and seeing the maquiedoras (sp?) sucking jobs down there long before NAFTA, but the agreement also reduced the restrictive import rules Mexico had, so our exports down there grew. That had unintended consequences for Mexican farmers, but so it goes when number crunching. So many good and bad things happened that it's tough to say whether or not it was a good or bad thing overall until the dust finally settles.

The same goes with other major trade agreements-- just ranting over "the damage done" means nothing unless you can show that there was actual damage done that was due entirely, or at least primarily, to the agreement.

The TPP has one fundamental purpose-- a balance to China as a new major economic player. It's already the most populous nation, and soon to be the largest economic producer-- eclipsing the US and Japan while destabilizing every other Pacific nation and the EU.

The TPP may not be the answer, but does anyone have a better one?